The Last couple of weeks

It's hard to believe we're over halfway through November already and Thanksgiving is this coming week!  

We had a pretty mild start to fall in the beginning of the Month (which all ended last week) but the kids had fun playing outside with the dogs and making forts, finding snakes and salamanders, etc.

We had a bonfire and made mountain pies and s'mores, it was chilly that night but Ricky made us a roaring fire to huddle around.  We had lots of friends and family come and had lots of fun.

The kids always like if we can stop in at Walmart the week after Halloween because the costumes are all 75% off. Joanna found a costume of a character from Star Wars and Katy found a poodle skirt dress. We couldn't find anything Chase's size but he had one leftover from last year that kind of still fits him :P

The girls are continuing to love horseback riding lessons. The both were able to trot on their own last lesson for the first time!  And Joanna matched her horse in her favorite blue :)

I'm still working on putting some finishing touches on the house.  The kids' bathroom needed some things on the wall and thankfully a Hobby Lobby just opened up in Lancaster!

I also wanted to find some things for the music room. I actually was looking for a sign with this exact hymn on it and searched and searched the store.  I finally found one way up high on a shelf and it was 40% off and perfect!

The other Saturday Ricky was hunting and Chase had a game in the morning so I picked up Dominic on the way home and the boys decided they wanted to "take shots" all afternoon.  Ricky set up a net on a pallet in the yard so they can open up the side roll doors and stand in the pole barn to shoot.

The girls and I sat by the stove and read comics. It was very cozy.

For school this year we are studying different countries and cultures.  We just finished up our second country (our first was USA) of Mexico and I decided it called for having a project day.  So after they finished their M's (music, maps and math) we tried making our own tortillas...

Decorated the dining room so we could have a fiesta in the evening.

They also made clay suns... a project from our Global Art book.

Apparently I can't get a nice smiling picture of Chase lately.

I had been disappointed with how the tortillas turned out, even though the kids thought they tasted good. I watched a video tutorial on YouTube and thought I wanted to try again so when we got our first snowfall of the year on Thursday (11/15) I thought it would be the perfect time to try again.

They still weren't perfect but they got better as I was making them and definitely turned out better than the first try!

I even got some of those coveted bubbles.

I want to try again and get better, they taste so good fresh.
It was a cold snowy day and the roads were terrible, there were so many accidents and people stranded on the side of the road. I don't know why there were no snow plows or salt trucks out but it was a mess.

I had gone out in the morning to get some food and immediately regretted it. Thankfully I was able to make it home safely and then didn't go anywhere the rest of the day.  Poor Ricky had been up at his shop switching tools over from his old truck to his new one and by the time he was done the roads were such a mess it took him three and a half hours to get home!

Glad that mess is over, hopefully they will be more prepared the next time it snows.  The next morning I took the kids over to Brubaker park to sled on the big hill before all the snow was gone.

It was melting pretty fast but was still pretty cold and windy.

Friday night my church women's ministry had a first ever "Chopped" competition. We had a great turnout and it was so much fun.  I am on the women's ministry committee so I went to help and bring supplies but didn't think I would be able to participate.  I was able to get on a team though and it was so fun, although a little nerve wracking until we knew what we were doing.

There were two groups competing with appetizers and two groups doing desserts.  I was on an appetizer group.  When we opened up our basket we found white and wheat mini bagels, spam, different flavors of cream cheese, and dried cranberries.

We decided to try to make a a salad and were able to quick grab the only container of lettuce in the "pantry". The spam was cut up into small pieces and cooked in butter, brown sugar and garlic and actually turned out really yummy! We made bacon from the pantry for the salad and made our dressing from a mixed berry flavored cream cheese, balsamic vinaigrette, olive oil, milk and the cranberries.

We also had fresh mozzarella cheese, homemade croutons (from the bagels), chopped avocado, apples and chopped nuts.

We were judged on how it tasted and also presentation.

I was surprised at how creative everyone was with their baskets and the 30 minute time limit!

We all got to sample each others dishes and fill out slips for judging.

After the very dramatic reveal my team turned out to be the winner!  It sounds weird but the salad was really very delicious! I took the display plate home for my family to try and Ricky ended up eating the whole thing by himself and not sharing! :D
The rest of the weekend was filled with hockey activities. Chase had two away games this weekend.

The first one on Saturday was at a rink that was still under construction and it was SOOOooo cold! There was no warm room even to get out of the cold for a little to warm up. I couldn't feel my toes at the end of the game.

The people there were super nice though and gave the kids hot chocolate to warm up and snacks for free.

Chase's team won that game pretty handily.
The game Sunday morning was different though, they were much more evenly matched with that team and ended up losing after a hard fought game.
In the evening on Sunday Dominic had a game that we went to.

 He got to play a bunch this game and even got his first penalty of the season :P