November 2025

November started out with a bang! The first Saturday we fit in a swim meet, baptism, dance photos, getting Ellie ready for a dance, and two birthday parties. I didn't get home until 1:30am the next morning.

Ellie went to her first school dance. She went with a boy named Davin George, who had never been to a dance before either even though he was a senior. It was Sadie's which is a dress up dance, so she asked him in "Anne of Green Gables" style. She ended up having a great time, which I love. They didn't actually stay at the dance that long, but that wasn't the point I guess. We did pictures, then they had homemade dumplings that they had made the night before at her friend Siqi's house. Then it was the dance and then a movie night. She didn't get home until pretty late too. 

Ellie: Sadie's was so fun! I went with Mori and her boyfriend and Sophia and her date. It was super stressful the whole month before to plan it, but the day itself was way fun. I loved picking out my dress and a fun theme. Davin was super nice, and right now we have a couple of classes together and are friends. The dumplings for dinner were delightful, and Stardust afterwards was such a good movie! The dance was fun, too, but not as much. The DJs the school hires never play very fun dancing music, but there were a couple of good songs. I love the pictures I have from it.

I (Kylee) took their dance photos. It is the first time I had taken dance photos before, and I definitely called Patti for all the tips. I think they turned out nice, and Ellie's friends told her their favorite part of the date was taking the photos. The only funny moment was when Mori's boyfriend tried to give me advice for the photos. I don't think they are together anymore. 

Holland went to Sophie's 11th birthday party that day. Erica went all out with a Harry Potter birthday. Holland ended up staying the night because she always asks, and Erica is the nicest. Holland went to church with them the next day, and Erica sent me the photo of them in the purple dresses. 

John and Darcy went to McKenzie Armstrong's belated 40th birthday party that evening. I met up with them after the dance photos. McKenzie went all out and rented a venue. It also coincided with Armstrong family lore where an Archbishop cursed their family 500 years ago. Duel party. 

The next day I taught a gospel doctrine lesson on D&C 124. It was so great to deep dive into the scriptures and look at the original sources. I spent a lot of time on the history of that time, and I felt like it went well. One funny thing was how Joseph Smith just went up to the White House and knocked on the door, asking to meet with the president. We had just gone to DC and the security around the White House was intense. 

It was a warmer fall so I did a lot of biking in November basically all of the places I could think of--up the canyon, down to Mapleton, out to the airport, and more. I loved pushing my body in this new way. One scary day though, I almost saw someone get hit by a train. I carried my bike over the overpass and as I was riding away, I heard a ton of train honks. Then I hear a bunch of sirens not too much later. When I was heading back, the whole area was closed with police tape, and as I was carrying my bike over the overpass, I looked down and saw a body shaped lump under a white cloth on the tracks. I later found out via the news that the man was younger than I was. So sad and kinda freaky. I am so glad I didn't actually see it. 

We spent one Saturday cleaning out all of the flower beds. Ellie and Miriam were at a swim meet (Miriam got 2 PRs!), and Holland and Darcy were actually very helpful. It was an adorable time playing in the leaves afterwards. They are cuties. I just love playing with my kids, even just silly moments pretending they are food and I am going to eat them. So many giggles. The end of season yard work is a lot but it made me glad we weren't building a pool this year. We dug up dahlia tubers (it didn't work to over winter them inside. How can they be too dry and also molding?) 

That night we had a campfire and s'mores (minus the graham crackers), which was surprisingly delightful. 

Date night this month was awesome. Fat Daddies with John - buffalo cauliflower, fat daddies pizza, and garden of eatin. Uptown Cheapskate with Miriam - so many good finds! 

John gave a talk in church about the most recent talk by Elder Uchtdorf. He did such a good job, and I was proud of him. It was funny because all three speakers in the meeting selected what talk they wanted to speak about and everyone happened to pick the same talk. His main takeaways were that progress is slow and that's okay. God helps us, but it takes effort. That evening Ellie and I went to her friend Elizabeth's Acting Up fireside. It was lovely and touching to hear the songs and messages about Christ, and Ellie is super fun to go with. 

I woke up with a cold one day but still made it to Holland's Veteran's Day assembly. She is adorable. I am so grateful for a body that heals from illness. I sometimes think negative thoughts about my body, but really it is amazing. Actually I was sick a lot in November. I think I had a version of the flu. 

