2018 in Review

There are a gazillion things that happened this year that deserve a blogpost of their own, but, for the sake of not getting so overwhelmed that I end up not blogging again, I'm going to jam-pack everything all into one big "Year in Review" post.  Then I can blog from where I am again.    

Hold on tight....it was a BIG year!!!    

January--Cami came home from her 18-month mission to France.

February--Cami spent February at home, moved to Utah right at the end, and got officially engaged as soon as she arrived in Utah.

March--Wedding planning and a spring break trip to Savannah, Georgia.

April--Cami and Garrett's wedding in the Salt Lake Temple on April 21.

May--Glen, Cami, Garrett, and me take a trip to France to visit Cami's mission.

 

June--WE plan like crazy  for the Virginia wedding reception and after that's over... YW camp.

Random trip to the Bible Museum

YW Camp--2018

July--Trip to Utah for Katy's wedding, EFY for Adam, Youth conference trip to Kirtland (Glen, Adam, and Emma), as much fishing as possible.

August--We started eating the keto diet.  Adam and Ellie performed in a local production of "Lion King, Jr".  Emma was the stage director.  We celebrated reaching our summer goals!

 I make bucketloads of sugar- and pectin-free jam...

September--Started 6-week long road trip around the country
Ugh....this could be twenty blogposts all by itself, so here are some highlights:

Carlsbad Caverns: 

Grand Canyon:

 Hoover Dam:

Las Vegas:  

Joshua Tree National Park:

Southern California (K's house):

My sister surprised us and flew Spencer and Cami into town for the weekend!

October--Spent the month on the road and got home right before Halloween/Emma's 18th birthday.

November--Came home and got back to real life, including Glen starting a job in Philadelphia

December--More real life, getting ready for Christmas, and a full house for Christmas

Ellie's first stake dance...

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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.    

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! 

Christmas 2018 for the Win

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...

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!