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...

=

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...