Here is a photo journal of our November. It was pretty neat, and flew by quickly!
Grandma Nana and Grandpa Papa made a last minute trip to visit from Nov 1-Nov 4, so they were here for just Thursday evening, Friday, Saturday and Sunday (left early Mon morning). Friday was an early release day for the boys at school, so I let them stay home with their grandparents while I subbed. On Saturday, I had a stake meeting in Rochester, so it was perfect that the grandparents were here to keep the boys company. They earned a sleepover with Papa and Nana at their hotel Saturday night. Sunday was a church regional conference broadcast, which was nice because it meant church was shorter, allowing us to spend more time with our guests. We are so glad that they were able to come be with us!!
Perkins Restaraunt
Jolly Green Giant in Blue Earth
I really enjoyed playing chess with Dad.
The water bottle game, and Papa got it to land on it’s narrow end! Monumental moment!!
The swimming pool at the hotel was a big hit!
Tanner found a way to display all his baseball cards during church without distrubing anyone.
Playing with bright shooter things in the gym with the lights out.
Showing grandma and grandpa the new playground at Tanner’s school.
Things weren’t as exciting once the grandparents left, but the time went by quickly.
Piano party for a few of my piano students and their families. I wanted to see what it would be like to have 3 pianos all in one room. It was interesting!
Dallin had fun with the hairdryer one evening. Weather was getting too cold to go to bed with wet hair.
The boys decided to make critter cards for their pretend school.
At his week-long work trainging in Texas, Jeremy got to see the Fort Worth Stock Yards with coworkers, back where he served his mission.
He tried racing armadillos with a coworker.
And he saw the rodeo!
Soon after that, I left for Idaho to help take care of Melissa and the nieces. It overlapped with Jeremy’s trip, so Merilee and Keith Blake were gracious enough to have our boys stay with them for 2.5 days. I am so thankful for them helping us out. The boys had a very fun time at their home, and getting the kids to and from school wasn’t too difficult since Merilee works at Tanner’s school. I will make a separate post about my adventures in Idaho. As soon as Jeremy got back home, he took the boys to Soup and Santa at the Hormel Historic Home. This was the 4th year in a row that I helped host/plan it, and I heard it went really well. The boys loved the elf show the best.
And they got to talk with our town’s favorite Santa! Even though they know Santa is pretend, the boys had a fun time making their official announcements of what they would like for Christmas on Santa’s knee. (It’s weird how Tanner looks so big in these pictures!) Dallin asked for a toy helicopter and Tanner asked for a remote control helicopter and/or a drone.
Football in the snow with Daddy.
Tanner wanted to make cookies all by himself, so Jeremy let him and this is how it turned out.
Dallin made this placemat at school. It says I am thankful for my new car. His assignment featured at the beginning of this post says I am thankful for mi mom.
Dallin’s Thanksgiving celebrations at school.
Dallin’s school feast filled the hallways to the brim! Kids got to eat popcorn, cornbread, and I think pumpkin pie. I think their favorite part is just sitting in the hallway with so many friends! Parents don’t attend this event, so the teachers took pictures and videos for us.
The boys enjoyed an evening at Shamrock Zone (drop-in daycare) while Jeremy was at a work event.
Dallin made this placemat at school. It says I am thankful for my new car. His assignment featured at the beginning of this post says I am thankful for mi mom.
Dallin’s Thanksgiving celebrations at school.
Dallin’s school feast filled the hallways to the brim! Kids got to eat popcorn, cornbread, and I think pumpkin pie. I think their favorite part is just sitting in the hallway with so many friends! Parents don’t attend this event, so the teachers took pictures and videos for us.
The boys enjoyed an evening at Shamrock Zone (drop-in daycare) while Jeremy was at a work event.
I got back from Idaho just in time for Thanksgiving. We wanted to make it extra easy on ourselves since both of us had been traveling, so we ate a thanksgiving meal at Perkins the day before Thanksgiving. We had a really great time enoying each other and letting other people do the work for us.
We decided that each one of us should order a different slice of pie, then we could all try a little of each one. The boys drew pie charts of what we wanted and showed it to the server. We had pumpkin, chocolate mousse, apple caramel and triple berry pie. We had so much fun eating a little bit of each one together. YUM!
On Thanksgiving day, we fulfilled a family tradition to play Mario Cart and Super Nintendo as a family. Boys were in heaven! We literally just lazed around the entire day and munched on snack foods. It was awesome.
I made these adorbale napkin rings at the Hoof house in Idaho.
On Friday, everyone was busy working. We were hoping to do a day trip somewhere, but I was sick and the weather was not good. I can’t remember what I was sick with, just sore throat probably and low grade fever.
We also spent some of the Thanksgiving weekend putting up Christmas decorations!
This game is ripped in half. Dallin figured out how to make the broken pieces stand on their skinny ends perfectly like an open book.
Jeremy introduced the boys to several computer and nintendo games during November. Not exactly sure about this.
Dallin likes to steel my phone and take pictures around the house or watch youtube videos. I always know when he has stolen it because the house gets really quiet.
More decorating.
And the biggest news from November is that Tanner lost his first tooth!!
Starting at age 5, Tanner has been very eager to lose a tooth, always wondering when his teeth will get loose, and getting very worried that his teeth would never fall out. He insisted back in March that he had a loose tooth. Well, finally, this one started really budging around Halloween. I was sure it had another week to go, but Tanner was so frustrated with the difficulty of eating one night. Jeremy told him to just pull it out because “once it’s out, you can eat again.” That gave Tanner a ton of determination. He grabbed his tooth and with a few hard tugs, pulled the thing right out all by himself at the dinner table!! I was in my bed (sick) and heard a yell and silence, then lots of crying. I ran downstairs to see the excitement. Tanner cried for a good five minutes. “My tooth is out, I’m gonna die, I’m gonna die! There’s nothing there!!” It was really bloody, much more blood than Jeremy or I ever had with our teeth falling out, but we played it cool. I am sure it hurt because it wasn’t really ready to come out yet. That just goes to show how much Tanner was frustrated with trying to eat while having a loose tooth. Under any other circumstance, I’m not so sure he would have pulled it out like that. We were so excited for him!
He decided to keep the tooth for a few days to look at it under the microscope. Then he was ready for me to take the tooth while he was sleeping. (Our kids know that we are the tooth fairy). Tanner was pretty upset when he found a gold coin dollar, and asked “why not $20?! My friend got $20 for his first tooth.” I had been hearing this for a couple days prior and already told him he was never getting that kind of money for any tooth ever. I then explained to him all the trouble I went through to get that coin for him, and he finally seemed to understand that it was special. I heard him explaining to Dallin about the gold coin, so that was encouraging. Now he is Toothless Tanner, and pretty adorable, if you ask me!