Thanksgiving with the Romneys!

My sister Becca and her family were able to drive out from Idaho and stay with us for the Thanksgiving holiday and we were thrilled! We love spending time with her family and will take any chance we can get. Bella and the kids made up multiple dances and imovies which we have enjoyed watching :). I posted one on youtube but Charles said I could only post it on there if it was made 'private', so it'll be just for our enjoyment...for now :). I think he'll look back on it years from now and think it's funny and hopefully won't mind sharing it with others. 

 Baby Rain is getting so big!!! We all loved taking turns holding him, kissing him and playing with him.

 I ran over 13 miles that morning, which i hadn't done in months, so I wore sweats on Thanksgiving so I could feel comfortable in my sore and tired legs, and so I could easily stretch them out throughout the day. The idea of running 13 miles before a Thanksgiving feast was a good one, I thought, but not so good if you haven't already been running that kind of distance. And I still do longer runs on Saturday mornings with my friend Kim Jones, but we've been going more like 8-10 miles so it was still a jump. Which meant it was a little harder to be on my feet cooking all morning/afternoon, and I sat more than I normally would have, while I prepped food.

I let Becca cut and color my hair during her stay. Over the past 12 or so years, I've only really done trims on my hair, and never color, so this was big for me. She cut off several inches and did a tapered cut where it's a little longer in the front than in the back and then she did a less-dramatic ombre color where up top is my normal, darker color, then it's lighter in the middle and she did some blonde pieces at the tips of some of the hair. 

It was fun to try something different, but I'll let it grow out again. In return for all the time she spent doing my hair and trimming some of the kids, we took Blake and Becca to an Indian buffet for lunch which was amazing! 

 Becca and Charles after she trimmed his hair.

 I didn't want to wake the baby with my early morning running on the treadmill, so I decided to go for a run outside even though it was dark, freezing and snowing a lot. I wore snow gloves, my thick and warm headband, and layers of warm clothing including Scott's waterproof lightweight jacket.

Several boys from our ward/neighborhood area decided to play Jr Jazz basketball and invited Charles to play with them. He hasn't played bball in awhile but he loves all sports and being with his friends, so this has been perfect for him. 

Piano competition, selfies, Young Women in Excellence, double date, Vitamix, Fuzzy Socks, Aquarium

Elisabeth performed in the Sandy Music Festival and got third place in her division and was awarded $30. I like competitions because they force you to really work hard on a piece, polishing it, memorizing it, and the money was a bonus for Elisabeth. 

 Elisabeth with her piano teacher of the past three years, Bridget. Bridget is amazing and brilliant and we have so appreciated our time with her! Come the New Year, Elisabeth will be moving to the same piano teacher as Annabelle and Jane...Elisabeth has gotten really busy with AP classes and dance team and tumbling and so she's trying simplify and cut things back. We didn't want her to discontinue piano completely, she has a gift, but for now, she'd like to scale back and be with a teacher who does shorter lessons and expects a little less when it comes to practice time. And this new piano teacher only lives a few minutes away which will be a big change from the 25 minutes we were driving each way for her lesson with Bridget.

 I often find many, many selfies on my phone. I don't mind that much :).

Elisabeth had her Young Women in Excellence night in November. They asked me to come and talk for 5 minutes, sharing a few thoughts on Personal Progress since I recently completed mine (I know, 35 is a bit old, but better late than never! And I loved working on it with Elisabeth...she's almost done!)

We went on a double date with my roommate from BYU April, and her husband Elliot. We had dinner at a Thai food restaurant in Midvale called Chabaar. It was delicious!

This vitamix went on sale in November so I picked one up. I'd been wanting to try one out for awhile...especially since my replacement Blendtec is a bit loud, and the warranty has expired. I am loving the vitamix so far.

Elisabeth with her 9th grader friends...fuzzy socks and slides is the cool thing.

Charles got this major bruise while he was biking with his scout troop. yikes! It's looking much better now.

At the 4D movie (3D plus air and water that sprays at you)

We lost Charles near the end of our Aquarium trip, we were separated for about 10 or 15 minutes before I decided to enlist the help of the staff (mostly because we needed to get home for someone's dance lesson). They asked me to describe what he was wearing...I couldn't remember exactly but I thought a bright blue short sleeved shirt. As you can tell from the pictures, that wasn't exactly correct. I did remember his hair was dark brown and that he was just a little shorter than me, so that's good! Luckily, after a couple of minutes of their team searching, I remembered I had taken some pictures so I showed them to a couple of staff and they sent a walkie talkie message to their coworkers that was a lot more specific (ace bandage on right hand/wrist, long sleeved, dark blue shirt with white football on front etc). After about five minutes, one of their volunteers radioed in on the walkie talkie saying "I found Nemo". I thought it was pretty clever and hilarious; and we were of course grateful for their help. In Charles' defense, he had stayed in the area where we had last been together, but after me and the girls looped around that area twice and couldn't find him (there were a lot of people there as it was a deeply discounted day), we thought to wait in the lobby area.

Scott's work recently took photos of their employees. I like the way it turned out. He's one handsome man!

A clean house when we expect company and Plant Based Nutrition Certificate from ecornell

This is what the kitchen looks like on a normal day. All sorts of things left out from breakfast and the makings of lunch, paper and pens scattered, dishes in the sink and dishwasher open.

