Happy Thanksgiving!

This week we celebrated Thanksgiving! We drove down to Westerville to visit my parents, and we were so fortunate that Kris and Linda were also able to come down too. It is such a blessing that our parents are such great friends and we can celebrate events like this together.

Before the actual Thanksgiving, we did a few things. Monday was pretty much a nothing day, though. Keira seemed a ton better, but we didn't want to risk it and kept things really low key for the morning. However, it was the day of the celebration for the GOTR, and I ended up bringing Keira and Soren with me. They had fun, and we had a ton of pizza left over. They enjoyed the girls and some brought younger siblings.


On Tuesday, Keira was good to go to school. While she was there, we got the oil changed in my car. It is pretty painful to keep Soren entertained in the dealership, so I was really happy when it only cost around $4.50 after I redeemed a coupon plus our owner advantage reward. I used an F150 truck bed for a play yard at one point. Soren really enjoyed it.

Keira brought home a ton of fall decorations today too. I think many of these were hanging in her classroom.


We got in a quick run at Maybury in the evening, and it was SO DARK! I really should have brought a lamp with me. It was a perfect temperature the whole time, in the low 50s, but just dark. Thankfully I didn't turn an ankle or anything. Ryan has been riding with a lamp for some time now, and I think it is finally time for me to start as well.

Wednesday was a busy day. There were no storytimes this week, but we hit the gym for a quick swim. Once home, we packed up to be ready to leave we Ryan got home. We got into Westerville close to bedtime for the kids, but we had a little bit of time to play.


Thursday was the big day! We started off at the Flying Feather 4 Miler in Dublin. I was very pleased with my finish time of 30:12, and I was 8th in my very large age group. There was a pretty large group running; Kris, Linda, Bob, and me, as well as friends Corey and Crystal. Soren wasn't feeling very well, and unfortunately we didn't realize it until we were at the race. He cried almost the whole time. Below: Corey, John, Jason, Crystal, Me, Bob



Kris, Linda, Bob, Me, and Soren (wearing a hoodie and facing me)

Once home, we got into cooking mode and had a great Thanksgiving dinner. Sarah and her boyfriend came over, as well as David and two of his roommates from Italy. The meal was great, and it was wonderful to share it with our family. Below: Miriam and Bob
Me and Keira
Linda and Kris
Soren and Ryan
Sarah and Me (and broccoli)
David and Sarah
Keira
Soren and Keira with Sarah's dog, Moose. They both LOVED him, and he is great with kids.

Black Friday was really a non-event for us. No big shopping sprees or getting up early. We instead had lunch with almost everyone from Thursday at Cap City. It was wonderful as usual.





Soren was still not feeling fabulous, so we didn't do much else. Ryan and I were able to have a date and saw New Moon. We enjoyed it, although I won't be posting pics of any characters here, as it is only a movie.



On Saturday, we had a lazy morning with a yummy pancake breakfast. I got a short quick run, and then we got on the road. We made a quick stop at Road Runner Sports, one of the online stores that I use to find good deals on shoes that only has a few actual stores, and found a fantastic deal on my shoe that had just gone to clearance, in my color, and they only had my size! How crazy is that! I can't wait to try them out. We got back into town without any issues and that evening, Ryan and I started pulling out Christmas decorations. With us leaving so early for Germany this year, we need to get a head start on them to make it worth doing. I also had to make some last minute calls for Primary since we had decided that we would be keeping everyone home from church due to illness.


On Sunday, we had a nice, lazy, restful day at home. We got most of our remaining Christmas decorations out and set up. We purposefully left some put away, because Soren is going to be in to everything this year. We had to take shifts working on the tree, because he wanted to touch EVERYTHING! The Little People Nativity was not the distraction for him that it was for Keira, but they both really enjoyed playing with it. They need to work on sharing it, though.


Keira was able to help decorate the tree.


Soren was kept occupied temporarily on the box from a fraction of the decorations.

Note that the stocking were hung from the hutch with care. In the past, they had been hung from the staircase (since we don't have a fireplace or chimney), but we didn't feel like having daily bonkings from the holders like last year, and that was just Keira.
Up for next week, we will hopefully all be healthy again and get back to our normal activities. We will have Ryan's work Christmas Party as well.

Veteran's Day Observed

This past week wasn't terribly exciting, but still busy. Ryan did have Monday off in observance of Veteran's day.

