I present November!
In reverse order!
For one our YW activities, we put together
stockings for the four full-time missionaries
serving in our ward. So fun to serve them.
Care Bear has decided to quit climbing.
Again.
She's not enjoying it.
I stopped by her last day to take a couple pics.
She may not miss climbing,
but she WILL miss Oka, the gym dog.
I'll miss watching her climb!
But she wasn't competing anyway, so
I didn't get to watch her much.
Absolutely breathtaking sunset on a Sunday evening.
We put up the Christmas tree!
Traditions like these make me miss B-train.
(And I look so Mexican in this pic, don't I?)
A new stained glass ornament Grandma Sweat
gave to each family at the 50th reunion.
So pretty!
This was a pic through one of our fun pairs of glasses
that turn Christmas lights into different shapes.
This was the penguin filter.
We braved the cold for a tennis date night.
I can't wait until Andrew's heels are fixed.
It's still fun to play with him,
but it's not the same when he can't run at all.
I somehow managed to slam my leg in my van door.
What the heck???
It left a nasty bruise that hung around forever.
Whit and her friends have been spending more time
together outside of school, which has been so fun for her.
Skylar's house is the party place, so they're often there.
Thanksgiving!
After taking a year off for COVID,
we went back to the Hunter's.
The Elders joined us as well as the Charlton's.
Teenage girl table
Pie buffet!!!
My favorite!
Amazing food island
Andrew nailed the turkey once again.
he's so good.
I'm so grateful.
Care Bear made our grasshopper pie all by herself.
And it was scrumptious.
We visited the COOLEST place in Raleigh this year.
It's called the Chinese Lantern Festival.
We went on the night before Thanksgiving.
First, we stopped in Burlington and watched Dune
in the theater. Andrew was super excited to see that.
He's read the book. The rest of us were just along for the ride.
It was a little violent for my taste. (As many movies are...)
But it was visually gorgeous (so much sand!) and I enjoyed
the story line. It leaves you on a total cliffhanger, though.
After the movie, we headed to the festival.
It was so cool!
This was a kaleidoscope area.
Jumping!
Kinda hard to see our faces. :)
They had a food truck that was selling elotes--
Mexican street corn.
Yes, please!
It was delicious!!
So, you walk through this park and there are
amazing and colorful lights everywhere.
The lanterns come in amazing shapes and colors.
It was a feast for the eyes and I loved it so much.
Firework lights
A huge dragon.
One of our favorites parts was this machine that spit
out smoke-filled bubbles. What?? I'd never seen that before.
It was so cool.
Crab
I think this pond with the fish was my favorite.
The orcas were awesome, too.
Cute sea turtles
This was a cool tunnel that changed colors.
It's a very different feel from blue to red.
They also had this awesome cannon that would shoot
smoke rings. It was unbelievable how far they could travel!
But not very easy to catch with my camera.
They had cool circular light-up swings.
This butterfly section was fun.
This peacock is near the beginning and is a show stopper!
How cool is that???
I would be super happy to go here again next year.
Marianne and family!
Andrew and I left the girls at home and
had a little overnight getaway to Georgia and SC.
We stayed the night with Marianne and Patrick.
I love having her here on the east coast.
So fun to see each other regularly!
Andrew entertained Eden while breakfast
was being cooked.
Our reason for going down to Georgia?
BYU FOOTBALL!!!
Andrew had planned something else for my birthday
that ended up not working out because of COVID restrictions.
So I told him I would LOVE to go the BYU game as my gift.
I had so much fun!
(Andrew did not. And I don't think we'll be going back
to a BYU game together anytime soon.)
It was fun watching the sunset as the game went on.
You know you're in the South when the
jumbotron is advertising BOILED PEANUTS.
It was a GORGEOUS day for football!
BYU was ranked in the top 25 and Georgia Southern is unranked,
so we assumed that we'd kick their butts.
But it was actually a fairly close game and
we were behind for a bit in the second quarter.
(That's the part Andrew couldn't handle.)
But we ended up winning in the end.
It was all good.
There were about 20,000 fans at the game and they
estimate that about 10,000 were BYU fans.
It was SO MUCH fun to be surrounded by fellow fans.
It felt like a home game!
Sitake is such a fun coach.
It was fun to watch the team warming up.
And we also went to the tailgate before the game.
We got to eat yummy food with thousands of other BYU fans.
We ran into a few people we knew.
Not as many as I thought we would.
We saw the Tuckers, Lisa Brewer, and Elder Galt,
the area Seventy who we just met at stake conference.
We passed Andrew's dream car on the way down,
a Toyota Celica Supra. So nice!
Caroline is learning Russian through Duolingo.
She decided to make us Borscht,
a beet soup that they eat in Russia.
It looks crazy, but it was so tasty.
I found a boomerang when I was doing yard work this week.
We bought that for B, probably ten years ago!
One of the projects I undertook this month:
replacing the noisy fan in our Tivo.
I was a little bit nervous to take some of those delicate
parts apart. But it was so noisy that it was useless.
The repair went smoothly and we have a quiet Tivo again.
Yay!
For Andrew's birthday gift,
I got him a ten pack of tickets to the Greensboro Swarm,
our local NBA G-league team.
