November

November is always a busy month at our house with our anniversary, Sara's birthday and Thanksgiving. This year we celebrated 9 years of wedded bliss!!! Sometimes I am amazed that we have been married this long. These have been the most wonderful years of my life and I am so grateful for an amazing man who loves me despite all my crankiness and laziness. And he honestly NEVER complains! In addition to putting up with me, he is so loving, caring, and hard working. Gosh, I really lucked out!! To celebrate this year we stuffed ourselves silly at Red Lobster and then went to the mall to walk it off. It was perfect!

Sara turned 7 this year on her birthday. At our home we only do friend parties every 3 years and the 7th birthday is one of those years. We had our family over for her real birthday and then the friend party the next night. She got tons of stuff from the family. We splurged this year and got her an American Girl doll. She has been wanting one for a few years. We told her she couldn't get one until she was 8 so she was way surprised. She also got her first pet--a betta fish, clothes, some jewelery and toys.

Yay presents!!

Beautiful betta fish.

Look at that happy face! I love it!

And now for the friend party. Since we only do this every 3 years I thought I should go all out. You see, I'm not a great hostess and parties really stress me out so this is a big deal for me. She wanted a horse party so that's what we did. I made horse tails for all the girls to wear (all 13 girls!!!) out of yarn. We played stomp the fly and pin the tail on the donkey; we made pony wands out of painted dowels and silk flowers; we ate pizza and cupcakes, opened presents and finished with a cowgirl boot pinata. The girls were crazy loud and hyper but Sara had tons of fun and after it was over I locked myself in the bathroom and took a nice long hot bath.

The happy girl with her cute cupcakes that my friend made.

 I made this awesome banner!!

 Here are the kids playing "stomp the fly". They each had a balloon tied to their ankles and had to try to stomp on eachothers balloons to pop them. It was wild and crazy and so fun!

Getting ready to open presents.

Oh my sweet Sara. I just love this girl so much. I can't believe how she is growing into being a big kid. She is so happy and fun and a great helper.

Then there was Thanksgiving. We first went to Than's folks' house to say hi to Andy and have some pie because we were eating with my family later. But we ended up snacking on some turkey and potatoes and such. We hung out there for a few hours and then headed to my sister's house. We ate tons of yummy food and desserts and then we got to talk to my niece Jain who is in India for BYU study abroad. She has been gone since August so it was great to talk to her.

I know that lots of other things happened in November, but I have no idea what. Really, no idea.