Fun Times

Where has time gone? It feels like just a few days ago that it was October and now it is January of a new year! I'll try to keep this post somewhat short to give a quick update of what we have been doing with ourselves since the end of October!

One of the last weekends in October, my aunt and uncle--Alan and Melissa, and their daughter, Aly, came to visit us in Wisconsin! They were just here for the weekend (before they moved on to Nauvoo and Chicago) but it was so much fun spending time with them! While they were here, we toured the capital building, ate at the Grumpy Troll, strolled around Madison, visited the Don Q Inn Airplane, and hung out! We really have such a great family and enjoyed having more visitors!

Inside the Capital Building

Inside the Don Q Inn Airplane (which kind of creeps me out...)

Matt and I have still been exploring Wisconsin! In November we went to the Blue Mounds state park which has the highest point in Southwest Wisconsin. It was really pretty up there!

They had these tall tours to get a better view. Kind of scary but still cool!

November flew by with preparation for the holidays, spending time with friends, a lot of errands and other happenings. For Thanksgiving, I did a 5k run with our friends Amber, Neil and Preston Spencer. It was such a fun way to start Thanksgiving! We also saw a lot of other friends from our Branch there as well. Amber and I were originally planning on walking the whole time, then pushed each other and ran most of the time. It was a great feeling!

For Thanksgiving dinner, we went to the Merkle's house, a family in our branch. They had invited several families over. It was a great meal and fun evening getting to know other people better! We are so grateful they invited us over for dinner!

The following day Amber and I did a quick black friday trip to Platteville, then did our own Thanksgiving dinner (so we could make a few dishes to have around as leftovers). It was delicious and fun attempting some new recipes!

For a few days in November, and all of December, I was doing a subbing job at Dodgeville Elementary helping out with the Spec. Ed classrooms. It was a great chance to finally get my foot in the door and a great experience to work with a variety of children and teachers. It definitely kept me busy and helped me take my mind off of the fact that at the beginning of December, our good friends--Amber, Neil and Preston Spencer, moved away to California for a new job. It was definitely a sad thing. We spent a lot of time with them and really got along with them well. They were the friends we could always call and they would be up for hanging out! They were also the first to reach out to us when we moved here and invited us over for dinner on our first night out here. They will definitely remain as great friends. One thing that is great is they are both from Western Washington as well, so we were able to see them over Christmas break, and are grateful for that Washington connection to see each other in the future! We will miss having them here!!

I'll post an update about our Christmas vacation soon!