Janvier

What! The best month of the year is coming to a close already? How can this be? I guess we'll just have to bide our time until this time next year. 

Birthday Month:

Kids who are old enough to buy whatever they want are hard to shop for.

Poor Addie has to scrape the old car off in the mornings. Wearing a blanket instead of a coat is a thing the kids are doing these days, and it makes no sense but what are ya gonna do? 

Fun with Puppies: 

Kevin and Tonya's dogs had puppies again, and we loved playing with them. While holding a puppy, it's really difficult to not want to buy it and take it home. Nils was the voice of reason, fortunately. 

The Guitar:

Nils has spent one day a week for the last year filming the making of this guitar. It's 100% custom and handmade by a luthier. It came back from the finisher last week, and it's quite beautiful. YouTube video coming at some point. 

Zion:

Nils and I headed down to Zion for a product course for a few days. Once again, going to these things opens our eyes to so many possibilities and changes our mindset entirely. It's pretty crazy what people can do and are doing. Exciting things to come! 

And, Zion NP is okay, I guess. 

We found licorice ice cream on the way down, and since Nils is one of the 10% of humans who loves licorice, he had to partake. It was pretty yummy, and I only think licorice is okay. 

Facetime call to make sure the children were alive. They were alive and obnoxious as ever. 

Pip was so traumatized by us leaving her, that when we got back she crawled into Nils' duffel bag and slept in it all night. She's got some issues she needs to work through. 

Nils is over the teacher's quorum and had a few of them over for a pasta dinner last week.

Aani was caressing Nils' face and he was concerned.

What's going on:

Addie and Aani just finished up their competitive swim season. Swim is a lot of time and a lot of commuting, but they have had a great time and a great experience, and lots of friendships have been made. They both want to do club swim here in a couple of months, so the busyness will continue on. They both babysit regularly, and have been offered a job by a neighbor of ours who has an eBay business, helping out with that. Lucky girls. 

Ava continues to do tumbling, be on student council, and hang out with her friends. Her room is still a disaster 99.9% of the time, even after she's forced to clean it thoroughly every Saturday. It's really quite stunning how easy of a time she has messing it up. 

Anders is still working a big boy job, making big boy money, and wants to buy a house. He has a real estate agent and everything. Sure will be interesting to see what all of this leads to, but he's got a good head on his shoulders so we're not too worried. 

Our business is growing and doing well, and we're super excited for this upcoming year and all the possibilities. Our first year was kind of a test for us, and now we feel more confident in investing more money into it.

My skin is worse than ever! I have tons of pictures but won't post them because no one wants to see that, but trust me when I say it's bad. I will start getting monthly injections here in a couple of weeks, so all the prayers going up that it is a solution. 

Other than my crappy skin, things are pretty good 'round here. Just slather me in Benadryl gel and I'm good to go. 

My Weird Life

At the moment, I have a basement full of teenage girls singing bad karaoke and eating tacos for Addie's birthday party. In the room next to me, Anders is playing his new steel drum while some of his friends play the electric guitar and bass. 

Nils is looking for real estate on which to start a compound with the neighbors he likes. "Imagine being able to pick your neighbors!"

It's a mad house, and Nils kindly just reminded me that I chose to be with/created the people who are making it so. So it is.

Yesterday was my birfday, and I threw a couples bunco party for myself. Nils helped with everything, because he's the best ever. 

Good friends who came to my partay! Some of these good folks will be our neighbors on the compound.

Aani trying to block out the steel drum that Anders has been playing all day: 

Fresh out of the box!

Camera footage of the madness happening in the basement currently: 

Just wanted to document in real time, because this is the stuff that's hard to remember. 😆