November

Jory checking out the new Christmas tree.

Jory plinking away at the piano.

Some of the fun stuff that we did while we were sick for a week.

Ahhh... What a month! The first week of November we were completely incapacitated. We had caught the latest fad flu, OK, I mean the deadliest flu of the year. But that was not all! Renton and Jory both had H1N1, but Eli had strep. Apparently you can't have a bacterial infection and a virus at the same time... so this is the good news of it: Renton got on the same antibiotic as Eli so he wouldn't eventually get strep, and apparently you can't catch strep when you are under 2 yrs old so Jory was good; Eli couldn't catch H1N1 while he had strep, so I kept expecting that he would get H1N1 the week after everyone else got well but by some miracle, he did not! Because both diseases will give you a high fever we thought that they had the same infection, so believe my surprise when I found that we not only had 2 different things but that we had to quarantine ourselves for a week if we loved our friends! I was self medicating with chocolate all week, that is the only way I got through it. And yes, Jake, chocolate is a medicine in that scenario! Ryan and I both had some minor cold symptoms, but that was all. Jory got the tamiflu stuff because he was high risk, but there wasn't enough to go around for those not high risk like Renton. But, Renton survived as did we all. Really, we were very blessed that it wasn't worse. I took the week off after that week to just relax!
So, aside from the week of horror, we really had a great month. We celebrated Thanksgiving with Rose and her family and her husband's brother's family and her husband's brother's in-laws. It was a lot of fun! A house full of great people. And with so many people there the food assignments were pretty minimal too. Rose was so awesome to host the grand event, she is amazing! We, of course, gorged ourselves on all the delectable food. The very next day was our 11th anniversary, and we typically do a steak dinner for that, but right after the Thanksgiving feast we decided to put off our anniversary dinner and do a fun family outing to celebrate our 11 years instead. So, we bundled up warm and headed to the zoo the day after Thanksgiving. We saw some great animals, checked out their Madagascar exhibit, and of course paid a visit to some of the family favorites: The orangutan named Eli, and the Siberian Lynx. We had a great day. Then on Sunday we fired up the grill and cooked up steaks to celebrate our anniversary. This year we decided to get our Christmas tree early because we knew that we wouldn't be here for Christmas but still wanted to enjoy all the traditions associated anyway. We actually bought our tree the night before Thanksgiving, as soon as we saw that they were available to buy. And it actually lasted pretty long as well, right up until we left. So, the Saturday after Thanksgiving we decorated the Christmas tree. We have a bunch of jingle bells that we hang on the tree, and this year the boys hung them all together in the front of the tree and then would stand there and bat the branches softly to play their new musical invention. I loved it. We listened to Christmas music and had a great time decking the tree and the halls.

Thanksgiving Day

Visiting the Siberian LynxAt the ZooHappy 11th Anniversary

Renton and I finished reading the 3rd Harry Potter book together this month, and that is where we will leave Harry Potter for a little while, but he has loved the books. I taught Eli's preschool the week heading into Thanksgiving and we did a little Thanksgiving feast after acting out the story of the Pilgrims. Eli really enjoyed that. Jory started cruising around, holding onto things as he walks around. His favorite thing to do is crawl to the piano, stand up at it and plink on the keys. I love to listen to it. He is our little musician.