Christmas 2019

As always, we had a Christmas Eve dinner and celebration at my parents' house. Everyone was in town except Thomas and Madison, this year, who were in Hawai'i for BYU's bowl game. This Christmas Eve tradition is one of my favorite events of the whole year. I love these people.

It was fun to have Isaac and Dominika and their family in town. I don't think I took pictures of it, but we had Adelina over to spend the night after Christmas so she and Jackson could play. We wish they lived closer so we could play all the time!

And it's always fun to have these cute baby cousins together - they're just a week apart in age. They were both mobile this year and very busy!

Annual Sis Pic - just missing Madison

We love having my Grandma at all our family events now that she lives with my parents. 

We got to bring Jackson this year, since we had him for Christmas morning

It's always fun to have Micah home, too. I've been campaigning pretty hard to get her to move home for good. Maybe after she graduates!

Grandkids

Dominika put together a couple of cute skits that she and the kids did. I was so proud of Jackson, who jumped in and read his lines even though he'd just found out about it that day.

And then there were presents!

Santa came to our house overnight and brought us some fun presents.

After we woke up and had breakfast and opened presents at our house, we headed to Brandon's dad's house where Jackson got a new bike.

Then we went to Brandon's mom's where we were all spoiled with lots of wonderful gifts.

That night, we went to Brandon's grandma's for a Christmas dinner. Jackson had gone to his mom's, but our nephew Bentley was my little buddy, as he always is.

Christmas Prep

I'm writing this out in March, and we're just now getting to a place where almost everything is settled. So in December, just 2 weeks after moving in, we were far from settled. Everything was still in boxes, but I felt like if I didn't prioritize Christmas, it wouldn't ever get done. So I took a Sunday evening to decorate. Even though the house was still in shambles, at least it was festive!

We also made an effort to do some other festive things - we went to see the musical lights at the state fairgrounds. I really loved it - it was a drive-through show. Jackson struggled, though, and was asleep before we event got into the lights. We had to keep waking him up during the show because he kept falling back asleep.

Of course I had to make Christmas sugar cookies - my favorite. Jackson helped me again this year, and was a much more willing helper than last year, when he was so sick.

KC and DC

The first week of December, I had a week of work travel. It wasn't the best timing - we'd just gotten possession of our house the week before and moved in only 2 days before I had to leave. But I was grateful to have gotten fairly settled before I left so I could at least pack!

The first stop was Kansas City, Missouri, where we had our annual team retreat. I've been blessed with some really awesome co-workers, and we have such a great time together. This was our first time meeting in KC, so it was fun to explore the city with Heather and Erica as our hosts. In addition to our work activities, we went to Union Station to see the train display,  the Plaza to see the lights there, and a Christmas Bar to see the decorations and Christmas-themed drinks (which I obviously didn't partake of). I actually didn't bring my ID because I don't drink so I never think about it, and the bouncer at the bar gave me a mark on my hand and told me I had to leave by 9 pm like I was underaged. :) 

Stop 2 was Washington, D.C. I've been working with a national partner - Jobs for America's Graduates. They had their yearly conference in DC, and since I've been the point person on the partnership, I was able to go to present to their educators and state leaders. It was fun to be in D.C. at Christmas time - the weather was pretty mild, so on the free evening that I had, I walked down to the Capitol Building, the Botanical Gardens, where I got to listen to a women's a capella group sing Christmas tunes, and Union Station. I really enjoyed it all.

The next day were the presentations - including one with the leader of entire K-12 team, Tom Parisi. That was fun, since a regional person like me doesn't usually have one-on-one time with of the higher-ups in the company. 

Both trips were fun, and I was excited to go. But I was so ready to come home. It had been a crazy 6 weeks with buying the house, working on it, moving, etc. And leaving for a week meant leaving Brandon (which I always hate anyway) alone to work on the house by himself. He is a rockstar, though, and did so much while I was gone, including replacing the carpet in our bedroom. I was so grateful to do all of this with him. He is such a dedicated, wonderful partner and building a home and a life with him has been the greatest source of joy in my life so far.

I got home Friday night, and Brandon was showing me everything he'd done, including finishing the flooring upstairs. As we were coming back downstairs, I slipped and fell down a few steps. My arm took most of the impact, and I don't remember the last time I've felt that much pain. Like I just saw there on the stairs for a few seconds trying to catch my breath, holding my arm, and immediately started crying. I was worried I'd broken it, but it turned out to just be a terrible deep bruise. I only got this one picture of it - I think it was from the day after I fell. It got much more discolored after this and I still have a scar. I survived, though, and no hospital visit was necessary, thank goodness. An eventful end to an eventful week!

We Bought a House!

When Brandon got his first commission check for helping a client purchase a house, we started thinking about buying a house for real. And then within a few weeks, we did! We took one day and saw seven different houses. I was starting to feel discouraged after the first few - they were all fine, but just nothing we really loved. I started feeling like maybe we couldn't really afford what we wanted. Then along came house #6 and I was in love instantly. It was the oldest house we'd seen so far, and it had all the charm of a 100+ year-old house. Plus it was in a nice urban neighborhood within walking distance of restaurants, the library, post office, etc., and it had a huge garage for Brandon. We saw one house after it, which I also really liked - it was also old and also in a cool neighborhood - but I think we both knew this was the one, and after a few back-and-forths with offers, it was ours. 

The next few weeks were kind of stressful - the sale was dependent on the sellers finding a house, and we were getting closer and closer to the date when we needed to be out of our apartment. It was starting to look like we'd have to move in as soon as we got possession of the house (and right before I had to go out of town for a week for work), which felt overwhelming, considering that we wanted to paint everything and redo the flooring upstairs. But God is good and miraculously we got the house a week earlier than expected so we had a week to work on the house before we had to move in. 

And we had a lot of work to do! Brandon worked nonstop all week painting and laying flooring. I took a day off to help and Jackson even pitched in, too. We were so grateful to also have help from our family - my parents both came twice to help with cleaning and flooring - my angel mother deep-cleaned the kitchen and all 3 bathrooms (which were pretty gross), my sister came one day and painted, and both of Brandon's parents came and helped with painting and carpet. My grandma even came and helped clean one day. There's no way we could've done it without all of their help.

We officially moved the day after Thanksgiving, and were so grateful to have help that day, too - Brandon's grandpa, uncle, cousin, and brother-in-law all pitched in, as well as a friend from church. It was a little bittersweet to leave our apartment - we lived there for almost 3 years, which was almost our entire married life. We had some great memories there and had such wonderful neighbors. It was a blessing to us, but we are really excited to move to the next chapter!

First Grade - Fall 2019

Jackson's first grade picture from Clark Elementary. Learning to read and getting so good at it!