November

 November was a month of banquets, travelling, and family.  We had a good month.

First the Mountain Bike closing social was the first of November.  

These kids have had a great year of Mountain Biking and this night was a good way to celebrate their accomplishments.

As one of the coaches, Russell was the one to give out the awards for the riders.  Emily got the Mountain Climber award because Snowbasin was her best ride and she is solid at climbing hills in practices and races.

Colby got the Track Stand award because he was the one that stayed balanced upright on his bike while standing still.

After the Banquet, we headed down to St. George.  It was a late night drive and we got there at about 2:00 am but we made it.  That morning we headed to the St. George Temple Open House.

This was an amazing once in a lifetime thing for our family.  The St. George Temple has always been "my" temple so to go through it with the kids was priceless.  We were able to walk them through all of the rooms and explain what each was used for.  Then when we came to the East Sealing room in the Celestial Room we got to tell them that this was the room we got married in.  It was cool to show the kids this room and let them know that this was where our family began.  It was a special experience.

The whole temple and the grounds have changed a lot but it is still the special place I will always love.  The changes were beautiful and well done.  A lot of my family was mad at the changes but I thought they were just fine and didn't distract from the special sacredness of the place at all.  They actually enhanced it.

This temple will always be my favorite and I am glad we were able to go through with the family.

The purpose of our trip to St. George this time was for Red Rocks State Band Festival held at the Dixie State campus.  This was the culminating event of the whole Marching Band season and these kids put it all out there on the field.

This was probably Mountain Crest's best field performance of the year.  While watching the show, I finally understood the story they were trying to tell with their performance and I could actually see the waves of the sea moving back and forth and they swayed and marched.  They did a great job.  As the results were being announced, we were all on the edge of our seats.  In the end Mountain Crest took home third place in the 4A Open category.  Good Job!!

The Band did amazing and Emily did so well too.  She learned a lot this Band season and had fun in the process.

We were excited to watch all of her performances and support her in this sport.

Here she is with all of her percussion section buddies.  She said they were a crazy bunch especially the guys but she liked getting to know all of them.

While Emily hung out with the band for the rest of the weekend, we hung out at Grandma and Grandpa Morwood's house.  We also went to lunch with the Checketts because they came down for the band performance too.  It was a fun weekend.

When we got home, we finally had a little break from everything.  Then on Veteran's Day we had more music performances.  First Emily and the Drum line did a little performance during the Veteran's Assembly at the high school. 

Emily was excited to play the snare again.  I thought the performance would be more than just a cadence but that's what it was.  Then I was stuck in the auditorium for the whole assembly.  That was okay though because the speaker was really inspiring and said some great things about veterans.

That night, Logan had a Patriot's Choir Concert.

The concert was very respectful and it was also cool to see the slideshow of all of the veterans in our school.

On November 15 our Primary put on a Pinewood Derby for the Activity Days boys.  The software for the track was struggling so we finally just said forget it and just raced.  This was just fine with the boys because that is all they wanted to do anyway.  

Logan's car was so cool and won the "Wow Factor" award.  His Bat-mobile did have the best paint job and design.  He drew up the plans and cut it out and everything.  He even spent a lot of time sanding it and making it smooth.  He didn't have the fastest car but he did win quite a few of his races.

This activity was a hit.  The boys made awesome cars and had a great time racing them.

The Band end of year social was a hoot.  Each of the sections and section leaders got up and gave "paper plate" awards to each of the kids in their section.  All of the awards were funny inside jokes so there was a lot of laughing.

Emily's award was the Mountain Bike Champ because when she wasn't at band, she was mountain biking.  The Percussion section was given the Barbie Award because of their sneaky trip to the Barbie Movie during band camp.  They got in so much trouble for this and they never lived it down.  Luckily Emily and two other percussionists didn't give in to the peer pressure so they were saved from a little bit of the wrath of Mr. Yoder.  It was a crazy day.  What a great band season.

For Thanksgiving we headed back down to St. George to spend the holiday with family.  We spent 10 days down there and it was so nice to relax and be with family.  While we were there, Brooklyn got her hair cut for the first time.  She was not quite sure about what Grandma was doing to her but she definitely needed a haircut.  She was finally able to see without hair in her eyes.

Also while we were there we got to meet cute baby Monroe!  He is the cutest chunkiest baby.  He is definitely a mama's boy though and loves his mom.  We loved holding and loving on him.

The girls brought down their baking clothes and rolling pins to help Grandma make pies for Thanksgiving.

When it came time to make the pies though, it was Grandpa they were helping to roll out the dough.  They loved it.

Finally it was Thanksgiving Day.  We had a huge gathering at the Morwood house on Thanksgiving.  For the first time in  a long time, all of my siblings were there for Thanksgiving dinner.  We also had most of the grand-kids.  There was a lot of us there.

Dinner was great as usual and we especially liked the endless supply of pies.  It was nice to get together with everyone and catch up on lost time.

I am so thankful for this family of mine.  I sure love them!  They are such a blessing to me.

Since this was the first time in a long time that all of us were together, my mom wanted to get some pictures of all of us kids.

We are a little goofy looking but it's all good.

Later that night we headed over to the Farnsworth's for some more pie and games.

Brooklyn was so excited to see Mavis.  These two played together and ate all of the crackers lying around.  

The next day we wanted to do something to have fun so we decided to go on a family hike through Red Cliffs.

This hike is one I used to do a lot when I was a kid.  Russell also hiked this area a lot as a kid too.  Our kids were excited to see all of the rocky coves and climb on the red rocks.  Brooklyn loved running down the trail to follow us all.  As we got to the end of the trail, Emily, Colby, and Logan were the only ones brave enough to scale the rock wall to get to the other side.  Okay really Charlotte and Brooklyn were too small to get over the edge and there was no way to take Truly so they hung out on the one side with Russell while the rest of us kept going.  The trail ended not much farther up so it didn't take very long.

This was a fun hike and brought back a lot of memories from when I was a kid.  On the hike back to the car, Charlotte and Brooklyn found a few caves and trees to hang out in.  Logan got his shoes wet because he slipped on a rock and fell in the water.  His feet were cold.

Before heading home, we took another little hike to see the dinosaur tracks.  You can see the tracks imprinted the rocks.  It was pretty cool.

We had a good trip down in St. George full of lots of biking, mountain biking, family time, and sunshine.  On Monday we headed home early so that we could stop in Orem and go to the new Orem Temple Open house.

This temple is so beautiful.  All temples are beautiful.  This temple had a ton of beautiful stained glass windows full of cherry blossoms and other flowers.  The kids loved walking through and were in awe at the beauty and peace.

Emily said this temple reminded her of the Pocatello temple.  Both temple do have a similar layout and design.  I really liked the open brightness of the Celestial Room.

We finally made our way home and Emily made it to her Hyrum Youth Council party.  A few weeks ago she had an interview for a position on the Hyrum Youth Council and she found out that she made the council for 2024.  This party was to welcome all of the new members and say goodbye to the ones leaving.  Emily is excited to be on the Youth Council and help with the community events in the coming year.

For Activity Days the boys wanted to do a STEM night and have an egg drop competition.  

All of the boys built different containers to put their eggs in hoping the egg wouldn't break when it was dropped.  For the first round, Logan's egg was the only one to survive.  Then the boys did some more work on their containers and in the second round Logan's was the only one that broke.  It was a fun activity and the boys seemed to love it.  

November was a much more chill month for us even with all of the travelling.  It is nice to just do our own thing sometimes and not worry about doing everything for everyone else.  Now on to December and the Holidays.