Month 11

November came and went, and I hardly remember ye. Good thing we take pictures sometimes, otherwise I wouldn't remember my life. Here we go: 

We went to the Giving Machine last night, and chose all kinds of goodies. Chickens, doctor visits, vaccines, and meals for kids. Pretty neato! 

While we were at the mall, we got Ava's ears pierced again. Her birthday is tomorrow, and this is part of her birthday present. She got her ears pierced a few years ago, but she took the earrings out without telling me, and the holes closed within one day which was annoying. May this piercing take. 

We got a cute new family member this month, Magnolia! She's my nephew KJ and his wife Emily's baby. She's adorable and we had the best time admiring her tiny cuteness. Why do cute babies have to grow into less cute teenagers? Stay little, Magnolia.

Nils has an invention up his sleeve, but it's a secret so no one steals it...

He recruited Emily's brother to help, who is quite smart and in college for engineering. They meet at my mom's house to work on it. 😂 My mom houses all kinds of people and situations. 

We decided to become a rental company. Nils has been renting out a drywall hoist for a few years. We make at least $100/month from it. We invested in these party speakers- hoping to hit up the ward party circuit, haha. 

At long last, the Star Wars studio is done. Nils worked long and hard on this, to appeal to the geeks of the world for the 3D printing channel. 

Aani had an orchestra concert- I think it was the first normal concert at this school. The first year the school opened, it wasn't finished, and the auditorium was one of the last things to be done. Covid hit the second year, and now in the 3rd year we can have concerts like the good old days. Aani has been 1st violin, so she gets to tune the orchestra and all that good stuff. 

Nils learned about this rock opera that has been in the works for 25 years. They're on their way to NYC in a couple of months to try to get it on Broadway. We were able to go to this preview of the show one night. It was pretty cool, and it will be even cooler when it's a full stage production. Fingers crossed for them! 

The final Parents and Pastries at the elementary school. Is it rude that I'm excited to be done with elementary school? It's been 14 years, and I'm good. 

Addie and Aani had a swim meet in St. George and had to leave in the wee hours of the morning, which turned them into gangsta robots, apparently.

Anders is working full time (in his room), and we see him sometimes. In this moment, he was sitting on the floor at the table, so we could only see his forehead. I started taking a picture so he got up and I missed it. 

Christmas shopping in bed on the interwebs with Aan Aan.

Addie and I had a little sit in the Walmarts. Just had to test out the bean bag chairs. 

My favorite app: The Dictionary app. There's a word of the day, and it's almost always a word you would never actually use. But I really enjoyed "crapulous". There are also games on the app, and I might be a bit of a word scramble junkie. 

The many faces of Addie. She's a funny one! Her collarbone is almost all the way healed. She started swimming again as of this week and is feeling pretty good. She says that she's mentally and emotionally ready to be done with high school, but she's not quite done with half of her junior year. She is at school around 6 am every day, either for early morning seminary or early morning weight training. She's on swim team, works as a lifeguard, etc. etc. Last night she said she wants to have a month with nothing to do, so she can sleep and sit on the couch as much as she wants to.

We reached 1 year of self-employment this month, and it's wonderful. No regrets. We love it. We've learned so much, still have so much to learn, and always will. Nils has a head full of ideas!