Some Things 2022 Taught Me

Highlights of 2022:

11 year anniversary celebrated

10 Dogman books Kasen read

9 states I visited

8 camping trips

7 Temple Dates

6th Family member conceived

5 Birthdays and birthday cakes

4 Hikes

3 5K races

2 Teeth Tai lost

1 Deer Kyle shot, first time since we've been married!

Kasen got to open his own bank account, he played basketball, tried water skiing and knee boarded all by himself this year.

Tai has grown up so much this year. She had her first dance recital, learned how to ride her bike without training wheels like a boss, she lost her first 2 teeth, started kindergarten and has already been reading like a champ! She insists on trying to read everything. 

Kohen had his first haircut, loves going to nursery at church and found out that he gets to be a big brother!

We're pregnant with our very last baby! I also made it to Texas, got to help my Grandma bottle beets, and made it to 8 of the 10 camping trips we wanted to go on.

Kyle is still with DEU right now and has fallen in love with fly fishing, ice fishing and jiu jitsu.

In 2023 I hope to cut my "want to read" book list in half, potty train Kohen before baby brother gets here, help Kasen prepare for his baptism, run the haunted half 5K in October and start doing family scripture reading before our family prayers, as suggested by Tai.

Some Things 2022 Taught Me:

1. Baking chocolate chip cookies in an air fryer does not work
2. The heating unit in a Muskoka fireplace only lasts 3 years and even though the user manual provides a list of service parts, you cannot order any of them.
3. Tai can do a 300 piece puzzle all by herself
4. Where Dakota's grave is at the Orem Cemetery
5. Waiting 24 hours after throwing up to declare yourself well again isn't enough time anymore, gotta wait 3 days now
6. It costs $60 to surrender a dog to the Humane Society and is critical that the muzzle placed on the animal is both the exact right size AND not placed on them upside down. Also, they don't even use the sedation shot they initially insist on bringing out in the correct dosage either.
7. The Eccles Theater will let you walk in wearing a handgun, no questions asked, but they will stop you if you aren't properly wearing a face mask.
8. The reason visual aids are not allowed in sacrament meeting is because holding up your 20 year old mustache, saved in a plastic baggie, is weird....
9. Kyle prefers cleaning birds to cleaning fish
10. Trees from Arbor Day Nursery in Riverton come with a 5 year warranty! Which means even if your tree has been dead for over 2 years you can still go get a new one.
11. Even if you have been vaccinated for covid, twice, you can still get it. And you can also still get covid even if you aren't the people pulling on strange chewed gum at the Seattle gum wall, while also wearing a face mask.
12. You can park in Portland, with a thin blue line sticker on your car, and it won't get vandalized.
13. Royal Caribbean will not tell you there is too much ice to see Dawes Glacier until like 30 minutes before you are supposed to be seeing it. But they do still have lobster night!
14. Paying $5.29 per gallon of gas is super depressing
15. Apparently 55 degrees is cold enough to cancel swimming lessons
16. How to make homemade bread, bagels and green pancakes without using food coloring.
17. Do not leave a bike trailer out in the sun unless you want all of the seatbelts to turn to literal dust.
18. Stephanie has no concept of how long it actually takes to drive to Provo and back to Lehi in rush hour, or that when I say Lehi park and ride I actually mean the American Fork one...
19. The Biolife plasma center does not check for, or notify you if you become pregnant during the weeks that you've been donating plasma. The OB says not to worry about it though!
20. Zofran would have been awesome to have back during round 1
21. Lab work is not billed under the doctor that actually ordered it and told you where to have it done.
22. How to bottle beets
23. A 2 year old can climb the Cliff Palace ladders at Mesa Verde just fine
24. A 6 day, 2,725 mile roadtrip to Texas can be done for under $500, if you're splitting it with another person. And it can also be miraculously done with 3 kids screen free!
25. If you squeeze some slivers hard enough they will shoot right out.
26. However, Tai's warts take freezing, a box of wart remover bandaids, weeks of apple cider vinegar and freezing again to disappear.
27. Arctic Circle discontinued their sweet potato fries and right now I'm real disappointed about it.
28. What it's like to pee when you sneeze and cough hard enough to throw up
29. It takes exactly 2 years to go through a 25lb. bag of flour, but we can go through 4 gallons of milk in 6 days.
30. Being in a bad enough accident means to have to give up 40 hours of vacation AND also you don't get your yearly pay raise either. Savage
31. It costs $296.76 to process a deer, way to go Jim!
32. The exact spot on the wall by the stairs that is Kohen's favorite part to color on.

2022 was a fantastic year! Bring on 2023

Happy New Year!

