November Recap.
We’ve officially entered birthday season at our house. One birthday per month until April. (Tim is the outlier in September). Rachel kicks it off in November.
On even years, the kids get to celebrate with friends so Rachel opted to invite a gaggle of girls to dinner at Panda Express and roller skating in Nampa. It was a blast. And we walked away with about 20 B1G1 coupons so we’ll be back for more…on Lily’s birthday!
As a side note, can I just say how much I love small towns? (I’m speaking of Nampa). Don’t get me wrong, I love living within 15 minutes of convenience and culture, but there’s something so refreshing about a small town environment. The people are a wee bit friendlier, in my opinion.
Moving on… Rachel has looked like a twelve-year-old for like two years now so this birthday shouldn’t have surprised me. But it did. For all intents and purposes, I now have three teenagers in the house. Three teenage girls, no less.
One of our birthday traditions is to shower the birthday girl (or boy) with compliments as we devour cake and ice cream together. There isn’t enough good to say about Rachel. She’s fun, helpful, obedient, responsible, inquisitive, problem-solving, and simply lovely.
We made a red velvet cake for her party and a peanut butter chocolate cheesecake for the family celebration. I’m a sucker for elaborate, from-scratch dessert requests. And they turn out spectacularly, if I do say so myself.
Earlier in the month primarily consisted of Rachel’s school basketball team’s tournament. They did well, despite having more fifth than sixth graders on their team. They went down in the third round when they played the team that ultimately went to the championship (before losing).
She also auditioned for and was one of the leads in the school play. She auditioned on Monday, memorized an abominable number of lines in 3 days and performed on Friday.
Eve also auditioned and was cast in the opening act, where she got to jam to Greatest Showman tunes and practice the back walkover she had recently mastered. We were proud of them both.
We spent Thanksgiving in Utah with family. My parents had recently accepted an offer on their home of over four years so it was a sort of “last hurrah” at the home my girls had known as grandma and grandpa’s house for a decent chunk of their working memory.
Good food, great company, fun games and gingerbread houses as usual.
We arrived home just in time for me to take Eve downtown to the Festival of Trees. She had entered an elementary art contest and received a top ten prize. Her drawing was on display so she indulged me in a picture or two in front of it. A mom can be proud, right?
Rachel dominated my November post, but we’ll just chalk it up to being the birthday girl.
On to December!