Catch Up

Whoa, so wow.  That was a long time with no posts, sorry!  I have no excuses, so here is a catch up post to try to cover, well, most of November.

In mid-November, we took a trip to the cabin.  It was a blizzard on the drive up, and the canyon was quite the adventure.  The kids were happily watching a movie in the back, but me and Preston were a little concerned up front.  We got there okay, and the next day, it was a beautiful (frigid) winter wonderland!

Silly me, I hadn't expected this much snow, and I was not prepared, The kids had (of course) grown out of their snow pants, and I and hadn't got any new ones yet.  So, no sledding for us, as my kids are complete wussies when it comes to cold.  But we still went on a few wintry walks with the dog.

Olive had never seen snow before, and she LOVED IT (except to piddle on.  It took her quite a while to stop looking for some nice, dry grass to do her bidness on.  Every time.  It was not my favorite thing to stand around outside and freeze my buns while waiting for her to figure out that it was snow or nothing)..  Olive had so much fun running through the snow and kicking it up and just doing the whole puppy frolicky thing.

 Cora frolicked a little too:

 Silly puppy.  That puppy is getting bigger every day too.   She can put her paws on Cora's shoulders and look her right in the eye now.

While we were at the cabin, Dax finally lost his other front tooth.  Well, Preston pulled it out when it was hanging by a thread.  Preston had been dying to pull it out for days and weeks, and Dax didn't want him to do it "until it was looser," so it was a relief to finally have it gone.

He was singing "All I Want for Christmas is my Two Front Teeth" for a while, but those new, giant teeth are coming in fast, and he will probably have a whole new smile by the time Christmas rolls around.  I miss the baby teeth when they go!  Silly boy.

The next morning was COLD!  Like, low-single-digits cold.  The whole lake was steaming:

 It seems weird to remember how cold it was, since it has been crazy warm these last few days down here, but more on that later.

Cora and I were shopping at the Tar-jay, and they had a little "Frozen" background next to a bunch of Frozen shirts and stuff, and Cora wanted me to take a picture of her so she could "fool" everyone into thinking she was really there.  Silly girl.

Were you fooled?  Cora enjoyed November, which at kindergarten is pretty much all about Thanksgiving.  She got to have a Native American name, "Silver Girl," and wear a feather headdress and a fringed vest made from a paper bag!  She LOVED her necklace made form pasta and Froot Loops.

She brought all of this home on Tuesday, which was the last day of school before the Thanksgiving break. She talked about how she wanted to wear the necklace to Thanksgiving dinner.  Later that night, however, while she was at her tumbling class, I saw that the necklace was on the ottoman, and was somehow missing all of its Froot Loops. I asked Dax about it, and said the dog had done it.  When I pointed out that the dog would have eaten the pasta off of the necklace too, he fessed up.  We ran to the store before we picked up Cora (after an extra long time-out, of course) and grabbed a box of Froot Loops.  We broke the news to Cora after her class,, and after a small but understandable freak-out, she was okay with it and quickly rebuilt it.  Both of them had Froot Loops for breakfast the next morning, which they were pretty excited about.  Actually, Dax probably thought the whole thing was worth it.

Wednesday the kids were out of school, it was 60 degrees, and it also happened to be a free day at the zoo.  So, guess where we (and everyone else on the Wasatch Front) headed?  We saw the new African Savannah area, and I liked this new giraffe statue (giraffes are my favorite!):

Dax is as tall as an adult male orangutan!  He is also as tall as Arden, but don't tell Arden that, she gets mad.  It was bound to happen sooner or later, Dax eats easily three times as much as she does.

Cora's favorite was these two bobcats all snugged up together, and she insisted I take a picture and put it "on the puter" so everyone could see it.  Okay.  Silly girl.

 My favorite is always the seals and sea lions, and Arden agrees with me.

 I somehow didn't take any pictures of any of the actual Thanksgiving festivities, but it.  Was.  Awesome.  I love me some Thanksgiving.  The turkey, the sweet potatoes, the family, the pie, the football, the pie!  I think we should do it more often.  I had fun holding my new niece Emmy and feeding her a bottle.  It had been a while since I handled a newborn, but everything came right back, just like riding a bike.  I even got a nice burp out of Emmy, like a boss.  It was so fun doing the baby thing again, and it was also fun handing the baby back to her mom when she filled up her diaper.

The next day, we headed up the cabin again.  This time, I was prepared with snow pants, so naturally there wasn't enough snow left to sled on.  But the sunset Friday night was amazing:

We had fun watching movies and making Christmas crafts and shopping online (well, maybe that last one was just me.)

I took Olive for some long runs during the break.  She likes to take long naps after long runs.  Dax shared his blanket with her.  Awwww!

Olive is doing great, and still puts up with the kids' shenanigans pretty well.  She misses them while they are at school, and always watches them drive away in the mornings with a sad look on her face.

Today was another crazy warm day, it was 60 degrees again.  On December 6th!  The kids are DYING to go sledding.  I was edging the lawn, and Arden got out her sled, and was asking me to find her a long stick.  She found one, and tied a milk bone to the end of it, and tried to get Olive to pull her around. Someone has been watching too many cartoons.  It didn't work very well in real life:

They had to find another solution, so they took turns pulling each other on the sled behind their bikes. Silly kids.

Yup, Cora is wearing shorts.  As nice as the weather is, I gotta admit that it doesn't feel especially Christmasy!  I hope it snows before the big day comes.  And I hope I can do better on the blogging!