I got a walking pad to go with the standing desk. The first one was a lemon and didn't work for more than an hour or two, so we went to a lot of effort to work with their customer service, but ultimately decided to return it because it wasn't working. We bought a different work, and it has worked great for months. We returned the first one in the most cobbled together box, but they gave us a a refund. 

We started our Taylor Swift dress up Sundays. Miriam's tightly curled hair was everything. I think I am going to do a whole post about that. 

Miriam's friend Alessia stayed at our house while her mom was out of town. I think it went well! We went to see them swim at a swim meet. I took Miriam and Alessia to the mall, and they had a great time buying jewelry. While they were there John and I went to two different bike shops and ended up buying a new dryer. Our dryer broke that afternoon. Then we took everyone to Cinnabon and to get everyone specialty cinnamon rolls. They were so fancy! 

Darcy got student of the month, and was recognized in an assembly. Ellie actually got student of the month too. Ellie laughed because she got it for a class that she doesn't really try hard in. 

We hosted the Deru Thanksgiving this year. We use our china and everything was so pretty and yummy. I loved it! John washed all the china, silver, and crystal. He is the best. We took a photo of the four of us sisters and sister in laws, and Patti had so much fun turning our photo into various versions with AI. 

The next day we set up Christmas! And the Jacobsons came to visit! They were in town because of a nephew leaving on a mission. They gave us a Christmas present that is a new game Jeff help develop - Fight 5. We love it. The next day we worked on the advent and garage storage. Man, I am definitely middle age to be excited about better functionality in our garage storage, but it was super needed. Darcy was so cute helping John with the screws for the first shelf. 

On the last day in November we had our first snow of the year. Darcy was so so excited about the start of the advent the next day. We had the funniest 5th Sunday meeting. Our kids just aren't shy. They all spoke up. They are just the cutest. Holland said gathering Israel is like making everyone a big family. Darcy told John, "We're not in Israel, we live in Utah." 

The cutest Anne of Green Gables.

Hunger games couple, Queen of hearts and the mad hatter, Gilbert and Anne. 

I picked some roses before a freeze one day. They are lovely.

Holland is actually the funniest/most alarming.

Quotes for the month:

D: Holland, we're not tenacious.

One day when I was sick and trying to take an afternoon nap, Darcy came in our room and told me how once when she was lost on our DC trip the Holy Ghost spoke to her out loud. She doesn't remember the exact words, but she replied out loud, "Okay, I will." And she followed the instructions to find us. I don't even remember her being lost! 

D: Mommy, can I start paying taxes? Or is it tithing? I have a paper and a coin I can give them. 

J (singing): You don't know you're beautiful!

D: Yes I do.

While John was exercising: 

D: He must exercise at the gym a lot because I can see his muscles. 

J: His muscles are almost as big as mine. 

D: (Gives John an appraising look and says nothing)

J: Do you like the Christmas lights?

D: Not particularly

J: Why does my phone want me to translate it to English? 

D: Joseph Smith knows how to do that! 

November raspberry crop before a freeze! 

I was a biking machine before I got sick. 

One of Miriam’s special finds on our date. (We didn’t buy this!)

Cutest kids in the leaves.

We love Fat Daddy’s!

A portrait of mommy from Darcy.

She loves the tiny scriptures

Veteran’s Day assembly

Darcy spent the Fall working on riding a pedal bike. She worked so hard on it!

The kids worked so hard at swim team

Fanciest cinnamon rolls ever

Darcy got student of the month for trustworthiness

I loved our tablescape for Thanksgiving

Yummiest Thanksgiving

Patti used this photo and had a good time editing it with AI. It was a good laugh!

I think these were supposed to be Met Gala dresses.

Forever friends

Fancy tea party of sparkles

Washington DC Day 7 & 8

Day 7 started with an attempted redo of seeing the Supreme Court building. Unfortunately the Supreme Court ran out of funding the Friday before because (according to my family) they called out approximately 1,000 personnel because of an abandoned bag that had been reported by some dumb citizen. 

We moved on, and walked over to the Museum of the Bible. On our way we came across the sections of the National Botanical Gardens that were open and not fenced. They probably aren’t quite as nice as the ones inside the gated area, but it was still fun for us. 

We also found the memorial for disabled veterans. This was a sobering memorial but also meaningful and lovely. 

At the Bible Museum we couldn’t believe our luck. We just happened to go to this museum on its free day. It is normally pretty pricey, so it felt awesome catching that free day. I guess one Tuesday a month it is free admission, and we hit it just right. Sweet!