I love this sign that I just saw posted online:

It's totally true! But you have to live. If we didn't eat and read and play and work, it'd be super clean. If all we did was clean, it'd be clean, or if we only had three people living in the house, it'd be much cleaner. But with 7 people and all their things, even though they do clean up after themselves daily, or at least, they mostly clean up after themselves, we still have a lot left out. When I'm hosting bookclub, we get the house really clean: 

 I told Scott I just need to host bookclub or some other activity every week so that it stays like this longer. But the truth is, in order to maintain this level of cleanliness with 7 people living in the household, mom has to turn into a taskmaster and not do anything else except clean and be on everybody about cleaning, and I don't like to do that. Oh well, such is life.

 I just finished up my ecornell class in Plant Based Nutrition (WFPB)! If you're not sure what that is, it's basically vegan (no animal products including meat, eggs and dairy), plus no processed foods including oils, refined sugars and flours. My family doesn't follow this closely, but I have been making adjustments and am cooking with less oil, and I've been feeding my family more vegetarian and vegan meals (I am vegetarian), more plants and legumes and whole grains. We do have a treat on the weekend, and sometimes the kids have more because of school/friends etc; and if we're being honest, sometimes I do too. Like last week on Thursday, I ate a small bag of fruit snacks at the car dealership ...Okay I ate 3 bags. It wasn't an exciting visit to the dealer, just my van needing to be worked on, as usual, and the fruit snacks seemed like a good thing at the time.

Healthy Habits while working, and Halloween

Charles finished football a couple of weeks ago. He worked hard and improved his skills and his team won over half of their games. 

 I've mentioned before that I'm working part-time at my little girls school, American Preparatory Academy, as a substitute. I go in 1-2 days a week. I've found that I have to plan ahead to make sure I'm eating healthy and getting in my daily exercise and studying my scriptures. I wake up at 5, read and pray til 540, and then exercise until 630...some days I exercise later, or for longer, like Thursdays and Fridays when I know I'm not going into the school(I told them before we started that Thursdays and Fridays were out...Thursday is temple day and friday I drop off junior high at 950am). I have been making a green smoothie Sunday afternoons for Monday and Tuesday, since that's usually when I go into the school; I drink this after I have my hot lemon water. I often prep my lunch the night before, making sure I have some chopped veggies and a plan for whatever else...often times I take chopped veggies and hummus and leftovers from dinner warmed up in a Thermos.

 Halloween has come and gone! I don't love Halloween. I don't love all the creepy costumes and decor and I don't love all the candy that's around for so long. I have a weakness for sugar so it's hard having it around, though it's also hard always having to be the mom that says no to treats. We've come up with a compromise, where they each picked out a quart sized freezer bag of goodies from halloween, and they keep it up high in the pantry during the week and one the weekend they can pick out a couple to eat. The rest of the candy we froze, threw away or put up high for later use on gingerbread houses. We did have fun going to the pumpkin patch and picking out some pumpkins for the porch, and running through the cornmaze.

 Elisabeth had her Halloween piano recital...here she is in her Vote for Pedro shirt...Napolean Dynamite.

 And here are a few pictures from our ward Halloween party and Halloween night:
Annabelle dressed as Anne Wheeler from The Greatest Showman, and her friend Lorelei from school that she invited along. They were in charge of this ghost bowling activity.

 Nora as Mal from Descendants.

 Charles as Mario.

 Me as a BYU super fan,

 Jane was Evie, another character from Descendants.

 Halloween night Annabelle went as Ginny from Harry Potter and she went trick-or-treating with our long-time friends the Ludwigs, since her and Annika Ludwig have been close since birth. Elisabeth went to the house of a friend in the neighborhood for a Halloween party with friends, and Charles went around with his friend Beau. So we only had Jane and Nora with us.

 Annabelle received the builder award at her school; one person from each class is chosen as the builder. This months theme was honesty. Good work Annie!

Capitol Reef National Park, Family Trip

The kids had their Fall Break over the third week of October, so we went to Capitol Reef! (the entire week off for my young girls at American Prep, and Thursday and Friday off for my middle schoolers...so we left Wednesday late afternoon)

We rented an Airbnb in Teasdale, which is about 15-20 minutes outside of Capitol Reef. It is a very small town, no grocery stores or restaurants, just a few houses spread throughout; a quiet and peaceful setting, and perfect for Scott and I to go running out on the roads each  morning. 

This is the front yard of the house. Beautiful backdrop!

Torrey is probably where the closest grocery store and restaurants are located, and they're about 15 minutes out. We had prepared ahead and brought our own food for all of our meals while we were there. We ate dinner out on the ride over because we didn't leave until 430(after school and piano lessons) and it's a 3 1/2 hour drive. We brought green Naked Juice, fruit and cereal for breakfasts, we packed sandwich makings for lunches and I made a pan of enchiladas and rice and beans for the evening we'd be eating dinner at the house.  It was cheaper than staying in a hotel(around 130/night here with taxes and cleaning fees, and could sleep all 7 of us...we're a little too big to stay in just one hotel room these days), and we had two bedrooms, living area and a full kitchen.  

 We went on a few hikes over that Thursday and Friday. We did Sunset Point hike (1 mile roundtrip) and the Goosenecks Overlook (mostly a picture spot, not really a hike) and Hickman Bridge(2 miles roundtrip) on Thursday.

 Friday we went to the Panorama Point for pictures (and we ran into our neighbors, the Droges while there!) and then did the Capitol Gorge hike (around 2 miles round trip)which is all flat, but you have to take some small dirt roads to get to it...I liked seeing the pioneer writing on the rock walls as we walked. Some dated back to 1877!

 Fun trip, all the kids enjoyed it! The weather was a bit cold in the mornings, like 30 degrees where we were staying in Teasdale, but Teasdale is also higher up. Once we got to our hikes, it was the perfect hiking weather! Probably in the high 50's, low 60's, or at least it felt that way.