Nov 2025

 Kaylee got her permit! It is crazy to think she is old enough to learn how to drive!

Brooklyn was nominated for the SHARP award at school. She got a picture with the kids who nominated her and then with the other kids who won the award as well. She had been hoping to get this for a long time and was so thrilled she finally got it!

We got another Giving Machine in our mall this year but it comes early and then goes somewhere else for 3 or so weeks before Christmas. For the opening of the Machines, people from our stake could go and sing in the choir. Richard took the girls and joined some of our friends to sing.

We also got to go do a service project where our church combined with another church downtown to prepare Thanksgiving meals to pass out. Some people opened up boxes of canned foods, some people went down the line with boxes to gather everything, some people passed out the food items, and other broke down boxes. We ended up having so many people show up that it went really quickly but it was fun! 

That same night, our friends had us over for Pie Night. Every year they do this a week or two before Thanksgiving to focus on pies instead of them getting lost with all the other Thanksgiving food. Richard had to miss out because he drove down to Cinncinnati with some friends to watch a BYU game

As usual, we were going to be gone over Kenna's birthday so we celebrated her bday before we left for Thanksgiving. Richard and her went out to eat and we opened presents. 

Kaylee had a field trip to Tolles Technical College and they got to choose a few different specialties to check out and she chose nursing and EMT. She got to try on all the firefighter gear, which she thought was pretty cool. She is thinking she might want to go into nursing so it was good for her to get a glimpse of what it might look like to go the route of getting a certificate during high school.

On our drive to Holly's house, we saw signs for a place called Uranus Fudge Factory. We had to stop and get some fudge to take to Holly! And Richard was having way to much fun making Uranus jokes. They had the most random stuff there! They even had a rotating tunnel that you walked through that made it feel like you can't walk straight and a 50 foot T-Rex outside. 

One of Brooklyn's favorite parts of being at Holly's house is playing with Mio. She was so excited when she convinced him to sleep with her one night!

To celebrate Kenna's birthday, Holly bought passes to a fun zone that had rock climbing, zip lines, trampolines, etc. Since Kaylee wasn't feeling good enough to do all of that, Holly, Richard and I took her to an escape room that was pirate themed. Holly also made Kenna an epic chocolate cake that everyone agreed was the best thing they'd ever tasted!

Another thing we have tried to do every year is some kind of service project. This year Holly signed us up to ring bells for the Salvation Army outside of a grocery store. I'm not going to lie, I was not excited at all to do it... but we ended up making it so much fun! We dressed up in holiday outfits, bought mini candy canes to pass out to people who donated, and spent the time singing songs and making up our own songs. It was so fun that all the kids said they wanted to do it again!

That night we had bought tickets to go see Wicked 2. All the girls bought fake nails in Wicked colors and even convinced Richard to let them paint his nails! 

Of course we also had to go to our favorite creepy store, Trader Baker's. Unfortunately this might be our last year for our tradition since they closed down soon after since the strip mall tripled their rent. Maybe they'll open up somewhere else so we can keep going!

Holly and Chase were teaching a youth Sunday School lesson in another ward so we went with them to hear their lesson, which was incredible! They were talking about taking ownership of tech and not letting it control our life. I was so impressed and am trying to convince Richard to do the same thing in our stake. Unfortunately, after church we had to head home and we were sad to say goodbye.