November 2023 in review

Whoooo! It’s November 8 and I’m starting the post! However, it’s now November 29, and I’m writing up two weeks worth of memories, and those two weeks were crazy busy.

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Week 1

What all happened, let’s see.

We started the month off with Game Club, and Superman was hopeful for a few games he might play, but instead they got to play Roots again, which he enjoys but wished he could have played a few games we own.

Leezard had a bad weekend, she found something that didn’t agree with her, and so had a bunch of seizures, which was not fun to deal with. But here she is happily trying to hint we should let her in the office with us.

Jeff, Superman, and I had fun playing the advanced version of Fresco together. See the basic version is just paint the Sistine Chapel and gain fame. We kept introducing new people to the game, so we never got to play the more advanced version. There is slightly more strategy to this version, at one point I spent 5 minutes trying to plan what time my apprentices were going to wake up because when I woke up changed how many I would have and how much my paints would cost. I love that game.

The bottom left picture is our Sunday School craft. We’re in a somewhat different type of Sunday School, for students who are there both hours, so we get to do more complicated crafts. This was a thankfulness cup for Joseph, and the kids generally enjoyed it.

And finally, I grabbed all these 4th grade books made into movies on Monday just so I could take a picture for the post I wrote. Then I went back today (November 8) returned them and grabbed some elephant books.

Jeff has been teasing me about that.

Books read:

• Masked City
• A Soul as Cold as Frost

Only two books read, I haven’t been reading quite as much this month.

Games played:

• Root– one of the kids in game club owns this and has brought it to Game Club a few times now

Week 2 of November

While I did really well with week 1, with week 2 I have not done quite so well with keeping up…

In a super hilarious turn of events, Superman came home from work at Taco Bell with a piece of paper. They had been given a word from the Lord for our city, we were being warned of coming judgment for our sins. Apparently, the man had been coming in a few times that week to deliver a word from God for the city and he wouldn’t leave until someone took it.

It led to an interesting discussion on what we would do in that situation and if we thought he had really heard from God. Ultimately we came down to, many of his statements might be true, but we didn’t really think God had given him a special message to deliver to Round Rock.

Friday we went down to San Antonio to see Batman at AIT. He is now allowed time off base, but has to be back by 7:00 to report for muster or something. I forget exactly what. We left at 6 am because he was supposed to be able to be picked up at 8:00. However he sent a text at 7 saying don’t bother coming until 8:30, because that is the earliest he could get there.

Superman didn’t come because he was working at Taco Bell until after 3, and didn’t want to then get up again barely two hours after getting home from work.

We’d already been on the road for an hour at that point, it’s not like we could suddenly get there later. The reality of it all is, that we got there right around 8:00 and sat around waiting until probably 9 maybe 9:15. We headed off to get breakfast/brunch, and to the Mirror Maze. That was the big thing he wanted to do.

We’ve gone there several times before and this time they had two new things. First, once you went through the mirror maze, then they gave you 3D glasses and you went through it backward with those on. Which let me tell you really messes with your brain because the lights at the bottom were all refracted and reflected in the mirrors. Apparently, this only really messed with my brain because everyone else was able to find their way out with no problem.

Then we wandered around the Alamo, and a nice couple offered to get our picture together, so we got a nice family picture as compared to my selfie attempt which the Artist made fun of. I don’t blame her it was a rather sad picture.

Though funny.

We finished off our day with him, eating at one of the restaurants he missed, and then dropping him off. On the way back we listened to My Side of the Mountain which was some serious nostalgia for Artist as she remembered listening to it so many times as a kid.

We played Codenames together, and at the point I took the picture I had earned all of the points on the board for both teams. I did great that game. Just not great for my team.

Sad sigh.

Leezard had her annual appointment, she did fine, apparently, she has some impressive allergies so we have to decide what we want to do about that. She also has lost about 8 pounds, which we hadn’t intended to do, but last time we’d gone in they had mentioned she was maybe getting a little chubby so I’d been more strict this year on letting her eat scraps and cleaning plates, but apparently I can relax that now.

Leezard will be very happy to find this out, as she’s been trying her best to steal all the food.

And then the final picture is of the parking lot at the Artist’s AHG troop. We pulled in an the ducks just slowly sauntered across the parking lot, like “Nope, we don’t care if your giant car might be able to destroy us, we’re still not going to move any faster.”

Funny story, so Artist has known one of the younger girls since she was literally in diapers, her older sisters are in the same squad as her, so as a result, she treats her almost like a little sister and teases her a fair amount. Apparently, some of the other girls and the parents thought she had a problem with this younger girl. We had a meeting to make sure Artist didn’t secretly hold a grudge or anything, at one point one of the leaders said, “Artist, I don’t think you have a problem with her, but I think you have a very adult sense of humor.”

At which point I interrupted her, “Just to clarify, when you say adult, you mean sarcastic, correct? Because usually adult is used to mean sexual.”

The other women got slightly flustered and realized just what she had said, and agreed, probably a better way to have said that might have been a sarcastic or dry sense of humor.

I got a good laugh out of that, even if it wasn’t necessarily intended.

