November did not start off great.
There was something wrong with Ralph.
I could tell because he wasn't following me around like he usually does.
He just parked himself here.
He was leaned up against the wall with his head propped on the shelf despondently looking out the window and whining.
When I could get him to walk, he had his head bowed and he cried. His movement was slow and stunted.
Getting appointments at our local vet hospital had been just about impossible.
The vet hospital directed us to call come 24-hour emergency vets to see if any were taking patients.
We were able to get an appointment at one. I had Huzbend carry Ralph to the car and off we went.
There was a bit of a wait, so I hung out in the back of the car with Ralph.
He was miserable.
Ugh. This face.
He was stressed.
He always yawns when he's stressed.
The nurse came out and took him inside.
After a bit, they called me to let me know that he was okay.
It seemed that he had hurt his neck - maybe pulled a muscle or something.
That was why his range of movement was limited and he was crying.
I have no idea how this happened. I guess we can chalk it up to him just being old.
They gave him some pain meds, an anti-inflammatory and put him on "inside quiet time" rest for the week.
After a few days of the meds, he was back to normal.
This was hard because he REALLY wanted to go for a walk.
Here he is scoping out a rabbit in our backyard that he was not allowed to chase.
I'm such a mean Mommy.
Katie was letting her hair grow out.
I kept telling her that people pay money to have their hair look like this.
Katie's Drivers Ed course ended the first week of November.
She took and passed the test for the course.
Plenty of time before her 16th birthday to build up her 50 driving hours, take the DMV written and driving test.
Judo moved indoors.
Here are the kids doing some breakfalls and not trusting their Dad to actually record it.
He doesn't have a good track record.
Don't let this photo fool you.
Mikey wasn't done yet with his mystery illnesses.
I think his immune system decided to make up for lost time during COVID lockdowns.
The second week in November, he came home from school with a headache.
As the day wore on, the headache got worse and worse.
We had chili dogs that night for dinner.
You know why I know?
Because Mikey barfed them up that evening.
School district policy said he had to wait 24 hours with no vomiting before he could go back to school. In addition to that, he had to have a COVID test because he had a headache AND he vomited.
That meant another day and a half of missing school.
The COVID test was negative, by the way.
That weekend, Katie's school had their "I Can't Believe It's Not Homecoming" dance.
It was held outside, masked and in the pouring rain.
We set up as many tents as we could to keep the kids dry.
The kids decorated the tents and set up a snack area, a game table, a picture booth and a dance area.
I volunteered as a "chaperone".
Since the dance was out in the parking lot, I had to keep eyes on kids to make sure they didn't wander off or that someone didn't try to sneak in.
It seemed as if they had a good time from where I was standing.
Katie and her friends danced the entire time.
Huzbend was called for jury duty the third week in November.
Lucky for him they dismissed him before he even had to call in to see if he had to report.
I guess that was one benefit of the Fall COVID surge.
Mikey did his last "task" for the college brain study he was a part of.
This time he did an MEG scan.
He played a game that gave him 25 cents per correct answer and ended up making a cool $24 dollars.
He told me that he just figured out the pattern of the answers.
Have I told you about the leaves that fall in our yard?
There are lots. And lots.
They are usually done falling by sometime in November.
This year, due to some nasty wind and rain storms, they were all down by the end of October.
It takes me WEEKS to get rid of all the leaves.
We have a compost bin that I put them in, and they get picked up once a week with our garbage and recycling.
The worst part is that the leaves lie in piles throughout our yard until I can get rid of them.
They sit there and soak up all the rain and Ralph LOVES to pee on them.
I call them Pee Leaves.
Nasty.
Anyways, one weekend, I was out raking the front yard when some movement in the street caught my eye.
I moved to get a better look and saw this.
Note: We are not "in the middle of nowhere" or rural by any stretch of the imagination.
I have a feeling they were lost.
Because they didn't trust me, they stayed across the street and hopped over a fence into my neighbor's front yard.
They stopped to nibble on some fallen apples.
And then, off they went.
It was an unexpected delight to see them wandering our neighborhood.
Every once in a while, Katie will get on a drawing kick.
I really wish she would draw (and share) more.
Her "stick figures" are excellent.
So expressive and fun.
Here are some stick figure drawings of popular anime characters.
Sadly, our inflatable turkey named Soos did not make it until Thanksgiving.
For some reason he just wouldn't inflate anymore.
