October 2023

 We started off the month with our favorite- General Conference! I got a new Perler bead Harry Potter set so that is what I spent most of Conference doing. Brooklyn got into the scrapbook paper and got really creative. She made all kinds of signs and collages but my favorite was the little monster feet she made sticking out from under the couch with a sign that said "monster- don't disturb!". 

In between the sessions on Sunday, Brooklyn convinced us to play Beauty Bash again. In the middle of our game, we heard a loud thud against the window and looked up to see a bird fall down.  We all rushed outside to check on it and the bird was laying on it's side not moving. We could see that it was still breathing but we didn't know what to do to help it. We told the girls to run next door and get our neighbor who is a vet but he wasn't home. We tried to stand the bird back up but he would just faceplant and not move again (which was both sad and funny at the same time). Kaylee googled it and found that sometimes birds get stunned and just need to rest before they can pop back up. We got a shoebox and a soft towel and put the bird in there and then made the girls go back inside so it could rest. About 20 mins later, we came to check on it and the bird hopped out of the box. It still wasn't flying all the way, but it wouldn't let us get close to it anymore and kept half hopping, half flying away so we assumed it would be ok. The girls were so worried about it and it was cute to see all the things they wanted to do to take care of it. 

Kaylee loves being in the Panther Pride club. This is all they have instead of student council in the middle school. For Breast Cancer Awareness Month, they made a tree on a trophy case in the main hall and students could fill out a leaf with someone they knew who has had cancer. Kaylee was so sweet and remembered to include Holly, Julie, Grandma Joye and Aunt Theda. 

Brooklyn had a field trip to the Ohio Historical Village and she was lucky enough to be in a group with her two best friends, Ella and Ella! They have people dress up like the 1800s and teach the kids what life was like back then.

We got invited to do a Harry Potter trivia night with a group from our ward. I'm not sure they knew what they were getting into with me! Ha ha. Sometimes I don't think I am that big of an HP nerd but then I go to things like this and realize I know a LOT about Harry Potter :) Unfortunately, they also asked about Fantastic Beasts, which I don't know hardly at all, so we did miss two questions total but that got us 2nd place (out of 29 teams!) and we won gift cards to the arcade, which my girls were very excited about.

Another thing Kaylee has really loved this year is the Peer to Peer class. They have a few students selected each period to go into the Special Needs class and help out. She gets to go on field trips with them as well and got to go to a pumpkin patch with their class in the beginning of October. She is so good with them and seems to have an innate ability to know how to help and how to treat and love everyone the same. It makes me very proud! 

After the Peer to Peer class went to the pumpkin patch, they had another class where they painted pumpkins. Kaylee's impressed me so much! Might be one of my favorite pumpkins I've ever seen.

For our Stake Conference weekend, our visiting authority was Elder Vai Sikahema who is a General Authority 70 and a lot of people know him as a former NFL player and news anchor. Friday night, he wanted to go out to dinner with all of the Stake Presidency, including the clerks and executive secretaries, and their wives. Both him and his wife were so welcoming and friendly and put everyone at ease. He wanted us to go around the table and have the wives introduce our families and tell him how we met. 

On Sunday, one thing I loved that Elder Sikahema did was he asked the Stake Presidency to come up with a list of people who they felt should come up a bear their testimony. Each person who came up, he put his arm around them and really paid attention and made them feel loved. After everyone was done, he talked about each testimony and said something specific about what they had said. It was very impressive and you could tell he really tries to be personal and loving to everyone. 

After Conference, we decorated more Book of Mormons with paint markers. I think we have every single one in the house covered by now! But it was really fun and it makes me smile every time I pull mine out to read. 

Megan Blake wanted to get more into photography but felt like she needed more practice before she could ask people to pay her for pictures so she asked a couple families in the ward if they would be willing to have her take their pictures for free, including us. We were very happy to agree and I was blown away by her pictures! I'm not sure why she didn't feel like she was ready to do it professionally because I thought all of our pictures were fantastic and I was really happy to have new family pictures to put up.

Little Charlotte Martin really loves our girls. She has started to come sit with us sometimes during sacrament meeting and every single week after church she will come up to them and tell them they are going to go play with her outside. (She doesn't ask, she TELLS you what you are going to do! Ha ha). Our girls are very sweet with her and are excited to play with her every week too. One week her mom told her they needed to go and Charlotte said, wait! You need to take a picture with my best friends!

Apparently it is tradition around here for the 8th graders here to take a trip to Washington DC. I was pretty nervous about letting Kaylee go but she had a blast! She didn't get much sleep and was dead by the time she got home, but she really enjoyed it. They saw a lot and so they moved pretty quickly through all of the museums, which frustrated Kaylee sometimes and she is hoping to go back someday and be able to look at everything more closely. Some of the highlights they hit were Gettysburg, African American Museum, Holocaust Museum, Mount Vernon, Natural History Museum, Washington Memorial, Lincoln Memorial, the White House, the Pentagon, and the Arlington National Cemetery (and that's not even everything they went to!). They even chose two students from essays submitted that got to lay a wreath on the tomb of the unknown soldier. 

I saw a cute idea where you take pretty fall leaves and turn them into something in a picture so Brooklyn and I did that together one Sunday. We went on a walk and collected all of the prettiest leaves we saw and then came home and did crafts with them. It was actually really fun and satisfying.

Mom came out to visit and we got to have a day together without the kids, while they were at school so we went to the temple together! The weather wasn't cooperating the next day so we had to scrap our outside plans and ended up at Scene 75 again. At least the kids will have good memories of being there with their grandparents! And then we walked around the mall for a bit. We also carved pumpkins with her a went to our ward Halloween party.

Kaylee has loved experimenting with different recipes and she made Grandma the most delicious little mini apple pies with apples from our own backyard! It was a quick trip and we hated to see her go but we always love the time we get to spend with her!

Kaylee and McKenna both went trick or treating with friends but they went in our neighborhood so we ran into them sporadically. Brooklyn and Ella went together and so we walked around with Ella's parents. It felt a little strange to be going around with just one kid! It was a rainy night, as it seems like it always happens, but luckily it was just a light mist and so it wasn't too bad to stay out.