The month of November was a little crazy. I decided to start putting together an official homeschool co-op for our area. It was a huge undertaking because it required me first to find people who were interested in joining. Then it was crunch time to try to find a location that would house us all. That took a lot of looking, emailing, calling, and stress. Then there was insurance that was required by the place where we were meeting which required yearly dues. Some of the parents didn't mind but others did. The last hiccup we had was the requirement of masks. I couldn't get around them. The place we met required masks as long as they were required by the school district. I decided this was an acceptable downside because after all the looking I did this place offered us a free meeting place and it had everything we could have hoped for. I had so many people leave the group after announcing the requirement of masks. I realized too late that the biggest reason for a lot of these people homeschooling their kids to begin with was the mask policy at schools. I had taken on homeschooling long before Corona, so it didn't seem like a big deal for Audrey to wear a mask for a couple hours a week to play with and have classes with her friends. Unfortunately, for a lot of people it was a huge deal so our numbers dropped. By the time it was all said and done we had four families meeting with a total of about 10 kids. No matter the numbers I knew that this was something I was supposed to pursue and I trusted that eventually somehow it would come together the way Heavenly Father intended it to. So far it has been worth the effort. It turns out the time spent with other families weekly is good for all of us!
Paul's parents came for Thanksgiving. It was so fun to have them for a little while. Anne helped me with dinner which was amazing. My favorite part about cooking Thanksgiving dinner is not the Turkey so I was glad to hand that one over to her. Dinner was great. It's truly the only time during the year that I give myself the option of eating as much pie as I want and I never regret it. In fact, I wait all year for it! I was grateful this year that we got to share it with family. We don't get to do that very often and we all enjoyed Rod and Anne's company so much. We went on a walk at some new trails we found just this year, tried to get Rae to walk more than 3 steps, played some tangram, watched a couple movies, and Rae got into Anna's tomatoes. She was super happy about it until one exploded on her and she started to scream. She got that far before she was caught. I made sure Paul got a picture of it before we cleaned her up. She obviously knew it was food and was enjoying it until it popped in her lap. :)
A couple of the pictures here are of the thankful turkey Audrey made at co-op and our thankful tree that we do every year. We try to have everyone write something their grateful for every day but some days we forget. I've enjoyed this tradition so much that I keep pulling this tree out no matter how battered it gets. I think it's time for a new one.
Overall it was a great November! Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
