November ended up being a very full month! WE ended up re-painting all the brown in our house to grey. There was volleyball watching of our friends, Thanksgiving with Hans' family, and then we got an early snow the end of November.
So here we go the month of November in review with pictures.....
We started off the month with taking on a big painting project. I had been wanting to repaint our house grey for awhile and I finally choose a color and bought the paint and got to it. The younger girls helped me and it went pretty fast. It was a lot of work, but I love painting because it is so gratifying and fun to see the new color and the freshness. We cleaned as we went and Aubrey loved that of course. And after 9 years of living here it was a little sad to see the brown go but so fun to have a new, bright, color on the walls. We started with the front hallway and dining room. These are the before pictures.
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| This is how I remembered where the pictures went |
Here is the brown next to the new grey color.
Fresh and bright new hallway! I'm really happy with the new color!
That weekend when Hans was home it was time to work on the living room! Here are the before pictures of the living room.
And that weekend Claire got to go on a fun adventure iFly. It was the middle school girls reward for winning the contest at E4M. They couldn't do it earlier because of Claire's broken leg so they were able to go in November when she was all healed up. They had a fun time. I think it would have been fun to go. But I was glad that she got to go and didn't get hurt. I will admit I had to look up the risk of getting hurt at iFly before I could sign the waiver. I am much more leary about those waivers these days.
Once again Aubrey and Raelyn were the best painting helpers! They really like painting with me!
At the outdoor party at Michauds in October Aubrey had carved these old man apples and we had soaked them in a lemon juice salt mixture I thought long enough to preserve them, but they started molding. So, we had to toss them. But here are the pictures of them. They were looking pretty cool. Bummer they didn't work out!
This year our good friend Jada is a senior! She also plays all the sports! So this was her senior night for volleyball. It was really fun, because a whole bunch of people from our church came to watch her and support her. It was a really fun game too. And not only was it senior night, but we thought it was their very last game. And they won!! So it was super fun. We also got to watch Kelsey for a little bit before
Senior night stuff!
We love this girl! She was emotional after winning and it being their last game (they thought).
It turned out that the girls winning on their senior night made them tied with another team for getting into playoffs. So they got to have another game to try and make the playoffs. So we went down to Gig Harbor a few days later with the Carlsen girls to watch the game. It was so fun and such nail biter matches. They were back and forth and finally in the end they won!! It was so awesome and fun to watch!
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| The Kopps saw us on the way! Lol! |
And they won!!
I was glad to get this picture of Olivia and Jada because I had not gotten one on senior night.
And finished picture of the walls in the living room with the pictures back up.
For Veteran's day we went and flew flags at Nordic! It was so cold!! But it was neat to be out and showing our support for Veterans! You would think we would get lots of honks and waves for veterans, and we did! But I was amazed how many didn't wave. I mean what is controversial about veterans? We spent about an hour and half out there.
Fall decorations are always so fun!!
I decorated for Christmas early so I had to take my Thanksgiving calendar picture early. Here are my sweet girls that I am so THANKFUL for!!
We also started painting the upstairs hallways and stairway. I should have gotten some pictures of Hans painting the stairway because it was quite entertaining. But alas I didn't. Here is the end of product of the upstairs hall.
Meanwhile our good friend Gina started working at the new Denny's in Poulsbo. And one night when we were going to have a pie night we decided instead of going to our usual Shari's we surprised Gina and we all headed to Denny's for dinner!
I had this yummy dessert!
Along with painting, school, and all the other projects I had to finish up putting away the too small clothes for Piper. It is always a little hard for me to let them go. To see these girls growing up so fast it seems. It is a letting go process all the time....a slow, but fast , and always a little hard process. I take pictures so I can remember the clothes they had and once wore. So many cute things! Piper gets a lot of cute hand me downs.
I'm not sure why I took this picture, but it shows our diligent Aubrey doing her chore of cleaning up dog poop out of the yard. She is very helpful!
And a couple of Aubrey and Raelyn in one of their outgrown outfits. They are both getting so grown up too fast on me!
And the midst of my clothing clean up, we had some friends over to watch the Cat Griz game with us. And it went well! Cats won!! WOOHOO! It was a fun party too!
And then it was time for more painting! I had to paint the last wall and the half wall around the stairs, because I hadn't decided what color to paint them. I went with light grey on the big wall and dark grey on the half wall.
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| Before |
Then it was time for Thanksgiving and family! This year we had Mary and Eric and Anna with us for Thanksgiving. They came over Thursday and we had dinner and played games and enjoyed time with them. Anna brought her puppy and she loved Stella, but Stella did not love her. Anna spent one night and then headed home with her puppy. Mary and Eric stay till Saturday evening I think and then headed back over to Anna's.
