Unfortunately, I have no idea what we did in November.
I can't find a single picture taken in the entire month.
I know we went to Christopher's cousin's house for dinner, and they came to ours. I know we had Thanksgiving at my Mother-in-law's house. (Christopher tried to fry some turkeys as well as smoke ours, and he decided that smoked turkey was much better.) We went to a BYU game or two. But the rest is lost.
All I can tell you is how we got ready for Christmas.
I got some tickets for a live Nativity months ago. We'd never gone to one before, but I was really impressed. I think the kids got a lot out of it, and I know I enjoyed it. The only bad part was that Jasmine refused to put on long pants or much of a coat beforehand, and she froze. But hopefully she learned something from that experience, too. We all want to wear short sleeves and shorts all year long, but that doesn't make it a good idea.
Whenever people bundled in coats ask me why my daughter is in shorts, I tell them that "she doesn't believe in Winter." They usually laugh and tell me that it happens anyway, which I hope Jasmine will realize someday. I keep thinking that I am fighting her on enough battles, and Mother Nature should convince her on this one. It is working . . . slowly.
In early December, we had a week of three Christmas parties for Christopher and I. The first one was for his new job. He really liked the old job, and felt bad leaving, but he was really sick of the commute. He is so much happier about going to work, now that work is 7 minutes away instead of close to an hour! The company party was fun, and we are hoping that it will be a good decision all around. The next night, the Race Entry company that Christopher helped to start had their party. The White Elephant was the oddest I had ever seen. First, someone opened a goldfish swimming in a bag and some potato chips. Fish and chips. Not the best surprise, but goldfish aren't a big commitment. Next, one poor girl saw a box from a pet store with holes in it, and dashed as far away as she could. I felt bad and opened it to see a cute little mouse (sitting in its own poop, sadly). No one else would go near that little mouse. And then later, someone realized that their box felt warm and opened it to find a live rooster. The guy who brought that was so proud of how he caught it to bring to the party.
Some people need a lesson in animal cruelty.
As we were leaving, I could hear the husband trying to convince his wife to go and get the mouse she hadn't gone near all night. "You opened it! We have to take it!" But the best plan they had was to leave it on a neighbor's doorstep as a prank. So I took pity on the tiny thing and we brought it home.
The kids were in love, instantly. This tiny little critter was adored by all of the kids, and they would spend as much time as they could holding him and sitting by the cage to watch him. Daddy tried to name him "pooper", because he really didn't like the smell, but Kaitlyn eventually settled on naming him Fuzzy. She even found a dollar store stocking kicking around somewhere and asked me to embroider its name on there so that Santa could bring him presents, too.
Of all the things I thought I would do with that machine, I never drempt of that.
Or embroidered toilet paper, but that did make a fun White Elephant gift for the final party that week.
Around Black Friday, I decided I wanted to make some embroidered hooded towels for my kids. I had seen so many cute pictures of them on the facebook group for embroidery that I was curious to try. It seemed silly to spend the money to just make 3, though, so I presented Christopher with a grand plan of spending $80 to make 8 of them and sell the extra 5. Our kids could just keep the leftovers, since I was only going to make ones they liked. The first time I posted a pair of towels for sale, I sold one of them. The next week I posted a set of five that I had ready to go, and I sold eight towels in 24 hours . . . but only two of those were the ones I had already made. I scrambled and got all the supplies to make all the rest.
I was proud of making $15-20 on each one, but Christopher and his brother got a bunch of phones on a good deal over Black Friday and were selling them off for $30-50 profit. Without working for two hours on each, like I was. So he won that round, again. At least they are really cute!
With a new Star Wars movie coming out, Daddy had started watching the original three movies with the kids. Tyler and Kaitlyn really enjoyed those! I just wish we had done that over the summer, so that Tyler knew what Jedi Training Academy was at Disneyland. At least they were ready to see the new movie. We managed to score some free tickets for a pre-showing, and while it was chaos making it through Tyler's school program and then sitting on the front row of the theater, it was worth it.
Jasmine will fall asleep anywhere, doing anything, I tell you.
Of course, I made them shirts the night before. You'd think I never leave that machine, but I swear I do. Sometimes.
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