We replaced him with Farmer Snoopy who arrived right before the holiday.
Guess who else arrived just before the holiday?
Grandma and Grandpa!
The kids had school for the three days before Thanksgiving break.
Huzbend took Grandma and Grandpa out and about to do some touristy things while the kids were busy.
The first day was a visit to Ballard Locks.
Ballard Locks marks the connection between Puget Sound (salt water) and Lake Washington (fresh water).
Although there were no salmon making their journey up the fish ladder to spawn, there were still boats to see and seals (or sea lions) frolicking in the water.
They stopped at a local burger joint for lunch.
The next day, he took them to see the new James Bond movie and then out for a pizza dinner.
On Wednesday, I joined them for lunch.
Since we had moved here, we've frequented a local state park we call St. Edwards.
The park had a big playground, plenty of hiking trails and an abandoned seminary school that was in various states of disrepair.
In the past few years, the seminary school had been up for sale.
Someone bought it and developed it into a hotel.
They made the fancy ball room of the building into the restaurant.
A picture of US.
Very rare.
Since Katie likes to see the food that we eat when we're not with her, here are some pictures of our plates.
Grandma had salmon.
She said it was okay.
I had a pork sandwich.
The sandwich itself was too thick to eat as a sandwich.
The meat was okay. It was tough in places.
The standout of this dish were the French fries.
They were amazing!
Huzbend had a steak salad type thing.
He said it was pretty good.
I couldn't' pass up the chance for dessert!
Grandma went with a chocolate chip cookie with dulce de leche ice cream.
I tried croissant beignets with some lemon ricotta and blueberries.
The croissant beignets were neither croissantish NOR beignetish.
They were yummy, but not what I was expecting.
It was more like fried balls of bread pudding.
Don't get me wrong they were yummy, but I didn't like the lemon ricotta blueberry stuff.
I snapped a few photos for the kids before we left. I thought they would be curious to see the inside.
The kids have looked into this hallway through the windows a million times.
It was always creepy and broken down. Like a haunted house.
Now look!
Thanksgiving Day!
Time for sitting on butts, watching the parade and dog show and eating too much food.
The kids were excited to see Goku in this year's parade.
Here is our turkey; brined and prepped for cooking.
Into the oven it goes.
Most of the day, the kitchen was busy with various people (and a canine) assisting or making things.
Grandpa watched some football and Mikey played video games.
Ahhh, yes.
Can't have turkey without cranberry sauce log.
Katie was inspired and made a hand turkey.
"I'm DEFINITELY anatomically correct."
Nothing like traditional Thanksgiving food along with a Mexican Coke.
The girl had good taste.
Mikey's meal consisted for stuffing, potatoes, some carrots, Root Beer and bread.
Lots of bread.
Note the absense of turkey.
After we stuffed ourselves with dinner, we took a break so that I could clean up the Thanksgiving Meal Prep Tornado mess.
We had pie for dessert.
Triple berry pie, everything-free pumpkin pie and everything-free apple pie.
All store-bought.
For the dairy-challenged in our group, there was a choice of coconut ice cream or coconut whipped topping.
For the others, we had some gourmet ice cream from a locally owned small business run by a mom that I know.
Mikey gave his dessert a 20 out of 20.
Yep.
Another Katie food picture.
She said her whipped topping looked like a frog.
And yet another.
This one was Diablo or a dog.
You decide.
Whipped topping...
Diablo...
Dog....
The next day, we had all recovered from our overeating sluggishness and decided to do touristy things while the rain stayed away.
A big rainy storm would be rolling in that weekend.
We took the grandparents to visit Deception Pass state park and then on to Fort Ebey state park.
Our car is not big enough to fit all of us.
So, Huzbend shuttled Mikey, Grandma, and Grandpa in their rental car.
Katie drove our car with me as her co-pilot.
She did good for such a long drive and in lots of different traffic situations.
Here she is driving over the ultra-scary Deception Pass Bridge.
(You'll see the bridge in the background of a picture below)
We drove down to the beach area to explore and see the bridge from afar.
Huzbend took Ralph and Mikey to wander down the beach a bit.
Katie stayed with Grandma and Grandpa to chat and look for rocks.
Grandma has a rock garden at home that she adds rocks from her travels into.
I spied Mikey, Huzbend and Ralph chilling out down the beach.
I had to go and bring them back.
It was getting breezy and cold.
