November in Review

Besides Brody's birthday and our trip to Utah for Thanksgiving, here's a look at some of the other things that happened during the month of November.


Lots and lots of leaves
We are lucky enough to have a friend with a leaf blower/sucker (which was awesome!) AND a friend who comes to our house and picks up ALL our bags of leaves for their garden.  It makes the process much easier.

Brody's trip to the Philippines
Brody's work sent him to the Philippines for 10 days in November to consult and do some research.  He was excited for the chance to go and I was happy for him, but I was also very sad to be alone that whole time.

Manila suburb

His "office"

Brody always wants to try the most EXTREME food item in a particular country and in the Philippines it was Balut - a partially formed duck egg.

They visited an active volcano called Taal

Drinking from a coconut

The team

A good companion
Salomon was a pretty good companion while Brody was gone.  While I'd much rather have a human living with me (and specifically a human named Brody), I'm happy I at least had this guy.

I can't imagine being completely alone without even a dog to keep me company.

Whatever I want

The first day or two of Brody being gone are kind of nice - I realize I get to eat whatever I want for dinner, including a big plate full of just salad, and that if I clean the house, it will stay that way, like the whole time.  

But then after day 3 or so, I begin to WANT to see a pile of his clothes laying around because at least it means he's HERE.  I really don't like being alone.

Bowling with friends

My friends were also really good to me while he was gone.  I stayed with Nicole and Casey one night (with Salomon), so that was really nice to be around people again.  I also joined them and Stan & Chelsey one evening for a few games of bowling.  I came in dead last the first round, but for the second game, I used a different ball and beat everyone!!  Even the guys!  I was very surprised.

My bowling name was Wilbur (the name I was called in the womb)
Also, some awesome selfies of us girls, and the whole group.

Christmas decor
Don't judge, I put up Christmas the weekend before Thanksgiving.  Partly because Brody was gone anyway and partly because I didn't want to worry about doing it when we got back from our trip to Utah.

I added two new trees to my collection this year, thanks to my mom

I love our big tree too

Most of my Christmas decor is the same as last year, which can be found here, if you are interested, but I did change a few things this year:

Brody's Golden Birthday

Brody had his Golden Birthday the day after Thanksgiving this year.  Which means he turned 29 on the 29th.  I decided to take that theme and run with it.  Since we were in Utah for Thanksgiving, I invited all his high school friends and their wives/kids to the party.  And it was great fun!  We ate dinner, played "who knows Brody best", had fun with the photo booth and just enjoyed each others company.

"happy birthday to you!"

 The whole crew

Friends who were at the party, but not in the group picture:

My sister Jess and her husband Brad (took the group picture)

Jon, Brittany and Isla (left early)

Me and Brody

It was a lot of fun and I'm so glad that so many of his friends could make it (and we missed those who couldn't!)  A big thanks to my mom and sister who did SO much to help me get ready for the party.  Couldn't have done it without you!

Thanksgiving in Utah

We decided to go home to Utah for Thanksgiving this year, for the first time since we left 5 years ago.  We usually never go home for this particular holiday because it's so close to Christmas, but we thought we'd give it a try this year.  Mainly because we hadn't made the long drive since May, so it didn't seem like too much driving back and forth for us, even though we'll turn around and do the same thing again in 3 weeks.  Also, to my slight disappointment, we will be going home for Christmas 2 days later than normal this year, so I thought if we were there for a few days at the BEGINNING of the Christmas season (i.e. right after Thanksgiving), that would make up for it.  And we had a great time!  {Sadly and surprisingly, I didn't take very many pictures on this trip}

Tuesday Brody's flight got in at 2:00 pm (he had been in the Philippines for 10 days for work -- more on that to come later) and we left 3 hours later for Utah.  I drove the whole way because he was so jet-lagged and he slept in until 11 or 12 for the first few days of our trip trying to get back on track.  Poor guy.

Wednesday morning I surprised my sister, who didn't know we were coming for Thanksgiving.

I got a tour of her new house and then she, my mom and I went to a new class at the gym called paddle fit.  You stand on these paddle boards that are sort of balancing on top of two half domed balls, and then you do all sorts of movements on and off the board.  We also sometimes used a "rowing" stick with a big weight at the end.  I felt like I was really getting the same work out (or better) that I would if I was actually on the water in a canoe.  I really liked it.

After having lunch at my parents house, we then spent the rest of the day visiting all of Brody's family members in various places around the valley.

At Brody's mom's house.  I'm so very happy to have him back in my life.
I really don't like it when he's gone, not even for just 10 days.

The only picture I got of Devyn and Dylan.
Devyn's outfit cracks me up - nightgown with one flip flop, one sparkly shoe and an adult sized USU hat (that WAS on backwards until Dylan fixed it for the picture)  I absolutely love those two.

Thursday (Thankgiving)  In the morning we had homemade pancakes, played some card games, then went to my grandparent's house for Thanksgiving dinner at 1:00.  It was sooooooo delicious, as always!  My all-time favorite meal.  That night we had pie with Brody's extended relatives on his mom's side.

Friday (Brody's birthday) my mom, Jess and I did some Black Friday shopping while Brody slept in -- but we didn't go until 9 am and since almost everything opened at 6pm the night before, it really wasn't too busy.  Most of the good "doorbuster" stuff was gone, but we did still find a few good deals.

After that, Brody and I met up with his mom and Berg for his birthday lunch at Le Nonne.  Then, Brody spent the afternoon with Brad and Cam while I finished some last minute errand and preparations for his birthday party that night.  I'll do a separate post on that later,but for now, here's a sneak peek -- getting the photo booth ready.

Saturday I went on a walk with my mom, Jessica and Sal in the morning (the weather was in the 40's and 50's the whole time we were there, it was great!), then after getting ready and having a quick lunch, we left to spend the rest of the day in SLC with the whole fam (mom, dad, me, Brod, Jess, Brad and Cam -- it was weird to not have Jake there {who's on a mission in Seattle} since this was our first time to be with everyone since he left in May).  We stopped at the Salomon Center in Ogden on our way to play glow-in-the-dark mini golf.  It was fun!  Especially when we cracked the system and figured out how to get your balls back at the end.  It came in handy for a much needed tie-breaker.

Then we drove to SLC and checked out the new City Creek mall, which I had never been to before.  It was pretty gigantic and awesome.  I loved that there was an actual creek with trees and grass running along the middle of the entire hallway.  I also liked that they have a roof that can be removed in the summer.

We walked around until it got dark, grabbed a quick snack and then headed to the temple to check out the lights.  It had been a while since I'd seen them, so I was excited to go, but it turns out that we picked the WRONG night to go.  It was the weekend after Thankgiving, for one thing (so the first weekend the lights were turned on) AND there was a huge basketball game between USU and BYU taking place right in downtown SLC and I'm pretty sure EVERYONE that was there for the game decided to go see the lights at the exact same time we did.  You could barely walk, there were so many people on the sidewalk.  The other bummer is, my nice camera got too cold, and didn't work properly, so I didn't get as good of pictures as I wanted.  Oh well.  It was still very pretty and we had a good time.

Jess and Brad, my cute parents, and the boys being silly

On the way home, we stopped at a delicious Mexican restaurant in Ogden, then sat in the hot tub when we got home.

Sunday we just went to part of church, said goodbye to everyone, had some leftover Thankgiving dinner for lunch and then hit the road.

We had a great time and it was so awesome to say "see you in 3 weeks!"  (We'll see if we feel the same way when we're in the middle of our 14 hour round trip drive, again, for the 2nd time in a month).