Carlson's November

I can't believe November is gone. Here's what we did:

We raked a lot of leaves! We enjoyed being outside and feeling the sunshine this extra warm November. We were able to get lots of outside projects done with the warm days sticking around so long. We got a good jump start on our compost - one of my favorite yard jobs. And we spent a few Saturdays, cleaning out, filling, and sealing the numerous cracks in our driveway.

We celebrated our 11th anniversary on 11/11, which was king of cool. Dad and Sharon came to watch our kids while we went to the temple, which was really nice. They must have changed the cleaning schedule at the Mt. Timp temple since we got married because now it is always closed on our anniversary. So we went to the Oquirrh Mountain one and really enjoyed it.

Our kids had their primary program on Nov 20. They did a great job. Since our primary is so small, each child gets to give a talk that they write themselves. Daniel talked about the restoration and the Book of Mormon; Mary talked about temples; and Anna talked about our bodies being temples for our spirits. Scott's parents came for the program, and stayed for Thanksgiving.

We had a nice Thanksgiving. Scott's parents did a really nice FHE lesson for us on gratitude. They taught us how to say thank you in several languages, and then we made a Gratitude tree with leaves that said all the things we're thankful for. The day before Thanksgiving as we were making the pies, we realized they were all made from our garden harvest! We had pumpkin, cherry, and apple, and they were all delicious. On Thanksgiving morning, we went on a nice walk, and then we made turkeys out of baby food jars, similar to the Santa's mom would put by our plates at Christmas. We filled them with nuts, and used those to eat as we went around the table before dinner and said many of the things we are thankful for. This has been a year of plenty for us, and we have so much to be thankful for.

Anna's ready for pie!

Another exciting thing that happened this month is that we traded Peter all his binkies for a stuffed polar bear he named Bob. We went back to the binkies for a few sick days, but overall he has done awesome with the trade. The only problem is that now instead of going right to sleep as soon as I plop the binkie in his mouth, he talks and sings (mostly to and about Bob) and takes forever to go to sleep. I keep hoping he'll go back to quickly going to sleep, but for now we're just so glad we made this huge leap in his "big boy transformation".