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. 😆

Let's Taco'bout What Happened in December

Mmm, tacos. Addie quit her job because she's been stressed and spread too thin. She says the worst part about quitting her job is that she won't be able to stop at Taco Time on the way home and buy tacos at 9:30 at night. Also, she's scared she won't have any money to buy tacos. She does have a fairly lucrative babysitting gig up the street, and now that she doesn't have a job she can babysit more. It's quite possible she'll be richer from babysitting than from lifeguarding, so tacos4ever.

December, eh? It's been a wild one for sure, what with all that holiday cheer. This week has been a week off, with no pressure to accomplish anything. We went to the store last week and stocked up on essentials with the goal of not leaving the house this week. It's worked pretty well! Nils has played a lot of video games, we've been trying to eat our way through all the neighbor treats, we've watched a lot of movies, and we've had plenty of food and toilet paper to get us through. We may be ready to get back in the saddle next week, but we also may cry about it. 

We've had a video go a little crazy this month, which was very unexpected and super awesome. It's gotten 584K views since 12/11. This is, according to YouTube analytics, 112 times higher than normal, and we've been entertained by this situation. If you want to watch it, you can do so here. It's a 1 minute video that was an afterthought- more proof that we don't know what we're doing. 💃👯

Alright, to the pictures of life:

Ava's amazing birthday cake made by yours truly. It sunk in the middle, and just got uglier the more I tried to make it look less bad. Good news is that no one cared, and it tasted delish.

B-day breakfast with Daddio. When Ava was little, she would point one finger in the air, and with her crooked mouth say, "Good fing!" and "At least!" all the time. It's a family classic that will live on forever. It's what they're doing in the picture, see? 

She had a party, where we learned that 11 girls is way too many in one place. They get unruly fast, and the night ended on a sour note, but we won't get into that. We did try, and that's what matters, right? 

Got a Star Wars advent from Nana!

We had our RS Christmas dinner, and it was stupendous, if I say so myself. How lucky am I to have the best of the best ladies?? I failed to take any pictures of the actual event- I felt like my head was full of bees and was so busy making sure things were going well. But it did go well thanks to many people's efforts. It was a lovely evening that we were proud of. 

Nils and I went on a li'l date, and decided to go to the Draper Tree of Light. We see it all the time on social media, but had never been. It's impressive in its scope and amount of lights, indeed. We looked at it, nodded, did a check mark in the air, and left. 

The last Christmas sing at the elementary school! 

Swim meet fun: Nils and I timed at the last meet before the break. Timing is crazy and busy and you really have to pay attention, thus the only picture that was taken was this of Aani's wrist detailing  her events.

Pip is going to audition for America's Next Top Model because she's such a hottie. 

Addie bought this amaryllis bulb, and we've all been scared of it and entertained as it has evolved and bloomed. 

Addie knows how to effectively wear a Mandalorian helmet.

Nils and some neighbor guys have started mining crypto. What does that mean, I know not, but we have lots of this going on now.

Nils visited Mount Pleasant where his friend lives and owns a solar company. 100 more ideas have been born in his brain...

While Nils is having entrepreneurial ideas, I made baked potatoes on a Monday, and on Friday I found this rogue potato hanging out in the oven...baked how many times we'll never know. It was so soft and wrinkly. So glad I can contribute around here. 

FACTS:

The youth had a holiday party, where they went ice skating and had dinner, white elephant, and games at the church. Nils works with the teachers now, so he gets to go to the things. :)

2nd annual company Christmas party. We went to Summit Pizza, which was delicious, and then sibling present shopping. The kids love sibling present shopping, and they love Christmas jammies, too. 

Chocolate log roll, uh huh! 

Christmas morning was fun! Most of us got to sleep in, and everyone seemed happy with their bounty. We saw the new Spiderman movie in the afternoon, had homemade Costa Vida for dinner, and relaxed in the evening.

I managed to kill the Christmas Eve white elephant tradition by suggesting we play Christmas Eve bunco instead. It was fun! Everyone even said it was fun, and everyone even said it was time for the white elephant to die. Everyone also left with a prize they were happy with! Hooray for killing traditions! 

2021 has been good to us. We've had some crazy times, hard times, and great times. We have spent an awful lot of time together, and we still love each other. 

Nils says, "2021 was the best year ever. I love my new life. I've never slept so much."

Thanks for reading! Happy New Year! 

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!