Sunday, November 29, 2015

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is over, soon Christmas will be here and I haven't bought a single Christmas present.  I'm in trouble.

But before I jump to Christmas, we need to talk about Thanksgiving.  We had a great weekend.  We started a new tradition of running a Turkey Trot as a family.  It was so great.  I was going to have Sage ride her bike, but she really wanted to run.  So all of us ran and it was awesome.  The kids did great, especially Sage.  I was amazed.  She's never even run even close to that far before, but she ran pretty much the whole way.  She was passing people left and right and just kept going.  She ended up finishing in just under 34 minutes.  Crazy!  She was super tired after and took two big naps in the car that day, but I was impressed.  It was a lot of fun to run a race with the whole family.  Definitely a great tradition.

For our feast, as my kids call it, we went to Greg and Tracy's.  There were at least 50 people there, but of course Tracy managed to have plenty of food, and even managed to make all of the tables look beautiful.  It was great to visit with everyone and eat lots of yummy food.

The rest of the weekend has been pretty chill.  We finally finished painting our garage.  Its been a huge disaster since we moved in and I finally couldn't take it anymore and told Jake we were painting it or else...  We had to paint it so that he would put shelves in so we could get all of our junk off the floor and actually park two cars in the garage.  For the first time in like 10 years I have a nice, clean, organized garage.  We still need to put more shelves in, but I can now go in there without getting a major headache.  The kids worked hard to help us finish.  It was definitely a family project.

I had to add this.  This is Sage's traumatic face after losing her first tooth

Ready to race!

Sunday, November 15, 2015

Gratitude, Dinner, and Choir

I should probably make this into three separate posts, but that will probably never happen.  So here it is, like a run-on sentence.  November is Gratitude Month, for obvious reasons.  And I have been feeling really grateful lately.  The last couple of years were really tough, and while we definitely still have hard things, life is really good right now.  Its so nice to be in our house, finally!  And I love everything about it.  Everything.  And even though it about killed us, I love that I can look anywhere in our house and know that we did it ourselves.  Its kind of cool to live in a house that you really built.  I love that Jake has to walk 100 feet for his commute.  That's pretty cool.  I'm grateful that we're busy with work and that this business we've (mostly Jake) worked so hard for is a real, true, successful business.  That's pretty cool too.  And all of these things that are pretty cool I know have come about through blessings from God.  I know we did not get here on our own.  I know without Him we are nothing.  And I'm so grateful.

Next post.....

We actually had friends over for dinner.  This is a big deal as we don't do it much.  And we really need to do it more.  This was an extra fun dinner because I didn't have to do any cooking.  The people we bought our appliances from send a chef over to cook dinner for you and friends as kind of a demo of the appliances.  So we had a for reals chef cook for us in our own kitchen.  It was awesome.  The food was delicious, even more so because I didn't have to cook it.  We had yummy shrimp, salad, steak with potatoes shaped like mushrooms, and bananas and pineapple foster.  Super delicious.  Every course but the salad involved sauce with liquor (don't worry, we didn't drink it), and thus some big flames.  All of the boys helped cook with the big flames and loved it.

Next post.....

Kate has been singing in a community choir the last couple of months.  She loves it more than I thought she would.  It totally takes me back to my madrigal days.  Its a small group of girls and they sing in fancy dresses with character shoes.  Oh yeah, there's dance involved too.  Anyway, her first performance was Saturday night.  She looked beautiful and did a great job.  It was really cute to watch.  Grandpa Spjute and Grandma Tracy even came to watch which made it extra special.  Kate got to curl her hair and wear makeup so she was feeling extra fancy.  It was a great experience!

I actually attempted to make this old table look nice for the dinner

Chef Vaughn on the left with our friend Jeff.  There was some big flame that you can't see

Super Girl Sage (don't ask)

Sage found old halloween costumes (again, don't ask)

Beautiful Kate ready to sing her guts out

Singing the "Star Spangled Banner" (second from the left)

Kate and Grandpa Pirate

A blurry picture of Kate and Grandma Tracy

The fam

Sunday, November 1, 2015

October Happenings

I cannot get my act together with this blog lately.  I think about writing in it, but I can't even think of anything to say.  Not sure why.  Writers block or something.  I know nobody reads this, but I will never scrapbook.  This is my way of keeping track of things and so I've got to do better.  On my list of things to do soon is get some books made of past posts so that we have them to look at.  Must do must do....

This month was fairly calm.  Yes, the business is crazy as usual.  Yes, there are plenty of things happening.  But nothing too newsworthy.  We had fall break and ended up doing a stay-cation.  Sometimes those are awesome.  Much less work.  We went bowling, went to a movie, went to the zoo, and Zack even made it to Frightmares at Lagoon with some friends.  He was in heaven.  Only he and one other girl had the guts to go on Cannibal.  Kind of funny.  Halloween was yesterday.  I'm glad my kids love it because its definitely not my favorite holiday.  I love the decorations, but that's about it.  This year Zack was Harry Potter, Kate was Hermione, and Sage was a princess (or an evil queen depending on her mood).  They got way too much candy and had a great time.  Happy days:)

Sage is ready to ski!

We did family pictures and this was Sage's pose

Zoo fun


Aunt Heidi and Baby Sofie came with us to the zoo!

The only picture I got of the Witchy-Poo Party - which doesn't do it justice because its my kids' favorite day of the year

Beautiful girls with a beautiful view

Sister!

Beautiful Princess

Hermione

Harry Potter