A few November happenings

Here are just a few pictures from our pre-Thanksgiving November.

Anna was excited too make this apron from a dish towel at activity girls.

She has made a lot of small goals for herself including learning to sew new things and cook.  She has a great chocolate chip cookie recipe she has made on her own several times.  We had a conflict one afternoon when she started making cookies and I needed the stand mixer for our gingerbread houses, but we are learning to share our cooking space and deconflict with one another.

Buttery delicious cookies

Took a trip with Emma to Trader Joe's.  I love Trader Joe's (the grocery store) but the nearest one is in downtown Salt Lake so I don't go that often.  It's about 25 minutes away so not terrible but I still don't make it there a lot.  It's a special treat when I do.  I loved going to TJ's as a kid - I remember getting cheesecake, pirouette type cookies and lots of dried nuts and fruits.  And in college (when there were no Trader Joe's in Utah) I would always stock up while I was home in California on nuts and cheese  and other fun things to take back to college.  I remember bringing disposable coolers back several times from college to keep the cheese fresh.  So I love Trader Joe's is what I'm saying.  My dream is to live really close to one some day.  My sister lives a few blocks from one in WA.  She is living the dream. :).  In CA (Monterey and Gilroy) we lived pretty close and that was great.  I love you TJ's!!  On this day we got a lot of seasonal treats like advent calendars, pumpkin spice things, tri-color carrots.  Fun times.

Anna had her DARE graduation (it used to stand for Drug Abuse Resistance Education but they may have changed the acronym - still about saying no to drugs though).

A former Miss Utah spoke to the DARE graduates.  I was conflicted about this picture because I object to beauty pageants on principle, but Anna wanted to try on Miss Utah's stuff and she did give a good speech about her brother's struggles with substance abuse so I let it go.  I don't want my girls to aspire to only being valued for external things - so boo to pageants, but yea to good inspiring messages about saying no to drugs.

Lots of fall leaves to deal with still.  Scott used a leaf blower.

John thought it was too loud.

Emma has learned to sort of clean her room by herself

She is also excited for Frozen 2 to come out

We played with bubbles one afternoon

She wants to have constant stimulation while the kids are at school.  It's exhausting.

Before going to pack meeting one night.  Starting to regret having the boys do scouts 'cause I have to make pinewood derby cars soon.  Gah!!

Working on Saturday jobs

Anna went through my old stash of fabric and we found some precut pieces (charm packs) of fabric for her to make a quilt.  I also had some white strips leftover.  She's making plans.

And executing them.  Good job Anna.  She's becoming a good seamstress.