I don’t have a picture of it, but I did go see Journey to Bethlehem, the new Christmas movie musical. It was exactly as cheesy and silly as I expected, but it was pretty fun to watch. I had a few complaints for the movie: the wise men were relegated to silly slapstick humor and only existed for comedy, and I think that did those characters a disservice. Also, the angel Gabriel also had a weird slapstick moment that made very little sense. They had a really cute scene with Mary and Joseph at the beginning that I think would have worked better if they changed one or two lines, and one of Mary’s songs needs a line changed because it was actually wrong, like contradicted the Bible (I’m a nobody and I’m not even royalty, she was from the line of David, so she is descended from kings and would have known that).

Books read:

• Aeronaut’s Windlass– I do not like the new cover for it, the older cover I feel captured the feel of the book more, and this one just feels generic
• Olympian Affair– the sequel to Aeronaut’s Windlass, which is why I reread it. This is Batman’s favorite series, so he’s been very eager for it to come out. I still liked this book, but it’s definitely more adult in nature (and this time I am deliberately using it for referring to sexual content), which I think actually takes away from the book. The first book was a solid adventure, a strong PG-13 level book, but one I could confidently say was safe for kids who can handle some amount of descriptive violence, but the second book added in explicitly sexual content, which disappointed me. Storyline is still strong, and it definitely expanded the world, so I’m still going to recommend it, but would recommend waiting for teens or listening together and skipping those scenes, they don’t add anything to the plot

Games played:

• Codenames
• World of Warcraft- Batman has renewed his subscription so I’ve been playing with him on the weekends for an hour or two

Week 3

I don’t super remember most of the week, but it did end with the Artist’s 17th birthday.

So, a bit of funny news. Superman came home from work, and apparently, there’s someone who thinks of themselves as a prophet to Round Rock. She has spent the past couple of days coming into various fast food places and won’t leave until they receive her “word of the Lord,” and it’s a hand written note. He brought it home and we were all immensely amused. Basically, Round Rock has been sinful and we’ve neglected what God has called us to do, so He will judge us.

We celebrated the Artist’s birthday, and she was less than impressed by our amazing job of wrapping her presents. I think wrapping them in blankets and random clothing items is genius! We took Leezard to the dog park and she was quite happy to play there, but didn’t really care about the other dogs, which amuses me for some reason.

The next day we had the cousins over to spend the night, we had a fire outside in the backyard and cooked their dinner over it while taking personality quizzes, then we sang happy birthday, and the picture means Liam has a halo on his head, which amuses me.

Books read:

• Wishing on a Superhero (betaread)- more in HL Burke’s superhero universe
• What Would Jane Austen Do?– a rather fun and silly rom-com between two authors

I don’t remember if I played any games that week, I didn’t write it down.

Week 4

I’m going to write this before the final events of the month and may or may not add them in. Just know that tonight, November 29, after I finish writing this right now, we’ll be decorating the Christmas tree. Then tomorrow we’ve got a college visit.

The 22nd kicked off with taking the cousins to the Austin Science and Nature Center, which they all had a blast with. I think Liam is actually wearing one of the boys’ old coats, so that’s amusing. Everyone thoroughly enjoyed it, and the trade counter was wildly popular.

A few days later and it was Thanksgiving. We opted to do a low-key Thanksgiving because we were going the next day down to San Antonio to see Batman. We made a ham, since we were going to have turkey for Christmas, then we headed down to San Antonio.

That was an adventure, to not turn this into a 10,000 word post, I’m going to sum up what went wrong:

• we first went to the wrong entrance to the base
• the first place we were going to go had an over 2 hour wait, and wouldn’t even add us to the list until we got there (and it was a 20 minute drive)
• Leezard escaped and I had to find someone to get her back in the house and give her water
• where we went for breakfast that turned into lunch didn’t get us seated for over an hour, despite originally claiming a 30 minute wait
• then our food was slow coming, and they got my order wrong, so we were at Cracker Barrel for over 3 hours
• we went to a park instead of the zoo because of the time, and shortly after getting there Superman had to go to the ER because of an allergic reaction
• when we went to dinner, the first restaurant was closed for Thanksgiving holiday (on Friday), then the restaurant we went to had a lot of add-ons

But, it was a good visit, it’s just one of those holidays that would make a great screwball comedy ending with a happy ending.

That bottom left corner picture is me at the thing, and I kinda hate it, but at the same time it’s a great sum-up of the day with all that went so crazy wrong.

Books read:

• Fawkes– alternate history about the gunpowder plot
• Of Snow and Roses– a very strange modern-day retelling of Snow White and Rose Red I picked up in a 99 cent sale or maybe it was free. When I started reading it, I’d forgotten the plot, and so it was odd to read. It takes place in a mental asylum as the main character is trying to figure out why she’s there and who she is, very odd book
• Crack the Stone– fantasy retelling of Les Miserables, very much streamlined plot, but interesting idea
• To Catch a Magic Thief– the sequel to Rose and the Wand, but oddly it takes place before it, and it’s set in the same world but different time period as several other books I’ve read. I enjoy the author, but sometimes she has more characters than I can keep track of, especially if they have aliases

And that’s our November, the years are flying by at an ever faster pace. It’s kind of crazy to think of.