As you know, November is birthday central around our house. We started off the month with Cody turning 4 years old. He wanted to go to Jump On It for his party. And then we topped it off with lunch at Canya Junia (otherwise known as Carls Jr.) He is such a fun kid to have in our family. He is always keeping us laughing. He is also one of the sweetest little kids I know. He is so loving and helpful. Every night he comes out of his room and says, "Mom, can I tell you something?" I say yes and he goes on to say something like, "You are a very nice Mom and I love it when you play with me. That's all, I love you." Sometimes he adds in something extra if we did something fun together that day. But he always comes out to tell me he loves me. How can you get mad at a kid for getting out of bed when he comes to tell you that every time. What a sweetie!
Next came Shelby's birthday on the 19th. For her party she wanted to invite Elsa and Mindi over for a dress up party. We painted nails, did makeup, made crafts, and ate pumpkin pie. It was a lot of fun. Darcy was sleeping during the party. When she woke up she decided she would like to paint her nails too. Of course she chose the hot pink color and decided to paint them on our living room carpet. (I was photographing a wedding and James was downstairs working on our fireplace at the time). Now we have pretty pink carpet! Yeah... 
We are in the middle of a home improvement project. The US government is giving a tax rebate on new high efficiency wood burning stoves. We have wanted one for our basement and decided to take advantage of the rebate while we can. So we've been building our fireplace downstairs. We had to use steel studs and concrete board for the walls. James loves trying new things, so this was a fun challenge for him. Here's a picture of James and his brother Ben cutting the steel studs.
Over the Thanksgiving weekend we finished up the walls and laid the slate tile. Joe and Ben came to help. It was great to have them there. We got all the tiles laid and will grout this coming weekend. 
Here is what the fireplace looked like just after we finished laying the tiles. I am so excited with the way it turned out. It looks better now that I have cleaned it up, but I'll wait to post the final picture after we have grouted this weekend.
Dallin's birthday was on November 27th. He decided what he would like most for his birthday was to go rock climbing as a family. So here are some pictures from our rock climbing party at The Quarry.
The weather has been very cold lately. The kids loved the first good snow storm we had. They made a mini snow man that was very cute. 
November was a fun an busy month, like it always is. I had a wedding and some family pictures to take. The cold weather is always a challenge when it comes to photography, but the pictures turned out great, even if my fingers were numb afterwards. My hip has been bothering me a lot the last few months. I am going to go see a specialist about it and hopefully find something that can help it feel better.
The other day Cody said something cute. My hip was hurting a lot at the time and he really wanted me to go downstairs with him so he could watch a different movie than the one we were watching upstairs. I told him I wasn't going to go downstairs because my hip hurt too bad. He kept begging me to go downstairs. After saying no several times I said, "Cody, how am I supposed to put a movie on for you downstairs if I am not going to go downstairs?" He thought for a second and then said, "If you were Elastagirl, you could stay up here and just reach downstairs and put the movie on for me!" What a cute and creative little kid. If only I had Elastagirl's powers!!!