"Time to go? Please?"
I mentioned the series of wind and rain storms that we had gotten.
They caused major catastrophic flooding in certain areas.
Here at Deception Pass, it partially buried a picnic table on the beach.
I would not want to be the park ranger that had to dig that out.
If you look in the background of the picture, you can see the bridge that I was talking about earlier.
There are LOTS of rocks on Washington beaches.
They make for a pretty picture mixed in with some beach detritus.
Grandma had the kids pose for a picture before we left.
She had a plan to have the grandkids and their dogs on her Christmas card.
We hopped in our cars and made our way to the next stop, Fort Ebey.
Mikey joined us in our car for this leg of the trip.
When we got there, the sun was peeking through the clouds and made for quite the dramatic picture.
We headed in to explore the WWII defense forts overlooking Puget Sound.
You had to bring flashlights to wander inside because the actual fort was built into the ground.
Ooo. Spooky.
Huzbend scared some kids - not our kids - with a loud evil laugh.
Outside, you can see the old gun placements.
They became a rudimentary fighting pit.
Grandpa walked around a bit.
Grandma took some pictures.
after we were done with the Fight Pit, we headed closer to the cliff overlooking the beach to see the concrete gun emplacements that were built into the bluff.
Mikey and Huzbend climbed down into it.
CHEESE!
I have no context to add to the following two pictures.
Except to say that my son is a cornball.
Katie overcame the yuck factor of touching the ladder railing that led into the concrete gun emplacement.
She climbed down to check it out.
Mikey joined her.
Family photo time.
It came out pretty good.
Guess I could've zoomed in more, but then we wouldn't get the water in the picture.
We made our way through the other half of the underground bunker on our way back to the car.
Before we got back in the car, Katie, Mikey and I stopped to use the bathroom.
Mikey was scarred by a past visit to a pit toilet and decided to go pee in the woods.
Except that when he thought he was hidden by a tree - at least from his viewpoint - we could totally see him.
So much for discretion.
To make it a true round trip, we decided to ride the ferry back across to the mainland.
The state parks we visited were on Whidbey Island.
Katie drove us to the ferry terminal, but then we switched so I could drive the car on to the ferry.
You never know what crazy place you'll end up parking.
We were first in line and parked on a steep hill with only the water in front of us.
Creepy.
Katie decided to stay in the car.
Mikey and I (he was riding with us again) met Huzbend on the ferry deck.
It was COLD up there!
We could see Katie from where we were standing.
HI!
We switched seats once again and Katie drove us off the ferry and the rest of the way home.
It was a great driving experience for her and got her a good chunk of time.
The rest of Thanksgiving weekend was super rainy.
We hunkered down and stayed busy at home.
I took Grandma out to pick up some more gourmet ice cream.
Because, you can't ever have too much handmade crazy ice cream flavors.
We came back and found that Huzbend and the kids had convinced Grandpa to play some tabletop games with them.
They were playing one of the kid's favorite games, Constant Arguing Superfight.
It's a game where you draw cards to create a character that you then pit against another player's character and argue over which would win in a fight.
Huzbend and I took the opportunity on Saturday morning to get our COVID vaccine boosters.
The kids had to get COVID tested for an upcoming surgial procedure.
Back on Thanksgiving, Katie had us keep the turkey innards so that she could "dissect" them.
No, she did not eat or lick them.
These are the things that make her happy.
If I was her age, I would be right there alongside.
On the 29th, the kiddos had follow-up endoscopies scheduled.
It was time to check the status of their EOE.
Grandma and Grandpa had said their goodbyes the night before.
They did some touristy stuff in Seattle before heading to the airport to fly home that evening.
It was so good to see them after so long!
Meanwhile, the kids and I had to be at the hospital bright and early.
The procedures went well, and they were out very quickly.
The doctor was encouraged by the visual inspection of their esophagi, saying that they looked really good.
We still had to wait for the biopsies to know for sure that healing was occurring.
I think Mikey's favorite part of the procedure is eating Saltines when he's done.
His least favorite part is the IV insertion.
"I love me some Saltine goodness."
Katie favorite part is getting to fall into a deep anesthesia induced sleep.
Her least favorite part is waking up early to go to the appointment and missing school.
My least favorite part is having them have to do these procedures so frequently.
My favorite part is that the nurses tell me my kids are great kids.
That they are friendly and funny.
That's always music to a mom's ears.
