A bit of November...

November came and went quickly for us.  We were FINALLY able to close on our house at the very end of October!!  So, that meant time to start making it our own!  We started with painting, which is still a work in progress, more of that when it is done!  

Crazy story...not a week after we had closed on our house, I was out in the garage and turned around to see 3 guys from the SWAT team walking up my driveway.  I had a moment of panic, that was quickly gone when one of them told me everything was okay.  They were looking for the guy who used to own this house.  They didn't tell me much of why, aside from the fact that he'd gone off the deep end.  Now that is comforting!  We never met the guy, he didn't come to closing, and had given power of attorney to his ex wife to get things done on the house.  

I decided I wanted to know what had happened, so I asked my neighbor later that day.  She told me about a standoff that had happened in our house back in April, and that he owned lots of guns, which is the reason for the SWAT team.  He had posted bail and run off.  

I was a bit concerned about this.  You really never know what crazy people are capable of.  They said I didn't need to worry about him coming back or anything, but still, you never know.  Turns out our house had been under surveillance for a couple months.  To end this long story, the guy turned up in another state and had shot a police man 2 times, they returned fire and killed him.  Kinda sad and unfortunate that things had to go that way for him.  But it was the end of my worries of him coming back here for any reason.

Since then, we've had 2 incidences of people coming by the house and taking pictures of it-that I know of!  Once the guy got out and Gracen was looking out the window and told me there was a guy taking pictures of our house.  The next time, which was just over a week or so ago, I was standing in the window painting and saw a black truck pull up on our street, not long after he was driving past my house with the passenger window down and his hand sticking up holding a camera, taking pictures as he drove by.  Creepy!  I don't like the thought of unknown people coming here and taking pictures.  

We also had some fun in November!  We had a couple of different visitors, which was so fun!  We love having people come out and see us!  And being close to Utah has allowed us much more than we've had before!  

Nate's brother Kelly and his family came out for a weekend.  They have 4 girls and my kids we just so excited to have them here!  They played and had a fun little sleepover in Brynlee's room. 

Unfortunately, the weather was cold so we weren't able to do much outside with them.  We were able to sneak out for a little bit... 

  Garden of The Gods.  Gracen wasn't in the picture because he fell and hit his mouth on the cement.  He was not a happy camper at that moment.

 Gracen LOVED having Kelly here!  He wouldn't leave him alone!  He wanted him to read him his bedtime stories, had fun shooting with him, and if he couldn't find Kelly, he would get quite worried.

All of the kids!  Kelly and Tausha's girls are all so fun!  They are so helpful and great examples to my kids.  We were really sad to see them leave.  Brynlee and Gracen were in tears.  They love spending time with their cousins!

Thanks for coming to see us!!  (And to Tausha for the pictures!)

Fall came with full force!  We loved all of the colors, but didn't really love having all of the leaves in our yard to clean up!  Nate and I raked and raked and raked!  We still don't have all of the leaves cleaned up.  Brynlee was a sweet girl and would help me try to clean up leaves after school.  They both loved playing in them!  Their first real experience with lots and lots of leaves...

I had raked up two sections of our backyard into 2 separate piles and left the monkeys to play in them while I made dinner.  I looked out the window to check on them and one of my piles was completely gone!  I went out and asked where they put them, and they told me they moved them over to the other pile.  That pile was so mushed that it didn't look as big as it did before they had combined the 2.  I couldn't believe they had smashed them all that well.  Makes for an easier time cleaning them up!  

For Turkey day we had my sister, her boyfriend and her daughter all come out.  It was fun having them here for a couple of days!  We had a yummy dinner on Thanksgiving.  Then my sister and I braved the very cold temps and headed out to Toys R Us for some BF shopping.  To say it was insane would be an understatement!  The line to get in practically wrapped around the building twice.  We stood in line for a minute, got told by someone who worked there that about 750 people were in front of us, and decided to head to walmart to try to price match what we could instead.  Walmart was surprisingly not bad.  I was able to get some of the things I wanted from Toys R Us and I didn't have to fight much of a crowd.  I was very surprised that it wasn't busier!  We got home at about 2 a.m. not bad.  I didn't really like the way all the stores were opening all throughout the night.  I might have gone other places, but didn't want to be up all night. 

I was happy to have my sister here!  It was fun to spend Thanksgiving with them and to have someone to go shopping with!  

 That pretty well sums up the month of November for us!  We had some fun and crazy all mixed together with lots of painting!