November Recap Via Instagram

I started the month by making spiderweb snacks for Henry's class.

Jason and I had a date night with Eli at Logans. He loves the peanuts:)

 I got see Chris Tomlin in concert! It was amazing!

 I made homemade red beans and rice for the first time.

 I worked on some cute Disney shirts for a friend's little girl.

 We played Headbanz while we waited for dinner to finish cooking.

 I voted...though I'm not really sure my vote actually counted since I don't live in one of the all important swing states!

 Eli disguised his turkey as Batman:)

 We had waffles for dinner.

 I did lots of laundry...as usual!

 Eli and I got caught in the rain at the park. We got a little wet:)

 We had a typical Monday afternoon of homework and more laundry.

 There were gorgeous blue skies and lovely weather.

 We shopped for our Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes.

 I made a fun cornucopia snack for the preschoolers at church.

 Henry had a field trip...

 ...and Grant had Thanksgiving lunch at school.

 We packed up our shoeboxes and the boys wrote letters to include in them.

 Eli got sick and we went to the doctor just to hear that it was a virus...that usually how it works:)

 We had yummy Shipley Donuts for breakfast in Starkville.

 The boys covered themselves in maroon in preparation for the Mississippi State game:)

 Eli's first Bulldog football game!

 We headed north to TN for a little pre-Thanksgiving trip.

 We did lots of hiking at Fall Creek Falls State Park.

 The boys favorite part of the state park:

 We visited a {kinda creepy} Indian Village Trading Post...

 ...and an apple orchard {where we didn't actually get to pick apples}.

 This sight means we are getting close to home:

 The one and only picture I took on Thanksgiving day was of the LONG line waiting outside Target! I guess I was too busy eating turkey to take pictures of the rest of the day:)

 The boys played with some of the boy cousins. Army men of course!

 We fed our friends' chickens while they were out of town for Thanksgiving.

 We spent another Saturday morning eating yummy donuts:)

The boys helped me make an apple pie with the apples that we got in TN.

 Impressive lattice crust:)

 Eli took his new stuffed bulldog Bully to preschool for show and tell. He made sure to buckle him up in the car!

 We went and picked out our Christmas tree...in November! That never happens around here! We almost always wait until at least the first weekend in December!

 I also wrapped two presents in NOVEMBER which never happens around here either:)

 I ended the month with some happy mail from my sweet friend Kelli {who BTW hasn't blogged in a long time and I miss it}! Don't you love getting happy mail!

Guest Post Over at Serenity Now!

Today I am over at Amanda's place as part of her holiday blog series "A Season of Serenity at Home".

I'm sharing a fun, easy, and yummy recipe for these SUPER cute edible Popcorn Snowballs:

Click on over and check out the step by step so you can make these yummy snowballs for your kiddos this winter!

Pre-Thanksgiving Roadtrip: Fall Creek Falls State Park, TN

The weekend before Thanksgiving, we had plans to go see the Mississippi State Bulldogs play football one last time this season. Since the boys were out of school the whole week of Thanksgiving, we decided to extend our weekend football trip by a few days and take a short trip to Tennessee. I did a little research and found a wonderful State Park about an hour north of Chattanooga {and only about a 6 hour drive from Starkville}. So after the Bulldogs won against the Arkansas Razorbacks, we loaded up the Airstream and headed to Fall Creek Falls State Park.

The namesake falls from the top:

All of us after the hike down to the bottom of the falls:

 The boys had a great time hiking, biking, and exploring all over the beautiful park and campground.

 Two of our favorite places in the whole park were the suspension bridges that crossed over the creeks. I was a little nervous about them, but the boys LOVED them! And they were the perfect setting for some cute group pictures too:)

 This was my normal view for most of the hikes that we took...bringing up the rear and making sure that Eli stayed with the group!

**We had a wonderful time at Fall Creek Falls State Park**

The campground was wonderful {and pretty sparsely occupied since it's off season for camping}.

We saw a ton of deer everywhere.

We had a campfire every night with yummy s'mores & campfire cones.

The boys got slingshots for souvenirs and learned how to shoot acorns with them:)

I managed to get a couple photos of my wild boys so we will always remember our first camping trip in Tennessee!