This museum was so much cooler than we expected. First, it’s huge! 430,000 square feet. Each floor has its own theme or purpose. We saw super old artifacts that mention David as a political leader which negates the idea that he was just a literary character. 

We saw a whole floor of historic bibles, including one that has been to the moon. We saw the first bible that included female pronouns. There was the ‘slave’ bible from the 1800s, which had about 90% of the Old Testament and 50% of the New Testament removed, specifically excluding passages about freedom and exodus. We saw an original King James Bible, and part of a Gutenburg bible. It was all crazy cool. 

There was a whole floor depicting the impact of the Bible on culture, literature, music, art, and even people’s names. There was a whole room about CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien.  There was a section for kids where there were almost arcade type games for the kids to play that were Bible themed. 

Probably the coolest part was an immersive experience telling some of the story of the Bible. There was videos, lights, music, wind, and going through a whole floor of this. I like how the story tellers really emphasized the covenants made with God in the story. There was way more than we could have seen in a whole day let alone just part of the day. We ate lunch at the restaurant on the top floor and enjoyed the fancier lunch there. 

Next we headed to the International Spy Museum. This was a fun museum, but it didn’t knock our socks off like the Museum of the Bible did. I thought it was cool how they assigned us secret identities and missions. I think I was supposed to be from Argentina on a mission in Iceland. We saw so many cool historical spy tools—almost Inspector Gadget ish. Something that stood out to me is the blow up tanks and soldiers that were used to fool the Germans in preparing for D-day. 

After the Spy Museum we walked back across the Mall and indulged in getting some gelato on our last evening in DC. The next morning we were up before dawn and taking the metro to airport. This is when we were told by the officer that Holland and Darcy shouldn’t be going through the gates without paying. “I hate to tell you this man, but you might be the only person in DC that thought of that.” Just kidding I would literally never say that. 

The flight home was smooth—man I love flying in and out of the Provo airport. Also we need a redo on this trip. Not that we didn't’ enjoy it, but we didn’t actually see a lot of the things that we meant to see. Probably someday!

Bogs typically have nutrient-poor soils and acidic conditions unsuitable for most plants. However, many organisms, like pitcher plants (Sarracenia spp.), have evolved to thrive in these conditions, and as a result bogs are some of most the diverse habitats in North America. Habitat loss and over-collection have led to many carnivorous plant species becoming endangered. Today it is illegal in most of the United States to collect carnivorous plants from the wild.

Bartholdi Fountain
The Fountain of Light and Water was designed by Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi for the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, PA.
Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi is best known for designing the Statue of Liberty (Liberty Enlightening the World) installed on Liberty Island in New York, NY. The U.S. Congress purchased the cast-iron fountain in 1877 and placed it with the original U.S. Botanic Garden where the Capitol Reflecting Pool is located today. It was moved to its present site in 1932. The original gas lamps were converted to electricity in 1881, making the fountain a major attraction. The design features turtle-like aquatic beasts and large shells around the base, three sea nymphs and fish on the pedestal, and three youthful Tritons holding seaweed just under the top crown. The fountain stands 30 feet (9 m) tall and weighs more than 15 tons (13,600 kg).

 

The Tel Dan Stele Tel Dan, Israel Basalt stone Aramaic
ca. 840-800 BC
On loan courtesy of the Israel Antiquities Authority
Also called the "House of David Inscription," this stone preserves the first ancient reference to King David's dynasty ever discovered. The king of Aram-Damascus created this inscription about 150 years after the time of David.
Why Does It Matter?
Prior to 1993, some scholars argued King David was a political myth, similar to King Arthur in British folklore.
The Tel Dan Stele upended that theory.
For the first time, an ancient reference to David's dynasty was found by archaeologists.
Even more significantly, the Tel Dan Stele was written by one of Judah's enemies-likely King Hazael of Aram-Damascus-who acknowledged David's dynasty in his use of the phrase "the house of David."

In 2004, an incredible mosaic was discovered in Megiddo, Israel. Its inscriptions reveal the first mention of Jesus Christ in a public building. Dating to AD 230, the mosaic recorded the names of a Roman centurion, an artist, and five faithful women one hundred years before the emperor legalized the practice of Christianity. They dedicated this space and the table within it "to God Jesus Christ."

Easter Morning, by Tiffany Studios, 1905

King James Bible, 1614
Commissioned by King James I of England shortly after his coronation, the King James Bible was intended to replace the Bishops' bible, It also aimed to give the English people a standard authoritative English translation without interpretive commentary like that in the Geneva Bible. The King James Bible was completed in 1611.

