November Lost

If you read this blog regularly, and I guess that's about eight folks all told, then you know it hasn't been updated for a while.  Novembers are hard on me.

For one thing, I try to do National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) each year.  This is a self challenge where you commit to writing a 50,000 book in the month of November.  I'm not sure why they chose November, perhaps because of the 30 days?  Regardless, I've done the challenge for five of the past six years and it takes a lot of commitment to crank out that many words without stopping to edit.  The same non profit organization hosts a Script Frenzy in April.  I haven't tried that one yet.

The other reason I'm so delinquent is that we traveled home to the US for the Thanksgiving holiday.  So, we were gone for a little over two full weeks.  Had a great time, got to spend lots of time with friends and family, but it's still hard on the daily writing routine.

I love getting to spend time with my kids and grandkids.  I'm so proud of how well they are doing, how big they are growing, and what fascinating things come out of their mouths.  I find it all endlessly entertaining.

Over this holiday, I got to see my daughter skate in a roller derby bout.  She's a member of the Oklahoma Victory Dolls.  It was great fun.  My suggestion to you?  Find your local roller derby and go see a bout.  It was a lot of entertainment for the bucks!

I think that deep down I thought of roller derby like professional wrestling.  Staged somehow.  But it was more sporting than I expected.  The announcer explained the tactics and strategies and we had a great time watching my daughter and her friends skate three bouts.  It was an action packed night of fun, fun FUN!

After the short weekend with my daughter in Oklahoma City, we flew to Huntersville, NC to spend the balance of the holiday with my son and his family.  Queue the darling grandkids...

I love the fact that my son cooks with his kids.  He lets them help stir things and he teaches them about what he's doing while he prepares their food.

Zack is a good teacher and ZJ is going to be a good cook one day too.  These guys don't mind mugging for the camera whenever one is pointed at them.

In this picture, they are making sweet potatoes for the Thanksgiving meal.  The secret ingredient?  Bananas.  Yeah, that's right.  Bananas.

While he and his dad were cooking, Zoey and both her grandmas took her out for a girls shopping trip.  Her mama came and met us for lunch.  Here is a picture of Zoey eating some kind of blue colored ice cream sitting next to her mama, Kim.

We had a lot of fun shopping with Zoey.  She ended up with hair clips that doubled as reindeer horns and a head band that keeps the mistletoe above her head all the time she's wearing it.  In case you can't tell by the photo, she's a little charmer.  But it's possible that Grandee is a little biased.

On our way home from NC, we stopped in Humble, TX.  We got to have a sleepover with DH's sister Linda.  We didn't get to see her husband or kids, so that was a bummer, but we were sure glad she drove down to see us.

I love spending the holidays with family and friends.  We got to see our dear friend Sandy from Tulsa and we also spent a couple of days with the Burgess' in Humble.  Catching up with friends and family is what the holidays are all about anyway.

So, November is over.  It flew by quickly.  We squeezed a lot of fun in that 30 days and I wouldn't trade that time for the world.

--Sandee Wagner