November

Brylee and Maelee still enjoy playing with each other although Maelee is slowly gravitating more towards Gunnar, which is leading to A LOT of mischief around here! They are no longer alolwed to play together in any of the bedrooms.

We took the back bench out of the van so we could pick up all the wood from Home Depot to make a triple bunk bed!

And of course there was a Christmas tree so everyone wanted to smile. 

The building of this bunk bed was really made possible by our fabulous neighbors that opened up their tools to us. We would love to own the tools but just don't really have space for them ti justify having them around all the time. 

I measured out the lengths and Tucker and Hunter helped hold the wood while Bryant cut on the line. 

We then measured for the holes and tried to drill through the template piece into the other pieces. After all this hard work we learned that holding a drill with your hand and drilling down is not the same as a drill press. All the holes had to be redrilled while laying in formation with the cross support beams. This first Saturday was a frustrating day when the pieces didn't line up for us to just take inside and put the bed together!

Look at all that wood! We sure hoped it wouldn't turn out to just be really expensive firewood!

During the week, I finished all the sanding, filling in the excess drilled holes, and painting all the pieces. I even ended up cutting a couple more pieces for the ladder rungs. Then, on the next Saturday we attached the rungs to the end pieces. We also had family pictures scheduled this afternoon. I had planned on the bunk bed only taking one Saturday, I'm an optimist. So we finished screwing the ends together, and cutting the plywood, then left for family pictures, came back and put the bed together inside. I'm so thankful, that the weather held out during this week long process so that we could get the bed done!

I was amazed by how much space there ended up being on the bottom two bunks. I can sit up on them and barely hit my head. The top bunk has a couple less inches of clearance. 

We had a family home evening lesson on King Benjamin teaching his people from the tower since we were reading about it in our morning Book of Mormon reading. We built tents to face the temple (couch). When we were done we played a game of "bear" Basically one person is a bear and they try to catch the other people as they scurry from one tent to the other. It was quite hilarious at time.

We did get our first snow the next week. I think this is Maelee's first experience with snow. She is not used to being cold and snow is cold! She has constantly fought with me about the need for closed toe shoes, jackets, beanies, etc. Only after going outside comes in complaining about being "cold-ee" and then requests help with her coat, shoes, beanie, etc. 

Connor was also super excited about the snow. Apparently, we didn't go play in the snow with Tucker, Hunter, or Gunnar when they were in size 5 shoes because our smallest boy snow shoes are size 8! Connor is really between a size 4 and a 5 and so he got to wear the pink princess boots outside. 

Connor also didn't like to keep his gloves on because it made it hard to grab the snow. He also didn't like to grab the snow with his bare hands. He didn't last outside very long. 

When Tucker and Hunter came home from school they destroyed the snowmen and worked on building an igloo. They don't usually get any snow because it melts away so quickly so our snowmen provided at least a little fun for them. 

After another day of building the igloo turned into a cave for his tiger. 

Here are the four at homers playing with play-doh

Bryant had a birthday and turned 32! I wrapped his presents a couple of days early and put them out for him to have to look at and wish he could open. 

Thanksgiving was a delight. We realized that with a Turkey in the oven nothing else would be able to cook. Thank goodness we built that fire pit last month! Bryant heated the coals and then put both our dutch ovens in, one with yams and marshmallows, and one with squash. They both turned out beautifully!

Aunt Natalie came back to visit. It was a lot of fun to have family joining us. Tucker learned how to play Number quest finally and he LOVES it! He played it with anyone who would play with him the entire weekend. 

The joys of a random evening!

Maelee also had a birthday and turned 3!

I made her a Minnie Mouse cake and had to explain on multiple occasions that Minnie Mouse was not coming to our house and that the cake was for her!

I was extremely pleased with how it turned out!

Hunter also created his own version of dashing through the snow.

"Dashing through the snow, on a pair of broken skis. I think I'm dead, the snow is red, I woke up in the hospital with stitches in my head. Oh here and here and here and here and here and here and here. Here and here and here and here and here and here and here. I'm Dead!"