We kicked off Thanksgiving on Wednesday evening with our celebration with Granddaddy Herbert.
Thanksgiving morning the kids woke up early to play Turkey Bowl Football with Eben and a bunch of the neighbors at Horizon View.
The players....
After football, we did a little Turkey Trot hosted by Eric and Olivia. We ran a 5K from the Civic Club. Charlotte did the whole 5K route this year! Edison and Reed did the 1-mile course.
Reed was super happy to play with Joseph again.
We learned that Cade and Edison share a passion for both football and chess.
Afterwards we headed to Kirstie and Peter's house for Thanksgiving. It felt so comfortable and cozy to be with the family again. Jason and Tabby announced their big news: they are expecting a baby in June! We couldn't be happier!
After the meal, the kids gave a piano recital under the tutelage of Nana.
And because Floyd and Kathie will be in Hawaii for Christmas, the kids got to open an early Christmas present. What fun!
We didn't go to the cabin this past weekend and instead stayed on the west coast. We went up to Deception Pass State Park to spend Saturday in the amazing November sunshine that is so rare here. We did all the hiking trails on this map. Highly recommend!
Looking out over Bowman Bay towards Rosario Head.
My beautiful family with Deception Pass Bridge in the background.
These fall colors are amazing, everywhere you look - even up.
It was so wonderful to have a three-day weekend to just be a family. We celebrated Nana's birthday!
We went to the zoo. We haven't been in a year, and the kids were really into it. This bear was a favorite.
And feeding the birds is always fun.
On Monday we spent the day in the sunshine at Kayak Point with the Adams Family. We picnicked, walked the beach, climbed on driftwood, played football, and just enjoyed our time together.
We got ready for Halloween by carving pumpkins and preparing our costumes. Reed had homework to make a pumpkin look like a favorite book character. I think he did a great job!
Charlotte and Edison carved their own pumpkins this year (yay!). Charlotte made a cool cat in front of a full moon, Edison made a clone trooper (again)m and Reed picked out a minion design that I carved. They looked great!
We were all Star Wars characters this year. Edison was Darth Vadar, Charlotte was Rey and Reed was Kylo Ren. So Eben and I dug our Han and Leia costumes out of storage and we had a family theme! Not too shabby!
Razi and Stephen were very kind and hosted the neighborhood Halloween Happening after school. Where did all these kids come from?!
I'm glad to say that we still know how to have fun!
The kids had an epic trick or treating run right at the top of our hill. It was great to be able to do that in our neighborhood with our neighborhood folk.
We celebrated Eben's birthday in multiple ways this year. On his actual birthday, we took a few hours off of work to have lunch and walk around Seattle a bit. We also celebrated that night with the kids and his birthday cake. Charlotte has learned how to play "Happy Birthday" on the piano and did a great job with that!
Here's the video!
On Friday night we went out with Chris and Meg to celebrate.
We also did an escape room - where we had to solve clues to find the Declaration of Independence. We thought we'd be amazing but ended up being quite humbled and needed to ask for clues :-)
But no matter - they did let us out eventually and we got to our dinner reservations at Epulo just in time!
The kids had a big swim meet the next morning and it was the first one that we got to share with Sully. Sully's mom, Kate, and I spent four hours timing lane 2 together and cheering for the kiddos who made it on time to all their races. Edison and Charlotte swam really well and dropped a lot of time in almost every race. We celebrated with lunch at Kidd Valley!
On Sunday the kids and I went to the Seattle Children's Theater to see a play about the early life of Cassius Clay. We enjoyed fall at the fountain and a play that was relevant, interesting, and very well done.
