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!
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