It was a crazy year:

I graduated from school with a Master’s in Landscape Architecture and MA in Instruction Design. I decided to start my own business.

Joe changed jobs and now works at a hospital in Salt Lake County.

We moved from our home of nine years to the home I grew up in.

Peter played basketball and is doing quite well even after moving to a more competitive area. He also likes piano, flag football, and percussion. Curtis did a lot of clubs, and rec soccer, basketball, and flag football. Henry did swimming, wrestling, piano, and scouts. Zack learned how to use the potty, went from daycare to preschool, and loves sports, monster trucks, and Spiderman.

Evie was born which is probably the biggest change of all.

We remodeled our home (still ongoing). We went to Lava Hot Springs, central Utah, St. George, and Logan. Not a lot of traveling with everything else going on, just enough to keep life interesting.

And here are my top 10 pictures from the year!

We had a great Christmas. The kids enjoyed all their presents, we sang songs and watched, read, and acted out many of the versions of the nativity, and spent some awesome time together as a family. I like going to church at Christmas. And the next day we took a short trip to sled, visit family, and have some fun.

It was our first Christmas in our new home. I missed some of the traditions we had in our old place: we walked up to the nativity on Christmas Eve every year. This year we performed one in our home with cousins. So new traditions replaced old ones. And it was nice to have the space to buy presents like a ping pong table and indoor sports equipment.

I also don’t take enough pictures in my life anymore. Just a few, and I go steal some my husband and son take as well.

So my kids tend to be a lot more pleasant if we take them places. We are a week into a two-week Christmas Break, and I’ve tried to keep them busy. We’ve been to the butterfly biosphere, a couple museums, the library, sledding, visited our cousins’ house and had cousins over. It’s been fun, and we are excited for a great Christmas. We’ve also made gingerbread houses, watched Christmas movies, played games, and the kids are really into tiny soccer. It’s regular soccer, but with a quarter-size ball and tiny little nets that Peter made with Joe

Henry had a birthday! He’s such a fun kid. Creative, full of energy. He loves people and makes friends easily. I love what he wrote on a school assignment about himself: “Not many people get me. I don’t really get myself.”

Winter is in full swing with days of snowfall. We went sledding because that’s what we like to do best when it snows.

Sometimes it’s good to get a time that isn’t busy, to do what you want to do. One day when all the kids but the baby were in school, I went on a walk down by the lake. The time alone was beautiful. Sometimes I fill up my life with more tasks and busyness. This was simply time to enjoy, time to reflect. A time to inhale, because if I always exhale, there’s not enough inside of me to keep going, or at least not keep going well.

One of the goals, when we started to remodel our home, was to have enough space to have everyone in my giant family over. We were working hard to get it done by Thanksgiving, and we had the big room done and ready to seat 40 people.

Before we moved here, I was adamant that I did not want to live in my childhood home again. It ended up being the best thing we could come up with so I moved back into the house I grew up in. But now, it isn’t so much my childhood home anymore. We’ve got more work to do, but it’s quite a dramatic change so far.

We mostly hung out over Thanksgiving break and worked on the house, but we also did go to a new park for fun one day.

I love to work. Good hard physical work, or mental engagement in a meaningful project. I am much more upset about things that keep me from working than I am about having too much work to do. I guess I’ve been pretty lucky because lately there has been a lot of work to do. We are trying to get the addition done for Thanksgiving. And we are on track to get it done!

The thing is, I don’t do much of the work. I sometimes help, but right now I have a full-time job raising five children. And I find if I don’t make that a priority, there are problems. Today we went out and played at the park, playing disc golf and on the playground. Because I knew if I worked on projects all day and didn’t do things with the kids, it would bite me later with grumpy attitudes from them. Last week I didn’t spend as much time with them as I should have, and I paid for it later.

So even though I really like work, I don’t spend as much time doing it as I might like to. There are more important things than simply getting items checked off a to-do list.

This year no one had much of an opinion on what they wanted to be for Halloween. Peter mentioned Spiderman, and I went for it. Here are our Spider-verse costumes. I’ve always loved Spiderman and loved doing this.

We went to a corn maze, and we’ve also stayed busy going to family events. And working on the house, trying to get it done before Thanksgiving!

I love the fall colors, the crisp air, and even the first snow. My kids were talking about how perfect the weather was when it dropped down into the 40s, and I had to agree. Do I always like the cold? Not winter cold. But when it’s just cold enough to need warm socks and a jacket, and you can come inside and be cozy.