November

With the sadness of October still hanging over us, we got November started off right away with some fun.
BYU Basketball Game
It just happened to work out that so many of us were able to go to the BYU basketball game on Nov 1st.  Rich, Jen, and kids were still in town so they joined in on the fun too.  The cousins went off and sat across the stadium from us on the second row. They had a great time being crazy together.
At one point they got on the jumbo-tron. It zoomed in on Nathan and Jaxon--Jaxon doing the thumb trick and Nathan freezing. It was pretty funny to watch.

Nathan and Jaxon! 

Cousins!! 

Logan, Max, James, Nathan, Jaxon, and Cara

Sadie Hawkins
On Saturday Nov 2nd Nathan went to the Sadie Hawkins dance at the new Mountain View high school with a friend from Summit Academy, Kiara Elegante. He had a great time.  For their day activity they painted Bob Ross style.

Matt's Half Marathon
On Saturday Nov 9th Matt ran the Mountain View Trail half Marathon on Antelope Island with Mark Fister. We decided to make a weekend of it so Mark and Kim invited us to spend Friday night up at their cabin by Pineview Reservoir. We are so glad that we did!! It is a beautiful cabin with a beautiful view.  We had a great dinner and played games on Friday night.  Saturday the boys left early to get to the race while Kim and I got a few extra hours of sleep.  I had not been to Antelope Island in years..if ever.  It was pretty cool to see the buffalo. The boys did great on their race--of course.  After the race we spent some time exploring the ranch on the island. It was a great weekend get away!

First Ski Day
The snow has been coming down already this year.  Nathan was more than ready to get his first ski day in.  Just days after Brighton opened Matt and Nathan were on the slopes...even if it was just one lift and a few run that were open.

Thanksgiving
We had a great Thanksgiving break that was filled with tons of great family time, food, and snow!  The day before Thanksgiving it snowed tons. We were glad that Miranda and Tyler were both able to make it home Tuesday.

Luckily Tyler was still able to attend Baking Day with Callie's family on Wednesday. Andrea sent me these cute photos of them.

We spent Thanksgiving day with the Hatches.  This year Paula hosted. Several families had plans with other family so with just 30 or so there it seemed a "small" event.  Our family brought 8. We had two extras with us this year-Leah Miranda's friend, and Callie, Tyler's girlfriend. The dinner was amazing, of course, and the company was fun.

Miranda and Leah

Mae and Maggie

Alice and Natalie

Even though we had plenty of desserts Paula had arranged for people to make their own mini pies.  The kids had a lot of fun with that. Can you tell which pie Jacob made?

Logan and Christian kept busy outside making snowmen while we were inside making pies...creative...

After stuffing ourselves we headed home to rest for a bit and then we headed out to our annual Thanksgiving movie. This year we saw Frozen 2 and it did not disappoint!

Vegas
The day after Thanksgiving we drove down to Vegas to visit with Dennis and Mary.  Sadly Miranda stayed back because she just had too much homework to do. The cats were happy about that though.  We got out just in time to miss tons of snow in the Salt Lake Valley. We did hit some snow on our drive down between Beaver and St George, but with Matt's truck we made it to Vegas just fine.  Brett, Debbie, JJ, and Jayson had spent the whole week at Dennis's house.  It was so fun to catch up with them and just have more family time. We even got to see Dennis try out his new foot! He walked across his whole family room with it! Finally! It's only taken a year. He still has a long way to go with it, but he is making great progress! It was amazing to see him walking again.

Friday night-playing games

Bret brought all three of his dogs.  They, of course, loved Jacob

On Saturday, after eating some yummy Pink Box doughnuts, we all went to visit the famous pawn shop from the TV show Pawn Stars. Then we split up for some more fun. Matt, Nathan, Bret, and JJ went to drive go-karts while the rest of us went to the Neon museum-kind of like a graveyard for old Vegas signs. It was actually pretty dang cool. It was a place my mom would have loved.

After having our fun the parents went and helped Mary with a few things while the "kids" stayed with Dennis and played video games together. Saturday night we dragged Dennis out to Red Rock.  Bret and Dennis played Poker while the rest of us saw the movie Knives Out. It was a pretty funny movie. We all liked it.

Meanwhile back at home-keeping warm inside during yet another big snowstorm. SO CUTE! 

Sunday morning we all had to head back to our homes. It's always sad to say goodbye.  The weather was great, but traffic was not. Poor Tyler had an additional two hour drive up to Logan. So it was a squishy (5 people in Matt's truck!) and short trip to Vegas, but well worth it. Now on to December!