November

The first Sunday in November, after church, we drove down to the river to take a nice stroll. On the way home, Kirk and Gretchen texted to say she was pregnant with baby #6! Pretty exciting!

Another zoo trip.

Dan left overnight to go climbing at Seneca Rocks. So I took the kids to Wendy's.

Sam showing off some of his amazing Halloween haul.

At the beginning of November, around election time, our school has a 4-day weekend. So I took the kids to my parents' house to hang out for a day and a half.

A friend offered to pay me to make 200 cookies for her wedding. Before the big day, I did some test batches to figure out how to optimize the convection oven and figure out the best temps and times. Quite the process!

The same day as the big wedding, Dan decided to run a marathon. He literally signed up for it like 4 days in advance. He is a stud. Between batches of cookies, we drove down to see him race.

I spent five hours or so in the kitchen that Saturday making the cookies. I had made eight batches of dough the day before. I was exhausted. Dan got home from the marathon, we saw each other for about 30 minutes, then I was off to the wedding! It was a really fun wedding and it was fun to be there with so many friends!

The ceremony itself was outside, which was COOOOOLD, but after that, they had a heated tent and it was perfect for the rest of the night. Chatting, dinner, dancing, dessert, sweet speeches, etc.

Dan and I went on a date somewhere.

The lights began to go up!

Dan started his annual reading of "The Christmas Carol." One year they'll actually finish it.

Sam had a big amusement park project and the parents were invited to come for their presentations. He is doing really well in school.

For Thanksgiving, we headed over to Earlysville to spend it with my parents. Dan has become quite the Black Friday man (really, Thursday night sometimes), so he spends lots of time scouring the ads.

Puzzles.

A few years ago, Dan and I began the tradition of going on a hike early on Friday. This year since I'm pregnant, I didn't think I could do Old Rag (8 miles) so we headed to Humpback Rock. When we got there, Shenandoah Park was CLOSED! Tragic! Apparently there had been a huge wind storm overnight and limbs were everywhere. We were pretty bummed.

So then we drove over to Dick's and got me some workout shoes for Christmas. The UVA/Virginia Tech football game was on. It was pretty tense.

We had set up the tree before we left so that we could decorate it when we got home.