November

November from what I remember was a pretty good month. We celebrated Stephen's big 30th birthday. I would like to say that I planned this huge surprise birthday party or rented us a cabin somewhere for the weekend or went to a nice fancy restaurant to celebrate. That is how I imagined celebrating his birthday. Instead Everett and I blew up tons of balloons, we had cake, and I don't even remember what I made us all for dinner. Maybe we can do something amazing for his 40th birthday. It was still a fun day though.

Thanksgiving this year was so much fun. This was our first thanksgiving that we had in our home and we cooked the entire dinner. Uncle Jesse came for a few days and he and Everett had the best time together. Everett was so sad to see him go. I thought cooking an entire thanksgiving dinner would be super stressful or not enjoyable but I actually loved it! And if I do say so myself everything turned out pretty delicious. On thanksgiving our hot water pressure went out and so we couldn't do dishes for a few days or shower. We kept trying to get a plumber to come replace our hot water heater because we figured it was shot because it was so old anyway. Turns out with the holiday it was impossible to get one. And because we weren't able to find someone a few days later the water pressure started working again and everything was fine. So that was our thanksgiving miracle. It saved us a lot of money that we just didn't have to spend on a water heater. It is still going to die any time now but now we are saving up so we have the funds when it happens. Maybe next year we will have more family to visit that we can cook for but if it is just us and Uncle Jesse again it will be a perfect day.

I hit 20 weeks being pregnant and we took some family pictures to celebrate. Plus we needed some kind of picture for Christmas cards. Everett also turned two and a half this month! I just love watching him grow up and become a little boy. He is such a sweetheart.

We decorated for Christmas way early this year! Everett and I spent most of December in Utah so we set everything up really early. I loved having it all up so early but next year I think I will go back to setting it up the day after thanksgiving. It starts to over clutter the house by new years and just becomes unbearable. 

One day trip we took was to the botanical gardens at Duke University. It was a perfect cool day and we had a lot of fun exploring. We can't wait to go back in the spring because there seems to be a lot more we could have explored if it had just been a little warmer and a prettier time of year.