Do You Have Room?

Christmas Day

Christmas finally came! And the best part was that the kids didn't wake up until about 8am.

It came on a Sunday this year and luckily we didn't have our Sacrament Meeting until noon. So we all went downstairs to read Luke 2 before going to see what we all got for Christmas.

I love how excited they always are to get these character juice drinks! This year Tai got Cakey from Gabby Cat. She also got clothes and legos and signed up to play basketball in January. Kohen is just all about finding all the chocolate to eat.

Kasen got so many new books this year! Magic Tree House books, I survived, Bad Guys, Last Kids on Earth, Cat Kid and some Pokemon chapter books too! He got book marks and a book light and he loves that his book shelf is all full of books. He also got a pocket microscope and a nerf gun.

Kohen got a soccer ball and a soccer net to kick it into!

He also got some of his favorite character toys; Gekko, Chase and "Pie-ley" (Spidey), "Pin" (Spin) and "Ghoss Spi-ler" (Ghost Spider)

Kasen and Tai got new tablets, even though I really wanted to get them a stair slide. :)

This Christmas was like a deja vu from 4 years ago when Kasen and Tai got tablets and I also got an ice cream maker! Haha This year I got an even bigger one though! Yay! Gimme all the ice cream! I also got a new coat, a pasta making attachment for the Kitchen Aid and that new clock to replace the broken one we've had for a couple years!

21 weeks pregnant! I'm already so big. We went to church though and I got to sing with the choir, 'Do You Have Room' and I love that song now! I'd never heard it before.

"The gift of life to all the world He brings, and all mankind He saves from doom, but on that night for Him there was no room.

Do you have room for the Savior and do you seek Him a new? Have you a place for the one who lives and died for you?"

I liked the talks at church about how to keep Christ a part of Christmas. It's something I try to do by reading Christ centered Christmas books, Christian Christmas music, watching the Christmas devotional and other nativity films, reading Luke 2, talking about how the symbols of Christmas remind us of Christ, and our advent cards we read each day of the month that tell us another name for Christ.

Kyle got a bunch of ice fishing gear so today he and Josh went up to Strawberry to ice fish! Ya know, the time that Josh dropped his phone down the ice hole!

After church we went to Melanie and Jack's house to open presents from them and Tai was so excited that we were twinners! I bought Tai a pack of 5 shirts and like 8 pants that just happened to have ones that matched the outfit Kyle got me for Christmas!

After Melanie's we headed down to Kelly's house to open more presents from him and all the rest of the girls just happened to be matching too! It was so fun! While we were there I taught Kasen how to play Cover Your Assets and Tai and I ate almost all the shrimp ourselves. We love shrimp.

We had a very Merry Christmas! 

And a perfect ending with Kasen's family prayer, "We're thankful for everything we have and all the presents we got, but we know it's not about the presents, it's about being with our family and that Jesus was born."

IT'S A .....!

We had our 20 week anatomy scan on Wednesday where we got to find out the gender of baby #4!

IT'S A.......

Well, you tell me, cause I have no idea what this is a picture of! The tech never stopped to point anything out to me so I'm kinda bummed I have no confirmation of my own.

Kasen, obviously a boy, Tai- obvious butt shot of nothing and Kohen's sonogram has a helpful arrow pointing out that he too is a boy.

I did a poll on instagram for everyone to see the sonogram and make their best guess and 61% of the people that voted were wrong!

IT'S A BOY!!

The pattern has been abandoned. There will be no Austyn, we have to come up with another KJL boy name.

I was feeling kinda bummed because I wanted the boys to be able to go on fun boys trips and the girls to be able to go on fun girls trips and was telling Kyle that Tai isn't going to want to go with just me cause, "It's not fun with just 2" and is going to always be asking to bring a friend. That same day night after our ultrasound Tai said to me, "I'm bored! Can a friend come over!" And so it begins.

The Eves

Christmas Eve Eve

We made homemade pizza for dinner and Chex mix to watch The Grinch (and Muppet Christmas Carol) and sleep under the Christmas tree! Well, near the Christmas tree. Tai and Kasen were both trying to put their heads right up under it, but we let them know they didn't actually have to be under the tree. Haha

Kasen made a little fort to watch the movie in and Tai was asleep before the second movie I think. When Kohen saw them bringing their pillows and blankets up he ran to his room to get his blanket and pillow too! But he didn't end up getting to sleep in the living room. They slept till after 8 the next morning though!

Christmas Eve

In the morning we went to my mom and dads house for breakfast. We got to see Ben and Josh there and the kids opened their presents from Grandma and Grandpa.

