We had to say goodbye to Grandma and Grandpa at the beginning of the month. At least we got to spend a lot of time with them between Jeff's birthday party and Sadie's baptism. Having them gone just makes us appreciate when they are back!
Grandma Stokes got to spend some time with us in November. She took these two kiddos shopping for their birthdays and all the kids shopping for Christmas. She also took the girls to get manicures, which they loved! Color changing nail polish is the best.
We got to hang out with Jeff and Amanda and their kids while they were here. Kylee got to go to the temple with them too.
The day after Sadie's baptism, Kylee earned her Young Women's medallion! This was extra fun because we had the both Ryan's parents and my mom here to see her be awarded. The bishop was actually out of town, but since we had family in town another member of the bishopric interviewed her and called her up to hand out her award. He also asked her to tell everyone her favorite part of the Book of Mormon, and her favorite project she worked on. She was a bit surprised to have to talk, but she handles everything well so it was no big deal. Her and Sadie both were called up together to receive certificates for Young Women achievement and baptism. Fun day!
To earn her medallion, she had to complete 6 10-hour projects and read the Book of Mormon. There were a lot of other smaller projects she had to do as well. She has a really great Young Women leader in charge of personal progress that has helped the girls a ton and so they can see that it is doable and not so overwhelming. Kylee organized a read-a-thon day with her friends where her plan was to read a lot in the Book of Mormon with her friends. She bought snacks, made invitations, set things up downstairs. I don't think they really read that much because they were all at different spots in the scriptures, but they worked on a lot of the values that asked you to read some specific scriptures and answer some questions or write your feelings about things. Although every time I went down there they were basically all just playing around. But she says they got "a lot" done.
The things she used for her big projects were the 6th grade Broadway Preview, with all the hours practicing and performing in that, the Trek they did over the summer, time spent doing baptisms at the temple, time spent babysitting for others to attend the temple, watching/listening to all 10 hours of General Conference, and a week long soccer camp over the summer. She also read the Book of Mormon in about 3 months. Some of the other things she had to do were help with planning, shopping and preparing meals for our family, work on being a peacemaker (she put effort into being kinder to Sadie, which was noticeably helpful), taking note of others' quiet acts of service and writing them down for two weeks (she gave Ryan and I notes with the things she noticed us doing, it was really sweet.) All in all, it was a LOT of work. Most girls don't get their medallions in the first year of joining Young Women's. Kylee got it in 7 months! There is a bit of urgency because the program is changing and we don't know what will be taking it's place. That change will happen at the beginning of 2020. Kylee is now working on her Honor Bee, which is an extension of the personal progress program and requires 40 hours of service as well as reading the Book of Mormon a second time. She plans to get that award before her birthday.
One of my favorite programs of the year is the Veteran's Day Program. My mom got to come with me this year. And the fifth graders are kind of the stars, so it was fun seeing Dylan up there.
Dentist time is always fun. Not for me when I was a kid. I hated it and screamed. But that's because I had bad teeth. My kids like the dentist. Especially Kaden because they have a big train table and some other fun toys. He begs me to take him to the dentist! But then when it comes down to people actually in his mouth, he is not super thrilled. I prepared him this time and he did pretty good, though. Six months ago when we saw the dentist, they told me Sadie was not brushing around her braces well enough and showed us pictures of people with scarred teeth from having plaque eating away at the teeth around the braces. It kind of freaked us both out. But they said she was all good now and no scars! Interestingly, the dentist said that Sadie and Dylan both have mature teeth, meaning he would guess they were a year or two older than they really are by looking at their teeth. Kylee has normal teeth I guess. Dylan only had four more baby teeth to lose and Kylee only had three. Sealants for Sadie next time. I don't love the idea of those strong chemicals in their mouth to seal their teeth, but this is something I feel like the benefits are great enough that it's worth it. So far my kids have not had any real cavities. Kylee had one very shallow cavity that didn't even require numbing a few years ago.
I forgot to add this to his birthday post, but Kaden got to bring cupcakes to his preschool class! So fun.
Kaden and I went to the Festival of Trees to see Kylee's choir class sing. It was fun! She had a solo part in A Million Dreams. And Kaden got to see Santa. I knew we weren't going to get to do our normal Santa visit this year so I took what I could get. I seriously considered bringing all my kids back later that night to get a group shot of them with Santa, but the older two kids are really not interested and were a bit whiny. And I just didn't care enough to push the issue or spend my evening driving all the way across town again. Kaden was happy though!
Sadie's favorite spot for her birthday dinner is ribs at Texas Roadhouse! Can I just say Kylee is rocking this gluten-free thing? It's not easy. I've gotten used to it, but to pass up those yummy rolls, especially on her mini burgers... She's been a champ. (If I haven't mentioned her diet change yet, let me just explain that she has chosen to cut out gluten hoping that the bumps on her skin "keratosis pilaris" will go away. When I changed my diet to heal my gut, my skin got remarkably better. I had been dealing with "KP" for as long as I could remember. This is the first time it was nearly gone. We tried dairy and gluten with Kylee a few years ago, saw some improvement with gluten, but decided she liked gluten and didn't care about her skin. I figured that might change as she got older. And the bumps have gotten worse. She's been sticking it out this time for a long time with hardly any improvement. It's not easy! But she thinks it might be finally getting better. This was all her choice, I have not tried to enforce anything.)
Kaden and Sadie got to ride the bull! And Sadie was mighty embarrassed having to wave the napkin around while they sang, haha.
Sadie is doing basketball with her same team again. It's fun to watch them.
While Sara was in town, we decided to go to the temple with her and Brooke and bring Hailee and Kylee to do baptisms. Hailee brought a few friends too.
We got a little bit of snow and Sadie went out to build the first snowman of the season.
Thanksgiving with all my brothers and Carol and her daughter and family.
During the break I decided to get Kaden out of the house! He had been sick, and before that we had been planning baptisms and birthdays. And he got so spoiled for his birthday that he was kind of being a monster. That happens when they get sick, too. Just the combination of everything was not great and I wanted him out of the house! Sadie wanted to come to Kid's Town too so I left the older ones to their own devices and took these two cuties out. Kid's Town is really fun for this particular age group!
Dylan got to do service for scouts at a nursing home. He played Bingo with some of the residents.
Dylan's first Battle of the Books battle was in November. He's on a team with Mitchell and Jaxon. He read all the books but didn't finish one. They did pretty good but missed a couple points. I like that he does this even if he doesn't get a perfect score. It's good for him to read things he might not really want to, and know what it's like to be part of a team and pull his weight.
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