14 candles on his cake

Jude turned 14 on Monday. He was supposed to be in school but ISD closed for the entire week due to Covid. So, he was able to have a relaxing day at home. He had a nice pancake breakfast, then Mustard’s for lunch and at dinner he wanted Indian food takeout. He had not one but two birthday cakes, an ice cream cake from Dairy Queen and Marcy made a combo carrot/red velvet cake. He spent most of the day playing Minecraft and watching The Office, but he did get to have cake with Anna and the neighbors and they jumped on the trampoline for a while.

Sharing birthday ice cream cake with the neighbors

Thanksgiving was just the four of us again this year. It was a chilly day, but sunny, and Jude wanted to start a new family tradition: a relay race at the track. We did two 4x100m races doing it in 1:13 both times. It was fun to get out and do something physical together.

After a family race at the track

Marcy was in the kitchen most of the day and I helped with just the turkey and gravy. We had a delicious feast that included a wonderful pumpkin pie for dessert.

Getting ready to sit down to Thanksgiving dinner

We decided over the Thanksgiving break that we would take a summer trip in an RV. Marcy has been talking about this for years and given that we had no vacation this year beyond the usual trips to Iowa and Keystone, we thought we should take a decent trip next summer. So, we started looking at RVs online and we went and saw one on Saturday which looked really good, it was a trailer we would tow with Marcy’s car. It was also way out southeast so afterwards we went for a hike down near Franktown.

A Saturday hike outside Franktown

Today was a quiet day to end the long weekend. Jude and I went for a run but most of the day was spent watching football. I also baked some bread for the first time in several months. I am going to get back into baking sourdough every weekend.