The highlight of November was the presidential election!  What a relief!

Otherwise, November was pretty uneventful.  I have pictures of food — the kids tried some nigiri for the first time one night when we did takeout.

One night I attempted making shrimp and grits, thanks to the NY Times cooking email from Sam Sifton.

We got outside for a few more s’mores.  I couldn’t figure out why we were wearing masks in this picture… then I realized it was because Blaine was in quarantine for two weeks due to covid exposure at school!  We all had to wear masks around the house among other precautions.

The quarantine weekend we hung around the house.  Smashed some geodes in the garage.  Did a sand art kit.

One day Sarah made a “laundry panda” for her school art class.

On 11/19 we went outside to see the planets!  You can see the moon is the brightest light in the night sky above Sith Sarah.  If you look closely you can see Saturn and Jupiter forming a triangle to the right of the moon, it was some astrological conjunction?  We tried to see them again on Dec 21 but it was too cloudy!

Blaine was inspired by his America’s Test Kitchen Kids Cookbook (thanks again to Great Grandmommy who I believe gave it to him a few years ago).  We tried out this sheet pan pizza recipe (thanks also to Uncle Fran for the yeast!).

Here’s another pic from later in the month of Blaine preparing some pork chops for dinner, from the same cookbook.  (Andrew helped!)

And we went on some hikes, of course!  Here we are at the 13 bridges trail at the Rockefeller Preserve.

I also tried to get some Christmas card pictures!  Last one was the winner this year.