In the Native American language  of Massachusetts

The Bay Psalm Bible, 1709, The first edition in 1640 was the first book printed in English in the Americas. It is considered one of the most historic volumes in American religious history. 

The Liberator, William Lloyd Garrison, 1863, This is a weekly journal that the abolitionist used to stir sentiment for the enslaved people. 

The kids loved the interactive David game where they had to play music, defeat animals, and collect gems for their crowns at various kiosks around the museum.

The Lewis Typewriter, 1932, For more than 35 years, 12,000 letter between CS Lewis and correspondents around the world were produced on this machine.

"Myth Became Fact" 
The Conversion of C.S. Lewis.
Lewis had long objected to Christianity on the basis that it resemble the pagan myths he knew so well. During a fateful nighttime walk with J.R.R. Tolkien and Hugo Dyson in 1931, Tolkien countered  that even myths often contain some element of truth, and that truth ultimately became incarnate in the person of Christ.

Original Illustrations for Prince Caspian

Arnold Friberg painting in the Museum of the Bible

Lunar Bible, 1971, Microform
Before his untimely death in 1967, astronaut Edward White II (Apollo I) told a reporter he hoped to carry a Bible to the moon. An organization was created to make copies of the Bible on microform, and it was finally taken to the moon in 1971. 

The interactive exhibits were so cool, like these where we saw historic places and another where we wrote one word about how we felt about the Bible and it got projected with others on a large screen.

We watched an awesome retelling of the Road to Emmaus.

Fragments of as original text as one can get.

Fragment of an original Gutenberg Bible, 1454
Hand letter was added individually. There is a faint unidentified fingerprint on the side of the page.

The "She" Bible, 2nd edition of King James Bible, 1611, first time a female pronoun was used. It was with the story of Ruth, "and she went into the citie." 

So many current translations of the Bible.

The kids' area was a good time. 

That's a cool Noah's arc.

Lorenz: Enigma on Steroids
Germany's Enigma machine was complex. The Lorenz cipher machine was far more so-like Enigma wrapped in a riddle inside a mystery.
This is a piece of the Lorenz. Five of its 12 rotors followed a regular pattern, and five were changed by the remaining pair. Lorenz also added seemingly random-generated letters to text. German High Command used Lorenz for its most important messages.
Lorenz taleprinter, Germany, 1942-1945

THE BRAINS OF BLETCHLEY
When WWII erupted in 1939, Britain assembled a secret weapon: mathematicians, chess champs, linguists, hieroglyphics experts, and crossword puzzle whizzes-people the government thought might be adept at codebreaking.
The recruits formed an astonishing cryptology unit at Bletchley Park, a quiet estate outside London. They were so eccentric a group that locals thought Bletchley might have been turned into a lunatic asylum.
The team of 100 swelled to nearly 10,000 by 1945-about three quarters women. Working in shifts around the clock they repeatedly won the wartime "brain battle." Equally remarkable, Bletchley stayed secret for 30 years.

We had such cool disguises. :) 

D-Day, the 1944 Allied landings in France, opened a crucial Western front in Europe. Success was vital. So was secrecy if the daring invasion was to succeed. Operation Bodyguard was an extraordinary effort to flood the Nazis with misinformation, distracting them from the actual D-Day invasion site at Normandy. Dummy armies, phony radio messages, fake news, and double agents were all part of an elaborate symphony of deception to convince Hitler that the invasion might come elsewhere on the European coast. Massive reinforcements and supplies arrive on Normandy beach to support the D-Day landings.
"IN WARTIME, TRUTH IS SO PRECIOUS THAT SHE SHOULD ALWAYS BE ATTENDED BY A BODYGUARD OF LIES."
WINSTON CHURCHILL BRITISH PRIME MINISTER, NOVEMBER 1943

These dummies were just 1/3 the size of a normal paratrooper and would explode on impact to disguise what had happened. They were nicknamed Rupert and were sent far from where the actual paratroopers were landing in Normandy.

Actual segments of the Berlin Wall. 

Blow up tank from D-day - This decoy was part of what they called the Ghost Army.

Lovely walk after the museum. We stayed until it closed.

Sharing a sweet treat!

Our big girls loved having their own little apartment downstairs.

Early, early morning the next day.

That direct flight was amazing. Loved seeing Lake Powell in the distance.

Hi house!