November 2021

 One of my favorite months of the year! We raked lots of leaves, did lots of little activities, saw wildlife, traveled and played in the snow! 

Dean has started saying his name. If you ask him what his full name is, it is “Dean Dad Terry” instead of Mikal. It is the cutest thing ever! 

I created lots of little crafts/activities for the boys this month to do. We made gingerbread houses, turkeys, painted and learned how to do elk calls. 😊 

Saw some sheep just outside of Wenatchee

I got in touch with one of my friends (Casey Nesbit) who has gone through IVF and told me about the Cache Valley Fertility Clinic. She gave me the idea to possibly look into another fertility clinic that costs a little less for the actually egg retrieval. The clinic was down Gilbert, Arizona called New Direction Fertility. I looked online and made a consultation with the doctor. A few days later, we met with Doctor Amols. Mikal really liked him and he said he would like to try a couple things with Mikal. This gave us hope and we said we would like to jump on the band wagon quick and get into doing the earliest egg retrieval possible. Mikal started some medicine that next week and both started taking vitamins. We would need to do this till mid January when we can get a sample of Mikal's sperm. We would know more then and would go to that point. 

We traveled over to Rathdrum, Idaho the weekend before Thanksgiving. We stayed at Mikal’s boss’ house David Isenberger. Mikal really wanted me to shoot a deer. Since I still have my Idaho license, we decided it would be best to just shoot something up in the panhandle. We were excited to do some hunting where we knew we would probably be able to shoot something. We headed out Friday night and decided that I would sit out in the tree stand on Saturday morning and night. Saturday morning I got up and went and sat in the tree stand just outside of David's house. A small buck came in, within the first 30 minutes. I decided I wanted something bigger, so I let him go. There was probably only one chance I would have been able to shoot him. We went back out that evening and a doe came in. Mikal was out with me this time and told me to shoot. I shot and thought I hit it, because it jumped really high, but did not show any sign of blood and did not run off. I told Mikal I didn’t want to hunt on Sunday, but he convinced me that we went up there and we only had 1 more day or we would loose our chance. So my birthday morning, I got up and Mikal went out with me. We saw a doe as we were hiking up the tree stand and she was not happy we were there. She left pretty quick. We waited another 30 minutes and a small forky came basically running past us. He stopped right in front of our tree stand I told Mikal there was one. He told me shoot! I picked up my rifle, aimed, and shot. The buck flinched and started running off. He got about 50 yards and then just stumbled over and died. I got him! I shot him in the perfect spot. David grabbed his four-wheeler and we loaded him up and put got him all cut up and put in the cooler before 10. David was so happy for me. He even gave me a hug and a buck knife. 😊 We were so grateful for all their generosity and letting us stay. We had a lot of fun! Dean loved Holly! (David’s wife)

We got home from hunting on Sunday and then Monday night we were able to get the paperwork to purchase a 2011 Dodge 3500 from a guy in Baker City, Oregon.

 We drove down to my parents and then on Tuesday morning we drove the rest of the way to pick up the truck. We got home Tuesday night and then Wednesday morning we flew to Rexburg for Thanksgiving to be with Mikal’s family. We enjoyed hanging out with them and letting Dean playing with his cousins. We took Dean to the movies and he got through over half of it before he was done. We did have a little bit of a crazy Thanksgiving Day though. We got told the Tristan had moved in with his girlfriend. Did not think much of it until they started talking about his girlfriend and her children. I was finding more and more out about her and then they started saying things that I was recognizing. I then made the connected that it was one of my previous Relief Society girls when I was the Relief Society President in the Married Student Ward. I quickly ran outside to inform Mikal before she came so that it wouldn’t be awkward. Well, it was. It turned into Tristan and Mikal having a conversation and then Isabell having a meltdown because of it. Well, she showed up and it was super awkward. I did not know what to say or anything. She did look at me one time and asked if we went to the same ward when I lived in Rexburg.. All I could say was “yup.” (Even though it was 2 years that I was the President with her in the ward) Other than that, Dean traveled really well and we had fun! It was nice to fly out of Wenatchee into Idaho Falls! 

We had a crazy busy month. We did lots of traveling and felt like we were never home! It’s always nice to come back home and just stay in your house for a couple days after going, going, going. 

The day after getting back from Idaho, my parents came up and we went up to Leavenworth and got Christmas trees. We took the new pickup and it was nice and roomy. It was an eventful time this year. There wasn’t much snow, but it was definitely muddy. Mikal wanted to drive up the mountain more, so we did. And my mom and I got rocked in the back. We were bouncing all over the place and it was not the best time, Sage ended up pooping in the back and I had to clean that up with Deans wet wipes. It was messy. On the way down the mountain, I rolled down the back window and it wouldn’t go back up. We stopped at the part store in Leavenworth and borrowed a tool from Napa to at least open up the door enough to roll up the window. We then ate at a burger joint in Leavenworth and headed back home.