November - Thanksgiving

This year for Thanksgiving we drove to my sister Amy's house in Baker City, OR. Amy and Jeremy recently finished building their home last spring and we hadn't been to visit yet. My parents and brother/sister-in-law drove down as well - we were only missing Mel & Dave, who just moved to Texas. We missed you, Mel & Dave!

Thanksgiving table all set 

somehow Brodie didn't make it into the picture. . . but he was there!

Luna and her new best friend, Daisy

Luna loved the Hindman's acreage, especially the creek. After coming home, I think she went through withdrawals of missing Daisy and the all of the open space. I guess we will have to visit again soon!

The day after Thanksgiving we played frisbee golf, went bowling, and saw "Murder on the Orient Express". It had been awhile since Brodie and I had gone out to the movies, so it was a fun little treat. It was even more fun because it was an old historic theater in downtown Baker City.

I bowled my best game! You can see on the left that I scored 148 and Brodie (on the right) got 177. It must have been our lucky day! 

We were both so close to getting on the leader board! Brodie was only 9 points off the men's score of 188 and I was only 3 points off of the women's score of 151. We could have been Baker City famous! ;) 

Saturday morning we went to cut down our Christmas tree! Jeremy's grandfather owns acres of land, which includes a wild Christmas tree farm. We were lucky enough to pick out and cut down our very own tree! 

Found it! This tree was over 30 feet tall and we cut off the top 8 feet. After cutting it down, we counted the rings and found out the tree was over 25 years old!

To get the tree home, we wrapped it in sewing elastic (thanks Amy), covered it with garbage bags, and taped it up. It barely fit in our car - the tip of the tree touched the dashboard! 

November - Seahawks Game

Back in August, Brodie, Brian, and Cohan participated in the Hardscape North America Installer Competition and won second place. As part of their winnings, they got tickets to a Seahawks game! We got some extra tickets so that the rest of the Fish Fam could go.

Even though I grew up near Seattle, I had never been to a Seahawks game before. It was quite the experience! This game was against the Falcons, which was cool because Brodie's cousin, Nico, works for the Falcons as an equipment manager. We were able to watch him down on the field and even meet up with him after the game. The Hawks lost, but it was still a close, exciting game that was fun to watch!

half time - this particular game was focused on honoring veterans

October Photo Bomb

Here are the rest of the photos from October!

Brodie built a privacy fence to separate our yard from the neighbors

Didn't he do an amazing job??

Ever since getting our food dehydrator over the summer, we have been experimenting with different fruits. We have tried strawberries, bananas, grapes, and apples. 

homemade apple crumble pie for General Conference weekend :)

field trip with the fifth graders to Bonneville Dam

. . . which ended with the bus getting a flat tire. Entertaining 60 fifth graders while you wait for new tires is so fun!

literacy door decorating competition at school - we won "Best Theme" 

 and to finish off October, my class won the Fall Boxtop Competition (big deal!) 

October - Halloween

Brodie was in Kentucky the evening of our ward Halloween party, which is when we usually dress up together as a couple. In the past we have been Wendy & Peter Pan, Katniss & Peeta, Thor & Jane, and Luke & Leah. Since I was riding solo at the Halloween party, I didn't put any effort into a costume. Luckily, we were able to go with Cohan and Emily to their ward party the following weekend, which was a Halloween Hoe Down.

Thanks for letting us crash your party, Cohan & Ems! 

cowboy and cowgirl

Without kids, we had little motivation to make it to the real pumpkin patch. Instead, we walked two blocks from our house to Safeway and picked out a pumpkin from the "patch". 

Brodie is a master carver and I am . . . not haha. So I scooped out the guts and he did the carving. 

Fish pumpkin 2017!

Brodie gave me a budget of $3 to decorate for Halloween - I think he was joking, but I accepted the challenge! This was as good as it got. Thank goodness for Dollar Tree!

October - National Hardscape Competition

Shovel & Thumb (the Fish family landscaping business) competed in a regional hardscape competition in August and got second place! They then proceeded to the national level in October, but this time all the way in Kentucky. 25 teams competed, and Shovel & Thumb finished overall in 6th place - extremely impressive!

Fish boys in Kentucky!

built in under 50 minutes!

 While there, they did some sight seeing and visited Churchill Downs - home of the Kentucky Derby. I was only a little bit jealous!

and while the boys were out of the town, the girls went out for dinner!