November

Kaden loves the Dentist.  He literally begs me to take him to the dentist.  We were shopping a few days before the actual appointment and he saw a train he wanted to play with, that didn't look like a kid's toy, more like Christmas decorations.  So I told him he could play with the train at the dentist in a few days.  That whole day and the next two, he begged to go to the dentist.  We were in the grocery store and he's whining about going to the dentist.  It's funny when I say it, but frustrating at the time.  The only reason he likes the dentist is because of the train table.

His train obsession has cooled off a little.  But even now he will say, "I have a loose tooth, I need to go to the dentist."  Funny kid.

We said goodbye to Grandma and Grandpa for the winter after receiving Christmas gifts so the kids won't be mad at them for leaving.  Ha ha.  It's always a sad day.  But they always come back.

 Dylan tried out karate for a little while.  One of his good friends, Jaxen, takes karate and Dylan enjoyed for the first little while.

But then he got bored of trying to memorize all the moves to get your belt.  And he thought it was a lot of work too.  It was 3 days a week and far away from home so I wasn't too sad that he didn't want to continue.  But he didn't want to play basketball so we told him he had to do something.  Soccer is only on Saturdays.  So I signed him up for the winter session of Grit League.  He loves Grit League.  I also had him doing the recommended workouts for Grit League during the week.  That only lasted a month, so then we signed him up for swim club.  Not his favorite, but I love swimming.  I think it's an awesome workout, and I like my kids getting comfortable in the water.  A lot of adults have a hard time swimming because they just didn't do it that much.  I, on the other hand, spent the majority of my time in 6-9th grades in the water whenever it was warm enough.

After our dentist appointment earlier in the month, I was told Sadie needed to be seen by the orthodontist asap.  Her front teeth had grown in more than I had realized and they were heading behind her bottom teeth.  The underbite needed to be corrected.  So I made an appointment for all my kids because Kylee has been asking when she can get braces forever, and Dylan's teeth aren't great so I figured we would just do it all at once.

He looked at Dylan and said he was fine for now, until the rest of his teeth grow in.  Sadie needed an expander.  And then braces, like a full set.  They said that years ago they would just pull out teeth to make room in the mouth of someone who had a smaller mouth like Sadie does.  But the expander is the way to go now.  The orthodontist we go to is Layne McCord and he is a friend because his daughter plays on Kylee's soccer team, and he has kids Dylan and Sadie's age too so he coached Dylan last Fall.  He has also coached Kylee before.  Anyway, his first grade daughter has an expander as well so that made me feel better about Sadie dealing with it.  When they showed me what it looked like, I thought it looked horrible.  So I was nervous for her.  We had to wait a week or so for that appointment, and she didn't handle it well.  She said she couldn't swallow.  She cried and cried.  It didn't really hurt, it was just in the way.  I took her to get a Jamba Juice after since she had missed lunch at school and I really didn't think she would eat much.  She did well with the Jamba.  But for the next week or so, I worried about her.  She eats slowly and not a lot anyway, but with the expander it was ten times worse.  I worried that she would start losing weight.  She would really only eat a tiny bit and basically give up.  And I was supposed to turn the expander, making it expand even more, every night for 10 days.  On one very emotional night, she refused and cried.  It was rough.  But after about a week she basically forgot about it.  I let her try chewing gum and she was happy again.

Kylee...  He looked at Kylee and said she looked good and didn't need anything done until all her teeth come in.  I told him she had been asking for braces.  He asked her if her teeth are bothering her.  She said, "no".  I was like, "then why are you begging me for braces all the time?"  She said, "well they don't hurt."  So Layne said he could easily put four on the front teeth and pull the gap closed.  Then later we would do the full set.  Just as I was pulling out my phone to text Ryan to see if it was something we wanted to pay for (most likely not), Layne said, "I'll just do these ones for free."  What?!  Well, I guess I have no excuse.  So right then, they took her over and put them on!  She had asked me specifically, "if they decide I need braces, will I get them today?"  And I had responded confidently that they would schedule another appointment.  Well, I was wrong.

 She is so responsible, she took care of everything herself.  She was happy have them!  We talked about how she needed her frenulum lasered and he said he could do that in the office as well, and also for free.  I felt pretty guilty accepting all this free work.  He even told me Sadie's bottom braces would be free (because they weren't completely necessary but he wanted them to be perfect.)  *update in February- she only had to have the braces on for about 8 weeks.  We went in to an appointment and surprisingly he said they could come off so he did right then again.  But during that quick appointment, we forgot about the frenulum.  So we had to go back to get that done.  Will include that in later post.

This isn't a great picture, but I just love the Veteran's Day program at the kids' school!  I cry every time.  It's so awesome.

Sunday nights messing around, my kids tried to challenge me to leg wrestle.  I laughed and told them they didn't stand a chance, that I beat Daddy back in the day.  So of course, they demanded we rematch.  I couldn't stop laughing enough to take it seriously, but I did beat him.  Multiple times.  I used to think this was more about technique, speed, leverage.  And it is.  But I think it has to do with the length and strength of your core.  Not saying Ryan doesn't have a strong core, but taller people have a harder time with like rolling from a lying position to a sitting position with hands about their head.  But I've never found that difficult.  Anyway, I think it has something to do with core, and not just strength but build.  I mean, I do have mighty strong legs if I do say so myself.  But not more than Ryan.

We had a girl's night to see the Little Mermaid musical!  It was so fun and so cute!  Our neighbor Kylie Paskett was one of the little fish extras.

 I took the kids with me to the school to go run.  I challenged them to run the mile in less than 10 minutes.  Well, they killed it.  Dylan made it in less than 8 minutes (just barely) and Kylee was like 5 seconds later.  Who knew they had it in them?  Then we continued running doing Sprints.  The kids beat me at sprints.  I get beat by a lot of people at sprints.  But I told them they needed to continue to beat me until the end, because I knew they would get tired eventually.  We ended up running like 2.5 miles total I think.  Sadie and Kaden played at the park but came down to run with us too.  It was really fun.

Thanksgiving.  The first one without my Dad.  We basically invited ourselves over to Carol's house again.  She seemed pleased to have us.  I felt like if we let thins tradition go, we may end up drifting apart from Carol and that would be really hard for me.  Plus, it's fun to do Thanksgiving with a big group of people, right?  Carol had her daughter's family and her ex husband.  And my brothers and me.  Keven brought his girlfriend so that was fun to meet her.  And the cousins got to hang out.  It was a great day.

And a couple pictures I got from Ryan's phone.  I must say, my kids have a pretty awesome dad.