Once we got back home Grammy Tammy came to visit and we played a couple games while Kyle smoked a yummy salmon and avocado salsa dinner!

We went downstairs to read our new Christmas book, The Tale of Three Trees, but Kohen kept turning out the lights. Grammy turned her phone light on for us and once the story was finished we ended up making shadow puppets on the wall. The alligator was Kohen's favorite! He was scared of it at first and then walked over to the wall and Grammy made it look like the alligator was eating him. He jumped so high! haha There was also a horse that Kasen made look like he was riding. They were having so much fun.

We watched a couple nativity videos and then after dinner we opened Grammy's presents, turned on the Santa Clause and made our cookies for Santa!

This year Kohen was big enough to really get in there and help.

At least he shares food! It's one of the things keeping him barely on the nice list.

Kasen and Tai made all sorts of love notes for Santa and didn't even want a song so that they could go to sleep as fast as possible! Kyle still sang them a super fast version of I'm a Child of God and the kids thought it was so funny!

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

Merry Christmas Things

I am so picky about my Christmas cards actually saying "Merry Christmas" and this year there were hardly any to even choose from! I finally found one I liked though. 2 of my most favorite things during Christmas are getting Christmas cards and the yummiest homemade treats from neighbors. I look forward to them way too much!

This year, for our neighbor gifts, we freeze dried a bunch of candy! Skittles, Salt Water Taffy, Big Hunk and Bit O Honey. I'm not a fan of freeze dried candy, but some people must be because 4oz bags sell for $10 online.

2022 Ornaments

We added more than a few new ornaments to our collection this year! 2 from our cruise to Skagway, Alaska and Seattle, 1 from our family trip to Waco, Texas and each of the kids got a new one. Chase for Kohen, Ballet shoes for Tai's first dance recital this year, and Pikachu for Kasen. We usually just get one new family ornament for the year, but this year we got to visit more than one new place!

We also had a successful round 2 of going to see the Draper Tree of Life! Kohen started a snowball fight while we were there, which Tai ended up losing and then Kyle got me sweet potato fries on the ay home cause Apollo Burger has them! They are all I want right now.

The next day was the First Presidency Christmas Devotional and Kyle made us Oreo cake balls while we watched it together!

With Kyle's family we went to the World of Illumination at the Utah State Fair Grounds. Kohen got to sit on Kyle's lap to help steer the car and was having so much fun dancing to the Christmas music.

Kyle and I also celebrated our 11th wedding anniversary on the 16th! 

My parents divorced right before their 11th anniversary, so making it to eleven years was my personal standard of achievement, which is why 11 years feels like a big deal.

I told Kyle he's not allowed to die before we're 73 so that we can celebrate a 50th wedding anniversary together now too!

We celebrated our sealing by going to the Provo City Center Temple to do sealings and then across the street to Comedy Sportz. We also went to dinner and tried Dirty Dough! The Dirty Scoop that comes with ice cream was SO good.

The kids got to go see some lights in Spanish Fork with their cousins while we were on our date and had a blast poking their heads out of the sunroof.

We got to go watch Kasen and Tai sing at the Christmas Sing with their elementary school and my favorite part is watching them come in, looking all over for us, and then as soon as they see us their faces light up and are so happy to see us there! It is the sweetest thing ever.

I also got to go help in Kasen's class with their Christmas party!

They have been the cutest with their prayers this month too. "We know Christmas isn't about the presents, but about being with family and the birth of Jesus."

Tai got to go on her first ever Krista birthday date and got so spoiled! She got to go to Build a Bear and make this cute rainbow bear, which she named Happy. She also got her first lip gloss and a couple cute Christmas sweaters. Thank you Aunt Krista!

Kelsey Degraffenried invited a bunch of neighbors over for hot cocoa, cinnamon rolls, a story and a song again this year and it's my favorite! Heidi and I have even had a couple Hallmark movie nights too. She also invited us to go write uplifting post it notes for the kids to stick on people's cars in the Maceys parking lot. For a few minutes we sat to watch people come out to their cars and smile at their notes. It was so cute to see how excited the kids were to leave notes for people!

We went to Coconut Cove, shopped for sibling gifts, and picked a few of our favorite houses to go watch the dancing lights at! Kasen told our primary class that it's his favorite tradition.

We also watched the Christmas Oranges movie while we ate oranges and bless Tai's heart, she was crying during multiple parts of the movie! It was the sweetest thing how emotional the movie made her.

We also make some snowflakes and stars that the kids hung in our front windows! I love how Kasen was teaching Tai how to make a star and then turn it into a snowflake.

Kids make life so magical!