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 3

 

The next morning we headed downtown to pick up the rental bikes. Rental bikes are such a great way to see the national mall. And bike rentals are everywhere including e-bikes. Unfortunately for families, e-bikes for children aren’t really a thing. And normal bike rentals often don’t accommodate families. We found one place that did have children’s bikes. And they even had a tagalong bike that Darcy could ride on the back of John’s bike. I was curious what she would think about it. Spoiler, she LOVED it. It was fantastic. John could actually feel her pedaling too, and sometimes she would pedal when he was trying to slow down. It was adorable. 

Getting through the couple of blocks to the national mall felt a little iffy just because we wanted to make sure everyone crossed the road before the light changed, and no one was going in the road or going to hit a pedestrian on the sidewalk. By the end of the day though, it felt like no big deal, and we were all pros. 

Biking around the monuments went better than I expected. The rental bikes obviously weren't as nice as our good bike at home that I was used to, but it was still great. We kept a pretty reasonable pace, and it was gorgeous. The sidewalks around the National Mall are really wide, and bikes are allowed on all of them. 

We headed up to Capitol Hill first thing. We took photos in front of the Capitol Building, which was cool, but we definitely had mixed feelings about our government right then. Especially we were frustrated because the people inside those buildings were the reason our vacation got hijacked. 

We learned that the flags over the Senate and House wings show if they are there. We saw the flag flying and couldn't help but wish they would pass the spending bill so we could see some museums.

We walked around to the back of the Capitol Building, passing the Library of Congress to the Supreme Court building. 

Unfortunately the beautiful pillars were covered up with scaffolding. In addition to the bad timing of being in DC during a government shut down, we also came less than a year before a major anniversary--250 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence. That meant there were major scaffolding everywhere with workers trying to get everything perfect for the big celebrations. Bad luck for us. 

We still locked our bikes at the bike rack across the road and walked up to the big patio in front of the Supreme Court building. We sat on the benches until John mentioned that he thought there might be a museum inside the building that potentially was open. I couldn't believe it! Let's go see it! We asked the security guard that was at the entrance who said that yes, indeed, there was a museum that we could go see. But there were strict rules about having no food or water inside. 

We were a family of six who was planning on biking around the whole day. We more than one whole backpack of food, snacks, and water.  So we decided to divide and conquer. John, Eliza, and Holland went into the museum, while Miriam, Darcy, and I stayed outside with the backpacks. The plan was to switch when they were done. 

The three of us stayed outside on the patio, playing jumping on the tiles, and giving Darcy all the attention. While we were hanging out, a group of teenagers (it looked like some kind of school group) came through and ate lunch on the patio.  After they moved on, I saw there was a draw string bag under a bench that potentially looked like a student had gotten for free for their field trip. I didn't want anyone to panic (that's irony) so I told the security guard that there was an abandoned bag under the bench that looked like belonged to one of the teenagers that just left. 

He didn't seem concerned. He thanked me and said he would look around for the owner. He asked the people in the close vicinity if it belonged to them. It didn't, obviously (because it belonged to one of the teenagers!). So he told someone else, who called someone. Pretty soon we were asked to move to the other side of the patio, "just to be cautious."

I am assuming more calls were made because more personnel showed. The officers that showed up were not so relaxed. They told us to move down to the street. I think this was the point that they evacuated the Supreme Court building. John had no idea that his wife was a fault for this. Just a couple of minutes later we were told to go to the other side of the street. 

More and more security personnel were showing up--cars, SUVs, motorcycles, and even bicycles. Like all the varieties of officers! We decided to sit on a bench and eat our lunch until the situation was resolved so we could finish seeing the museum. We didn't even eat half our lunch before we were told that they were closing and evacuating the whole block, so we had to back up to the Capitol building. This was a bit of harder task because we had our food from Costco all spread out. We walked out to the new perimeter and left the food and the kids. But we still had to go get our rental bikes. We had to be escorted back to the bikes, and somewhat awkwardly tried to get all 5 bikes to the new location without all of our people moving them. 

We heard other tourists wondering what happened. They wanted to see the museum too. The permitter officers told them that there had been an incident so they were closing things until it could be resolved. I wanted to interject that it wasn't an 'incident' it was a teenager being a typical teenager and forgetting something. There were some grumpy people! 

We wanted to wait it out and see the museum, but we decided to move. We wanted to see all of the national mall, and we were burning daylight. We needed to get our rental bikes back. So we moved on with the plan of coming back another day. 

So the rest of the story is that we had an opportunity the following Tuesday (that day was Friday) to try again about the Supreme Court building. So we went out of our way and walked up Capitol Hill. When we got there we were told that the Supreme Court building ran out of funding on Friday. My children thought this was enormously funny. They concluded that their mother (me) single handedly ran out the Supreme Court's funding because I reported the bag that 1,000 people were called out to deal with. I don't know what I thought would happen when I told the guards about it. Maybe they would call a bomb smelling dog, and the dog would let them know that there were no explosives, but no--they called out what felt like every branch of the armed forces to deal with it, and shut down Capitol Hill. Well, I didn't get to see the one museum that was open, but it was my kids' favorite part of the whole trip. 
I learned a valuable lesson too--if you see something don't say anything until you have seen what you have come to see. This is contrary to everything I have ever been told, but sometimes you have to learn the hard way... I will now be reporting zero things ever again. The whole situation was so absurd. 

