November is a time for counting blessings and by far our greatest blessing of 2020, besides our collective health, is that Stephen works from home now. It's not always an ideal situation for him, but it makes such a difference knowing he's there in our home. The girls love going in to check on him throughout the day and being able to eat meals together as a family again. Ada hasn't had to miss a nap time all year because there is always an adult at home to allow her to sleep through any appointments or errand running. It really is just the best.
Jax ordered these to die for Hamilton dresses to do a little photoshoot for her photography business. In the end she decided we needed to do a reshoot because the girls were less than cooperative and the dresses were pretty expensive, so in case plans fall through I needed to document my little Eliza.
The second weekend in November my brother Brad set up a trip to come and golf with Stephen. When my dad heard about it he joined in and then Stephen asked John to come down and join them to make a foursome. My mom and Lucina obviously weren't going to let them visit grandkids without them and so we had all five of them come for a visit! The very first day they were all there I had my appointment to find out the gender of our new baby. I stopped by the Dollar Tree on my way home and we had a mini lack-luster gender reveal. It's a girl! and we are all so excited!
We got to do a lot of fun things together while the boys golfed. We went to the riparian preserve and fed the ducks, we went shopping at Arizona Mills mall and stopped by the aquarium there, and ate lots of yummy food together.
After our first day together it was clear that while Rory was stoked to have all these grown ups around she was much less excited about the fact that they all seemed to want to talk to each other all the time! My mom and I went to high fitness together that night and while we were gone she decided to give herself a little haircut. And by little I mean an extremely drastic amount. I had a missed call from Stephen when I got out of class and when I called him on the way home he said, "It's bad. It's really bad." I tried to go into her room and see the damage when I got home, but Rory rolled over and pretended to be asleep. When I went back in for try two I asked her, "Are you too tired? Or are you too sad?" and she said, "Too sad..." in a voice that nearly broke my heart. It's so hard to be mad when they feel so bad, and Rory so rarely feels bad about anything that my entire heart was aching for her. When she woke up the next morning the first thing she said to me was, "I'm so sad about my hair. Will it grow back when I'm five?!" After getting some "before" pictures we went straight to the Great Clips down the street and got it all fixed up. She loved the salon so much that I can almost guarantee she will try to cut her own hair again. I keep reminding that we can come there any time and we don't even have to try to cut our own hair first.
It's always tough getting back to regular life after a weekend like that, but thankfully we had plenty to do and knowing that Thanksgiving was right around the corner made the time go even more quickly. Rory got so many compliments on her new short hair and she loves it. Every once in a while she gets sad about not being able to do Elsa braids anymore, but for the most part she is a big fan. We had some fun play dates to pass the time with Rebecca and a new friend named Dantzel from her gymnastics class.
By far the biggest thing to happen to our family in November, even bigger than Rory's new hair or finding out our baby was a girl (sorry baby girl) was that we decided to get a dog. I know, I never thought I would say those words! Shortly after we had Ada, in fact I believe we were still in the hospital with our precious little newborn, Stephen said, "If our next baby is a girl then I get a dog." A comment to which my newborn-smell- high, hormonally-unstable self laughingly agreed. Fast forward to this summer when we were taking swimming lessons with a friend from our old ward and I noticed how sweet and chill their lab was. They told me they were breeding her. I said, don't tell me that. Fast forward to October when the sweet lab actually has her puppies, and I continue to try to ignore them. Then suddenly on November 4 I see a post from this friend about how cute their puppies are and that there are still two left, and something makes me message her for more info. After a lot of prayer, and a little bit of crying, we decided it was the right thing to do for our family, even though it will undoubtedly be insane for a while with both a puppy and a newborn joining our family. A week after we put down our deposit we found out the baby was a girl, so at least I'm sticking to my word!
We were finally able to go pick out our puppy. She's a little black girl who has is identified by the pink collar they put on her at birth, and we can't wait to take her home after Christmas.
We headed to St George for Thanksgiving this year. We got to play at the dinosaur park (and only lost Rory for a heart stopping five minutes), swim in the heated pool, hike the petroglyphs (and only got the truck stuck in the sand once), and see the live Nativity at Tuacahn. It was cold this year and I horribly under-packed for my crew, but it was nothing a quick trip to TJ Maxx couldn't fix. It was a small crew for Thanksgiving dinner this year, just John and Ashleigh's family, John and Lucina, and us. The food of course was amazing and the kids had way too much fun with each other.
Attending the live Nativity at Tuacahn was a special treat and Rory and I made it a mother/daughter date. We got corn dogs for dinner beforehand and chatted all the way to the venue. Uncle John John treated us to hot chocolate, which we received right before the show, and Rory spent the entire time asking if it was cold enough to drink yet. It reinforced my decision not to spend the $25/person to see the Nutcracker with her this year. Afterwards we waited to talk to Santa, and thankfully due to Covid she just stood sort of near him, which we were both happy with. She happily told him that she wanted a unicorn this year. Santa said, "Alright sounds good!" then came to his senses and added, "Well, I'll see what I can do. Those can be hard to come by." Nice save, St Nick.
A few days after thanksgiving, Preston's crew drove up to Rockville to have a memorial for Jackson, whom he put down the next day. The brothers were able to dig him a grave and say goodbye to everyone's favorite dog while the kids played and enjoyed themselves at the house. The whole family loved Jackson and it was hard to see him go, but everyone is glad he is no longer in pain.
As we were packing up to leave Rory told me that she needed to take her backpack and be in a room by herself and not to check on her. I followed her, obviously, and found her trying to pack a small fancy box into her backpack. She assured me it was empty and nobody wanted it, but after I encouraged her to open it to check we saw that the box in fact contained the new fancy piano trinket that Kenzie had just bought for Grandma. As much as I disapprove of her lying and being sneaky like that, oh my heaven do I love watching her feign surprise or confusion when I see right through her plans. I told her we could take a picture of the fancy piano so that we could remember it until we were able to come back to Grandma's house and see it again and she was good with that.
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