A Day at a Time: 2018

Monday, December 31, 2018

Ellie's Christmas Drawings

This year Ellie decided that she was going to make something special for everyone for Christmas. She worked hard for hours and hours and made a special drawing for every person.

For AnnaLisa she made a narwhal drawing...

For Cami and Garrett an "Up" quote and for me a beautiful landscape....

For Cami a nurse and for Tim some cute cats...

For Glen, some wildlife and for Emma a good quote...

and for Spencer a rock climbing drawing.

I loved the thought she put into deciding what to draw and the time she spent making each one perfect.

Saturday, December 29, 2018

Christmas Card and Newsletter 2018

Here is our Christmas card and newsletter from 2018:

The card ended up being smaller than we expected, but otherwise we liked how it turned out.

I designed the newsletter on Microsoft Publisher:

Hope you had a wonderful Christmas!

It's been a looooooooong time since I've written anything here. I got excited about doing the monthly updates, then got a little overwhelmed with getting all the pictures from my phone to the computer. I find it a little perplexing that there's still no reasonable iPhone app for blogging from a phone. Or at least being able to upload the pictures straight to a blogpost, then typing on the computer.

I guess at this point, it's probably just easier to start with where I'm at, so here goes....

It's been 3 years since we've been all together as a family for the holidays. We tried to keep our expectations low, in case Cami and Garrett chose to spend the holidays with his family instead, but we were totally thrilled when they announced that they were coming here this year!

It's been fun to spend time with them both and we've been totally enjoying this time we have with the girls all together again.

We are also excited to have Spence home from Utah. He doesn't love pictures being taken of him, so this one of all of us in our Christmas pajamas will have to do.

Speaking of pajamas...they were pretty epic this year. I love the "grumpy cougar" design and the kids declared them the "most comfy pjs yet", so I'm calling it a win!

And I'm pretty sure we "won" for most obnoxious Christmas outfits ever at our ward Christmas party...

Our Sunday outfits were a little tamer...

AnnaLisa definitely won for awesome Christmas sweater ever....haha...her and her narwhals!

Ellie won for making sure that everyone got one of her drawings in their Christmas stocking this year. The drawings were awesome and I loved how thoughtful she was in choosing what she drew for each person. In fact, I think I need to dedicate a whole blog post just to the drawings.

Can I pull it together and blog twice in the same week again?

Time will tell, time will tell...

Sunday, July 8, 2018

January 2018--Coming Home!!!

The most exciting thing that happened in January was right at the end of the month, but since it eclipses everything else, I'll start with that.

On January 30th, Cami returned home from serving for 18-months as a missionary in the France Lyon Mission. We hadn't seen her at all in that time, had only been able to communicate by email once a week, and had only talked to her a couple of times, so this was a HUGE deal and we were very excited to be able to spend time with her in person again!

Here's the video of the big moment when we saw her for the first time at the airport:

We had made signs for the occasion...

And invited immediate family to join us for the occasion...

It was soooooooo wonderful to be reunited again and we would have loved to have kept her all to ourselves....

but we invited a few close friends to meet us at Cafe Rio, so that they could talk with her too!

After Cafe Rio, we took her to meet with the stake president where she was officially released as a missionary and got to take her tag off. It was an emotional moment for her.

After that we took her out for dessert at Magnolia (a funky new bakery in town)...

And ate up every moment we could with her.

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Okay! Now that we got that big excitement taken care of....here's the recap of the rest of the month.

In December our stake president reminded us that the temple would be closing for two years starting in March and that our time with a temple nearby was fleeting, so Glen and I made it a goal to attend weekly until it closed. This was definitely a stretch in our busy schedule for us, but it ended up being such a happy blessing and we loved those weekly reconnections with God!

January, six years ago, is the month Spencer was diagnosed with AML. It's been six years, but I still always get a restless anxiety that kicks in each January as memories of all of that time flood back to me. It gets a little less with each passing year, but it's still something that plagues me, so I've decided that one way to address this anxiety is to do something meaningful. I can't remember when I started (last year maybe), but I've decided that I will donate blood every January in Spencer's honor. I have to be careful to take my iron pills to make sure they'll let me do it, but it's officially a tradition now that I hope to keep up for the long term!

This is the jug of milk that made me cry right in the middle of the grocery store.

On the missionary mom Facebook page, it's a thing to look for milk jugs that expire on the day your child is returning from their mission. I saw this milk a good couple weeks before she was coming home and it unexpectedly made me cry. I was soooooo restless right before she came home!

And here are some more random pictures from January...

We finally raked our backyard...haha!

This was a missionary youth activity the kids participated in and I helped a little with...

Loved that Rocky tried to jump in the photo with us!

And that was a super fast recap of January 2018!

Monday, July 2, 2018

December 2017 --Baptism, Zombie Problems, and a Chocolate Fast

We started off December with my nephew, Davin's baptism. He was a cutie pie and it was fun to spend the time with their family. We also enjoyed running into one of Cami's friends (Elder Duffy), serving a mission in my brother's ward.

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Don't ask what got into me, but I randomly decided that I was going to make the coolest white elephant gift ever for the high priest group party. I did some research, made my plans, spent too much money, and put way more effort than I should have to create a Zombie Apocalypse Survival Kit.

I put in all these fun things (along with a bunch of snacks on the bottom layer)....

I made this Zombie Identification Guide with pictures of men from our ward. I was totally prepared for it to be the hit gift of the night. Everyone would laugh and everyone would fight for it.

That afternoon Glen found out that his job was ending in February. His super sensitive HR director pulled him out of his work Christmas party to let him know.

We didn't really feel much like partying at that point, but I had this super cool gift and some fun festive clothes to wear, so we went anyway.

And it was all a HUGE flop. The gift was the first one picked of the night and no one paid it one iota of attention. It never got stolen and the people who got it couldn't have cared less and didn't even laugh at all the funny details I'd added, then they left early. Combined with finding out about Glen's job, it all felt like a colossal waste of our time and money. Next year, I'm definitely just going to the thrift store to buy something stupid, because clever/funny seems too elusive for me.

(And apparently I'm still a bit bitter about it six months later)!

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Right at the end of December, I ended my year-long chocolate fast. It was amazing and I ate waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much of it and made myself sick.