November Adventures (The Sad and The Happy)

Can I have a moment of silence, please? This month, my beautiful camera, pictured above, died a sudden and very unexpected death. As a blogger, this is somewhat upsetting, because how can I blog with no camera? This camera was given to us three years ago by my brother-in-law and sister-in-law, and it has served us faithfully on all our adventures ever since. Honestly, a DSLR isn't in the works for people like Angel and I. We need a tough camera that can fit in a pocket and manages to take good, pretty pictures even though Angel doesn't really have a long enough attention span to actually wait for it to focus. I have never bought a camera in my life, my previous camera was given to me when I was 16, and after 5 years of using that one, this Sony was a huge upgrade. Any recommendations for a replacement model, or at least what features to look for? I'm borrowing my Mom's ultra-compact Canon at the moment, but so far it seems especially prone to taking blurry pictures if your hands aren't perfectly still, which isn't great for two non-photography experts like us. Or maybe we just have it on the wrong setting...

{Here's the part where everyone wonders how I've managed to blog for so long without learning the basics of photography...it took diligence and commitment, let me tell you...}

We took the kids on a field trip to an International Horse Show. There were show jumping and dressage competitions, but the most exciting part for the littles was that some of them got to ride a horse for the first time ever!

Josh wasn't entirely sure what to think about the whole ordeal.

On a whim, we decided to enter a bouldering competition (not because we are awesome rock climbers, but because the competition entry fee was cheaper than normal entry), and we had so much fun. My claim to fame of the day was that I was the only lady in our group (of 5) that successfully completed both the "easy" and "medium" courses. You only got three tries for the competition, though, and I fell off on my first time on the medium course, so I didn't even get to try the hard one.

I drove once this month. Pretty sure my face shows my feelings on that subject.

Some time ago, Kira posted on her blog that she'd made this dress, but it was too big for her, and wanted to have a giveaway for it. I knew it wouldn't be likely to fit me, but I thought it might fit Rebekah, so I entered, and lo and behold, Kira was actually willing the mail the dress all the way over here to Malaysia!

Rebekah loves the new dress! I asked her if any of her friends said anything to her about the dress on the day she wore it and she said, "Well...no one really got a chance to say anything, because I was running up to people and saying, 'Look at my new dress! It's so cool! And the skirt twirls!' as soon as I saw anyone I knew."

We also had a Thanksgiving dinner at our place. This is not a photo of that dinner, however, because we took no photos of Thanksgiving. However, there was a significant amount of overlap in guests between this dinner (earlier in November) and our Thanksgiving dinner, so I call it close enough. There were 13 of us for Thanksgiving, 3 of which were 4 and under, so it was a slightly more rambunctious crew.

Our Thanksgiving menu was chicken chili, lime sherbet punch, loaded mashed potatoes, chips with homemade dip, apples with homemade dip, no-bake chocolate cookies, and a loaf of french bread. What do all of these things have in common? You can make them without an oven. ;) Because, between two households, we are currently completely oven-less, as my parents' oven died this month. (It was a bad month for electronics)

Starting a Youtube channel was a highlight from the last week of our month. Thanks for all the support you guys! We're having fun chatting about video ideas every time we hang out. This is a picture Angel snapped from an as-yet unfinished skit, because we've already had our first filming error and will have to retake because the camera was out of focus. And this time I'll probably write the items on the board in bolder handwriting to make them more readable. What would you guess that hugs, the 4th of July, and casseroles have in common?

So, I'll do what every single Youtuber does and end with the word: Subscribe!