Well, the rest of Friday was still delightful. I love riding bikes, and so did everyone else (mostly). Holland's legs got a little tired, but she pushed through. 

We saw the Washington Monument but couldn't go inside, obviously. It was fun to be so close to it though, and look at how tall it is. From there we went over to the White House, which we definitely had mixed feelings about. 

Getting near the White House was not happening. There was barricades everywhere including over the roads. Big fences, little fences, National Guard, Secret Service, and regular police officers. It was funny because shortly after this trip I substituted in Gospel Doctrine and studied about the time that Joseph Smith showed up at the White House and asked to see the president, and he was ushered in to a parlor on the second floor where President Van Buren was. That was quite the contrast to our experience where we could barely see the White House from where we were standing. 

Next we explored the WWII monument which we had seen briefly the day before while we were doing the family photos. Our family photo is now one of the photographer's featured in her album. :) It was great to explore the monument better. There are so many amazing quotes in granite at these monuments. It was equally inspiring and heartbreaking because our country has had genuinely good leaders over the years, but in my opinion this is not one of those times.  

Next up was the Lincoln Memorial, which was also partially covered by scaffolding. I hope that I was successfully strategic in keeping it out of photos. Ellie told us about how they studied Lincoln's second inaugural address in AP Language. It is exceptionally well written and noteworthy because of how he united his audience in his rhetoric. It's hard to imagine right now. I also thought it was cool to see the spot where Martin Luther King Jr spoke the "I Have a Dream" speech. 

We rode our bikes down to the Martin Luther King Jr memorial next. I don't remember ever seeing that one before. Riding around the Tidal Basin was lovely. The light was perfect, and the Jefferson memorial was picturesque. 

When we got to the Jefferson memorial we enjoyed the beautiful light and took a few fun photos. We eventually got a little crowded out by school groups and other tourists (I am surprised there were school groups at that time of the evening.) 

From there we headed down to the DC waterfront on recommendation from a friend from pickleball. We decided to try getting dinner from Falafel Inc. It was just a little shop at the start of the waterfront. Man that was such a winner! It was maybe my favorite meal of the trip. That's why on "Remember DC day" during our Christmas advent, we ate a falafel salad with french fries with za'atar spices. It was delicious!

We rounded out our meal with some delicious milkshakes from Southwest Soda Pop Shop. We planned on buying three, but Ellie wanted her own. I don't know that our kids could have been more excited for those. 

Walking along the DC waterfront was so pleasant. The light was lovely. The water sparkled with the setting sun. The cafe lights turned on. We could have walked for an hour there easily. But we had to return our bikes. So we headed back towards the National Mall. We couldn't resist stopping and taking photos of the National Mall lit up with the spot lights on the monuments. We made it back in time for our bike return which made us feel like a boss. What a delightful (and memorable) day!

I want to buy a tagalong bike for us at home!

In the Supreme Court museum that was not to be for half of us.

The scaffolding was a lot.

I am sorry, but that staircase!

Exiting the Supreme Court. I wish I had taken a photo of all of the security personnel outside.

Ulysses S. Grant memorial (252 ft long!)

It was a little less than two miles between the Capitol building and the Washington Monument. Tough for walking with kids, but just great for a bike ride.

Closed Smithsonian!

Crazy aspect ratio of the Washington Monument. We weren't allow to lock our bikes to the metal barricades that are everywhere. I think this is the only place we couldn't find something else to lock them to, so we took turns staying with the bikes.

Cutest kids ever

The relative security for the White House compared to any other building was insane. This is as close as we could get. We purposefully cropped out all of the security people.

The white house almost feels closer when we were further back and the fences were less in our face.

The WWII memorial really is majestic.

The Price of Freedom

Freedom Wall holds 4,048 gold stars. Each gold star represents one hundred American service personnel who died or remain missing in the war. The 405,399 American dead and missing from World War II are second only to the loss of more than 620,000 Americans during our Civil War.

The quotes were all amazing, "They have given their sons to the military services. They have stoked the furnaces and hurried the factory wheels. They have made the planes and welded the tanks riveted the the ships, and rolled the shells." - Franklin D. Roosevelt

Vietnam War Memorial

Korean War Memorial - I was listening to a Kpop song as we listened to this. I wonder what our love for Korean entertainment would be without the sacrifice of these soldiers.

Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial

FDR Memorial

Apparently it was hotly debated about how to show him - sitting or standing. 

Love the fall leaves!

We had fun taking photos with the lovely sunset at the Jefferson Memorial.

That's how we felt about the falafel salad.

Eagerly awaiting the milkshakes.

Cutest!

Hawaii in the square!

This reflection pool at night was startlingly beautiful.