The Friday after Thanksgiving we always go get our tree. It was super rainy that day and so we waited and waited and finally there was a break in the rain. So we headed for the first time to our neighbors tree farm right at the end of River Lane....Olmstead's Tree Farm. We didn't find one to cut down and bring home, but they did have a good selection of pre-cut trees, so chose one of those to bring home. It was close and nice to support our neighbors.
That night we were mysteriously tree'd by someone. We never did figure out who it was although we had and still have our suspicions. We were never able to get anyone we accused to admit it was them.
Saturday, we headed down to Poulsbo to see Olivia because she was working and get some treats from Sluy's. We did some shopping with the grandparents too. It was a fun outing.
Saturday night I got the lights on the tree at least! It looked pretty with the lights on! So much better!
Sunday afternoon I took Raelyn and Claire to see the Nutcracker put on by Irene's dance studio at the Bremerton High School. We needed to check it out to see if the girls wanted to join the company so they could be in the Nutcracker the next year. It was really pretty, but two things we noticed were there were a lot of girls on stage most of the dances. And the big parts were done by professionals. Which is pretty, but sad also that you can't aspire to be the Sugar Plum Fairy or Snow Queen because they are done by professionals. It is pretty to watch those professional dancers. We had a good time!
Back at home for the evening it was time to get the tree decorated! It happened so fast this year as the girls just got out the decorations they wanted from their boxes and put them on! It looked beautiful of course once it was all decorated and I love getting out all our ornaments and remembering back to when we got them.
And we were having some star issues!
On November 29th we started to get snow! Snow is always an exciting event here, because we rarely get it. The schools close down, everyone hunkers down and doesn't want to go places. It is quite humorous to us Montanans. It was l ight and wet in the morning and Olivia had to work so she headed in. Then she calls me and tells me her tire blew! What?!! That was strange. So she got it into a parking lot and I went to pick her up and take her to work. I remember this Tuesday being really crazy!
That evening we even lost power for a bit!
After work Hans picked Olivia up from work and stopped to see if they could change the flat tire. But it turned out to be a much bigger problem than a flat tire. The brake which Hans had changed a few months before when my dad was in town had lost a bolt out of it and come down and completely wrecked the metal in the rim of the tire, causing it to shatter and then all of the air whooshed out of the tire. I had never seen anything like it!! So needless to say they didn't get the jeep home that night. Hans need to find a bolt and put the brake back on properly in order to bring it home.
In no particular order here are some pictures of the girls playing outside in the fresh snow. I was sure glad the power came back on and that we already put up our Christmas lights before Thanksgiving. They were so pretty in the snow!!!
And then because we didn't know how long the snow would last (you never do in Washington) we decided to do a crazy thing and head to sledding hill in the dark to sled with our friends the Kopps. It was so fun! Not a lot of snow, but it worked and the kids were sledding up a storm! Again in no particular order here are some pictures from the night. It was weird because there was some light coming from the nearby military base. These were taken with long exposure on my phone, hence why some are kind of blurry!
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| Love these girls and their lifetime friendship! |
And this is not a very good picture, but we had to drive underneath a powerline on the way home that had been brought down by a tree branch.
The next morning we still had snow! Woohoo! The girls went out to play some and we saw the damage to the trees from the heavy wet snow and wind. We also saw a coyote in the road! So in no particular order here are a few pictures.
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| Sadly our best and biggest apple tree was knocked over and broken by a tree falling in the woods. |
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| Sammy was funny in the snow! |
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| Another tree down by our shed. |
We put our little tree up upstairs this year and the cats loved it! And I loved seeing them under it. I was sad when we had to take it down. Oliver especially loved laying under it!
That afternoon, I went to help Hans find a bolt for the jeep brake and then get the jeep back home. It was hard to imagine what the tire looked like until I saw it. And Olivia had said when you roll it, it sounds like jingle bells. I could not picture how that could be. Until I saw it! It really was crazy! And we were so glad it happened when it did when she was driving slow and coming to a stop at a stop sign, and not on the highway or anther time braking. That could have been really bad! Lesson learned when you change your own brakes, make sure you get the bolts in tight! We did finally find a bolt that would work well enough to get it home till we could get the right one. Glad for husband who is willing to fix things. And thankful we were able to find a new rim for not that much. It did take over a week to get a rim of ebay and then get the tire put on the new rim. It was a bummer to have our other 4 wheel vehicle broken when we had snow.
Kelsey was dropped off for a bit to play with the girls in the yard. They had fun!
Not sure what was going on here...They had fun though! Looks like maybe a Kelsey "snow" person.
And Claire's turn!
And we got the little tree decorated! So cute!! I love it!!
Well finally I am done with November...it is only the May 2nd, 2023! Ack! I am so far behind! Maybe someday I will get caught up. I will try to get December done faster and then maybe I can just do better at highlights for 2023...I don't know....or maybe I will just always be behind!