We went to our first one this month.
They are SO fun!
Excited to go back a few times this season.
He even caught a t-shirt! Woot!
I didn't take any pictures, but we got to go out to dinner
with the Charlotte NC Mission President and his wife,
the Browns. They are SO nice and we loved spending time with them.
We took them to Saigon, Duckie's family's restaurant.
It was perfect.
The Browns are right around our age and have young kids
with them here on their mission. They are amazing.
I'm looking forward to getting to know them better over the
next three years while they serve here.
The same night we went out with the Browns, I got
a text message from an old friend, Holly Hancock. We
met when I first moved here to NC. We had kids the same
age and had a fun little playgroup with a few other friends.
But the Hancocks moved back to AZ not long after we got here,
so we didn't stay in touch and didn't know each other that well.
Anyway, Holly and her husband Marshall were in town from AZ
and wanted to know if we could visit. Andrew's social battery was
already depleted, but I'm always up for visiting, So I headed to
Grandover and we had such a fun time visiting.
Andrew's birthday!
We had yummy chocolate cake with chocolate frosting.
In addition to his Swarm tickets, he got some new
extra-long ties and yummy treats from the girls.
Another year in the books!
Look at the giant leaf I found!
It's bigger than my face!
A few more glimpses of fall around town
The Young Men decided to have a Pinewood Derby
as our combined activity this month.
Isn't that a fun idea?
Care Bear designed a pack of crayons
And Dubs designed a Bingus-mobile
A few of the other cars that participated
It was such a fun activity.
They put together a random bracket.
And Caroline ended up winning it all!!
Woo hoo!
Winner
Andrew and I still play Pandemic most days over lunch.
This was one of the most dominating wins we've ever had!
More fall beauty in our own front yard
So, while Grandma and Grandpa were busy
running Whitney all over Winston-Salem for
Honors Chorus, I was having my own super
fun weekend!
Luke Ostertag, an amazing young man who joined
the church in our ward toward the beginning of COVID,
received his own endowment and invited me to join him.
It was fantastic and I was so happy I could be there with him.
He's attending SVU this semester before his mission.
He had a few friends from school join him. The Rosiers,
who have taken him in since his family kicked him out,
were of course there with him as well. His religion teacher and his wife came
down from Virginia. And two of the Elders who taught him were
also able to join us. One of them flew out from Utah just for this.
Exciting times!
I stopped in Raleigh on my way home from Wilmington,
where I was with my super fun 40-Love Combo Tennis team.
We ate dinner at The Basics one night.
It was PERFECT.
They had an upstairs area reserved just for us.
This root beer cake was DIVINE.
Lynette, Debbie, Brenda, Teresa
Serena, Jennifer, Kimberly, Stephanie, and Me
I won two of my three matches at States this time!
Yippee!
I was so happy about that!
I got to play with Sara,
my amazing playoffs partner.
We had to play a team from Lake Norman,
who are known for having amazing tennis teams.
But I guess it just wasn't their day.
Or we're just that good?
We won 6-2, 6-4.
Saw this beauty of a car parked at the tennis courts.
It was FREEZING while we were cheering on our teammates!
Our other dinner was at Osteria Cicchetti,
a delicious Italian restaurant that I love.
Elisabeth joined us for this dinner, but missed the last one.
The whole team!
We drove behind this truck that had a mannequin
in the back. The legs were sticking out the back
and it looked so funny! The pic doesn't quite capture it. :)
I won my first match that I played with Elisabeth.
It was our first time playing together.
She's amazing and was super easy to play with.
We played a team from Sand Hills.
One of their players started off visibly nervous.
I felt so bad for her.
But she got better as the match went on.
We won 6-3, 6-4.
I didn't get a pic with me and Jennifer, but we played together
against Foothills. Their 3.5 player was REALLY good.
We kinda got our butts kicked, 6-1, 6-3.
I just looked her up and she got bumped to a 4.0 at the
end of the year. That makes me feel a little better.
And her partner got bumped to 3.5.
No wonder they kicked our butts!
Ready to get the tournament started!
The night that I left to drive to Wilmington,
my preschool friends had a GNO at Shelly's house.
We hadn't been together in over six months.
And we found out that Martha was having some
health struggles. We needed to be together to support her.
And all of us could make it on the same night!
And Jayne was even in town!
These ladies are amazing and I'm so thankful for
our friendship over many years. I couldn't stay
long because I still had a three hour drive ahead of me.
But I'm so happy I could sit around the table and eat
and laugh with them for a bit before I left.
Random pic of C sitting outside the window....
If you look close, they say that this model
is FIVE FOOT TWELVE.
Not six feet tall.
5' 12".
Why????
Random photo ball pic of our dining room.
I don't take pics when I'm at NAI.
But Sister Dearden asked me if I could
share something on the stake social
media feed, so I took this pic on the way in.
Even though I don't post pics of my time at NAI,
it is always one of my favorite days of the week.
I LOVE rubbing shoulders with these amazing souls
who have been through SO MUCH and have a new
lease on life. I'm happy I get to walk with them on a
small part of their journey as they learn a new language
to help them succeed in their new country.