Monday was a very non-typical day off for Ryan and more of a day off for me. It is usually more fun for Ryan. We had a lazy morning. Sometimes when we can't "find" Soren (meaning he isn't in Keira's room or the upstairs bathroom and we haven't heard him in a while), he is here:

He likes to look out the window in our room. The view really isn't much right now since all the plants are pretty much done, but the glass comes all the way to the floor so it is perfect for little people to look out. At one point, Keira, Soren, and Ryan were all in the curtain looking out. This picture doesn't fully capture what I wanted to show, because usually it is brighter outside and you see his outline as a shadow on the curtain, but it was too dark and didn't show up without the flash, and with the flash, it just looked like a bump.

Ryan went for a bike ride while I took Keira and Soren to the library for Storytime.



Once we got back from storytime, I was able to go get my hair cut and colored for the first time since last Christmas. That took up most of the afternoon, and then I went to coach GOTR. It was a bummer that I didn't get a day off of that today because we had family pictures in the evening (I posted those pictures already). That was pretty much our whole day.

Tuesday things were back to normal and Keira went to school. However, the church building was closed for re-carpeting. We were able to go to Maybury as a family. Keira and Soren LOVE the leaves.




Wednesday was a pretty full day. We started off at the gym, then hit the library.

After a quick stop at home for lunch, we went to meet Valerie, Katie, and Luke at Laurel Park to see the new play area there. It is pretty small, but empty, so it was plenty big for the 4 children to play.






On Thursday, I was starting to drag a bit. Here are Keira's school projects for the week:



Keira's school picture proofs came back, and they turned out really nice.

I did some work for Primary (but not nearly enough it seems) while Keira was at school, and then had everyone nap in the afternoon. It had rained today, so going to Maybury wasn't really an option in the evening. Instead, we decided to hit up Parmenters for one last time before they close this Sunday.
Soren is rocking Keira's sunglasses. He loves wearing sunglasses.

On Friday, we slept in a little bit, and went to the gym. Since we didn't have anything going on really today, I was able to get in a longer workout than usual. Soren was being cute and snuggling with Keira and saying, "ahh".
That evening, we went to REI and costco. We watched the Star Trek movie that evening, and then I really started to feel yucky. I was up very late coughing, and found myself at CVS at 1:30am purchasing cold medicine to finally go to sleep.

On Saturday, I woke up barely in time to make it to a Primary Stake meeting. While I was there, Ryan attended a meeting with his Wolverine friends about taking over the positions of ride leaders for next year. Ryan, Kent, and David will all be ride leaders for next year, and be able to wear special jerseys provided to them by the club. After that, the OSU/UM game was on. Ryan watched it, while I slept through most of it. Keira and Soren love playing with my witch hat, which we FINALLY put away from Halloween.


The OSU victory made me feel a little better. Afterwards, Ryan went on a ride at Maybury, and I just tagged along to watch Keira and Soren at the playground. That is actually a lot easier than trying to watch them here because they love to be outside and it is a shorter time alone with them. Soren got to do the slide with minimal spotting. He was pretty slow to go down on his own, so here is the full play by play, starting with him trying to climb up it first.








Sunday was the huge day of service for me. I still wasn't feeling the greatest, but good enough to just push through all my obligations. Today was the day of my Girls on the Run 5K. All of my girls completed the race, and the weather wasn't terrible for it.

I couldn't stay too long after the race, though, because I had to dash home to get ready for church. I did have time to crank out some pumpkin bread. It was from a mix, but it was fabulous! I think the fact I substitued Parmenter's Apple Cider for the water was a KEY improvement. It had mentioned using juice instead, but the cider really kicked it up a notch! Keira had a rough day today. She fell asleep in the car on the way to church, and then slept on Ryan during Sacrament meeting. We should have known from that act that she didn't feel well, but we put her into nursery anyway. About halfway through nursery, Soren wandered into Keira's nursery, and she was just laying down on the floor. At that point, Ryan took Keira and Soren home since I had driven separately because I had to stay late for a quarterly meeting with the Bishop. I had a brief dinner at home that Ryan graciously prepared, and then had to dash off again to a Priesthood Preview meeting. What a crazy day! Hopefully I can use better planning next time around and try to not have so many things all in one day.

I have cancelled all plans for tomorrow because of Keira's illness (she had a low fever we noticed once we got home). Hopefully we can rest up these next couple of days so that we can have a healthy Thanksgiving in Ohio.