November

We had some fun times in November. I had a crazy adventure at the beginning of the month. My friends Whitney and Janine had planned a 30-mile, one day hike on the Ohlone Wilderness Trail from Livermore back to Fremont. We trained a little bit but not as much as we'd hoped. The longest hike I'd done before this 8 miles. It ended up being a really long, really awesome day with some awesome women (including Janine's 11 year-old hiking extraordinaire daughter). It was so fun to push myself that hard and see that I could do it. It took us 14 hours and we had 8,316 feet elevation change during the day. We were worried about the weather but when I checked the night before it said there wouldn't be any rain. Stupidly, I didn't prepare like I should have anyway and didn't really bring anything waterproof. Thankfully, I was able to borrow some things and it didn't really do more than sprinkle. It was really cold at times, though, and taking that hot bath after I got home was heavenly. 

I didn't get any pictures so I stole all of these from friends.

Starting off at 6am:

A beautiful sunrise:

5 miles in:

 We had a beautiful view of the bay all lit up as came down Mission peak in the dark:

It was a really challenging day but it definitely cemented my love of hiking.

The weekend after that, we got to dog-sit for our friends the Kings. They have a really well-behaved golden-doodle named Clark. We were hoping it would help the boys get a little more used to dogs and not so scared of them. I'm not sure if it helped with that but it sure was fun to have a little dog experience. The kids were all in love! I have to say I was a bit glad to get the dog smell out of the house and not to worry about the messes but he was so loveable. We were sad to see him go Sunday after church:

Elizabeth started getting more into crochet and made this awesome bag just by figuring it out on her own:

The kids had the whole week of Thanksgiving off of school so we decided to spend it at Old Greenwood. We were hoping to have some snow but there was none and it ended up being 60 degrees some days. So, we actually got to spend a couple of afternoons in the pool!

We also went to Reno one night and saw Wonder. That was a fantastic movie. Joe worked remotely but we went on some long walks in the morning together and got to go to the pizzeria one night together. It was a relaxing couple of days. The morning of Thanksgiving, we got packed up and left early so we could make it to Stockton in time for dinner at the country club.

It was another great meal there with my Mom and Dad, Chris and Lisa and their kids, and Lisa's parents came too.

Eli's Thanksgiving dinner:

Not so traditional maybe but he loved it!

More pictures:

We had a whole lot of delicious pie at my mom and dad's afterward and then headed home.

We had some more fun on Friday going bowling with the Ashby's:

We'd planned on hiking Mission Peak Saturday morning and we talked Mike and Max into joining us. Mari was kind enough to offer to watch Eli so he stayed behind. It was probably better that way for our first attempt at it. 

On the way up:

Elizabeth and Nate struggled the most but both made it up fine. We were proud of all of them for doing it even though it was hard.

We all enjoyed the view at the top:

I loved sneaking these pictures of Joe talking to his girls:

Here's one more of the boys putting on a puppet show from the back of the van:

It was a great month!