November

One of my favorite weekend trips of the year is meeting up with Tara and Gloria in Provo for BYU’s DanceSport competition. Gloria and I take advantage of the opportunity to visit family while Tara works at the competition. We have daily “Dirty Diet Cokes” and cookies at Swig’s, hit our favorite restaurants, shop fun boutiques, and try to outguess the judges at the competition. This year we even made it to the grand opening of Provo’s first Target Store!

Gloria and I love being able to add some holiday decorations to the cemetery, deliver Christmas gifts to our brothers, and visit Aunt Pearl and Aunt Viv. It is always fun to have Mandy join us for the final night’s competition too. BIG thanks to Tara for always being so generous and making it such a great trip!

We kicked off the holiday season this year at The Woodlands winter festival where Olivia performed with her school choir. We didn’t even need another leaf in the dining room table for dinner, and had to organize our own “Turkey Trot,” but enjoyed a yummy Thanksgiving dinner before doing some real celebrating shopping the Black Friday sales! We had great success navigating the sales and put several checks on our Christmas lists.

We had one more special November event to celebrate — Max’s 14th Birthday — so we loaded up the car and headed to Ohio. We loved being able to celebrate with Max, watch him swim, and visit the beautiful new home they had just moved in to. Max is such a special young man — sensitive, smart, kind, handsome, talented, and loving. He is also an awesome athlete and swimmer. Being able to share Max’s birthday with him was an especially great way to end November!