so now we have november which is a tricky month for me because it's birthday month (for me and half of my family) but it's also the month taz died so i swing wildly back and forth on emotions.
this year was a big milestone - 5 years since taz went away which feels like a million years but one look at a picture and it seems like yesterday.
what have i been up to in november? glad you asked!
we attended Bug Jam which is a celebration of volkswagen beetles and campers which is something i dearly love. i know i'll never own one but it's fun to see what everybody else has.
we drove 3 hours to a tiny town in florida to meet my sister (who also drove over 3 hours) and have lunch to celebrate our birthdays. i wish i had a picture of the two of us together but we'll have to settle for a picture of me driving/riding there.
i took several days off from work surrounding my birthday and on my actual birthday i treated myself to brunch and got my free starbucks birthday frappucino so that was a good day.
the kids came home from school on that day and "surprised" me with presents and a homemade card. i had wanted to go out for dinner but we ended up having pizza delivered and it was so awful that i ended up feeling sick for the rest of the evening.
thanksgiving was a couple of days later but we didn't really celebrate because chris was working most of the day. we went to red lobster in the evening and he enjoyed the endless shrimp. i absolutely hated what i ordered (stuffed flounder which i used to love there but they've changed the recipe and added some horrible sauce) but we had a good time hanging out. afterwards we went shopping at dollar tree and dollar general (the only stores open on the holiday) and picked up some fun christmas decor and that was probably my favorite thanksgiving memory this year.
thanksgiving has been hard for me since taz died on thanksgiving day so i haven't cooked turkey or any of the traditional meal since then but turkeys were only $5 earlier that week so we had one in the refrigerator and i decided to make it on sunday evening along with mashed potatoes. i literally spent all day in the kitchen and it was so hot and i was sweating and i think the food turned out pretty well although, since no one thanked me or commented, i really don't know - i liked it so i guess that's all that counts. but i realized that i really don't want to ever do that again. cooking the turkey wasn't so bad and i love turkey sandwiches so i'll make it again for me but i'm just not ever going to be one of those women who shows her love by spending endless hours in the kitchen.
and the clean up was soul crushing. i think my big push for this year is to get a dishwasher because i am so over doing dishes by hand.
my payoff is those turkey sandwiches that i love and i was looking forward to having one on monday when i realized that my son ate the last of the bread and didn't mention it so my sandwich had to wait.
so there's november in a nutshell - we were supposed to go to daytona for a car show on thanksgiving weekend but didn't have the money so we started putting some of our christmas decorations up. i think we went low key on the holiday last year so i'd like to jolly it up a little more this season.
we also had a lot of basketball in the first 2 weeks of november but we've been on a break for the end of the month. it starts up again in december but i'm just trying to block that out for the moment.
bring on december!
