2012

I cannot believe the year is ending! It seems to me that we just moved here a couple weeks ago and here we are one year later in Minnesota!

I have to say this year we are most grateful we’ve had a calm year. Yes we did move this year, but it was right at the first of the year and most of our move was coordinated in 2011 it seems like something we really had to go through in 2011. After so many trials and lots going on in 2011, it was nice to have a peaceful year with no huge events in 2012. (If I never have to have surgery 3 weeks after having a baby again, I’ll definitely be fine with that!)

This year we really discovered what it meant to spend time as a family, because we didn’t have as many friends or family members around to spend time with here. We decided to put all our energy into family time, taking outings, playing games, exploring, and enjoying time together while we were getting to know Minnesota. We took many trips to the zoo, children’s museum, different cities, parks, farms, Twins games, excursions to try new restaurants, and Mitch and I each got really into biking with the great trail system here. After my knee surgery it was a big trial mentally and physically for me to not be able to run anymore, especially because I’ve always struggled with my weight, but biking really helped me mentally come out of a hard place with that. I am so grateful for biking this year! I loved doing Tour de Tonka with some friends in August. What a great experience.

We also took a trip up to Northern Minnesota, a trip to Chicago, a trip to Texas for Shannon and Utah for Mitch, and a trip for both of us to California. We also actually had a lot of visitors to Minnesota which was a nice blessing feeling so foreign in a new place - along with one of my best friends from college moving here into our ward!

A hard experience for us this year was finding out Emerson had a peanut allergy. I don’t know why but it really shocked me and made me feel scared as a parent that I had somehow done something wrong. He has been such a good sport about getting tested and letting us refuse him certain foods, but it is scary to know that anybody could accidentally give him something to set off his reaction. In better news for Emerson, he started preschool, got potty trained, had his first swim lessons, learned to love the snow sledding in our yard, went to his first Major League Baseball game, and had his first father son campout.

Just as she was during my knee surgery, Genevieve has been such a sweetheart this year with all the changes. She is always pretty happy but just in the past couple weeks has really started learning to throw some tantrums when she doesn’t get her way! We remember this same thing happening around this age with E and we’re praying it’s just the age! She is usually pretty happy but sometimes she does these tantrums where she flops on the floor and rolls around crying. Is it bad that we actually find them funny sometimes? She really is so cute. This year she started nursery, went swimming many times this summer, and began walking this fall.

We are grateful that Mitch really likes his job and has done well this year. I think it’d be tough for us if we moved all the way out here and he didn’t like it! He only travels about 1 time per month for a day or two, so we are lucky to be with him a lot. My business has been going really well this year and I am continually grateful for my wonderful business partner Lori and for our friends at BYU that brought us together. We work so well together and have a lot of fun too.

We spent our first Christmas with just ourselves as a family and had a great time. Growing up and not being able to celebrate Christmas was always a struggle for me. I loved our Buddhist Children’s Day traditions & shrine as a small child, but I always felt like I wanted to better understand Christmas and it’s magic, but wasn’t able to. Since then and becoming LDS, I’ve always wanted to make the Christmas Holidays meaningful and magical for my kids. I know they probably won’t remember it at this age, but it has been so much fun for Mitch and I to celebrate Christmas with them this year. Just after Christmas we were sad to find out that my step-grandfather passed away. It was good in the sense that he was in pain and it was his time to go (he was almost 90 and ill) but we will all miss him. When I was a teenager I was close with him and loved going golfing with him! We had a fun relationship of joking with each other.

We had a hard time adjusting to a new place and we still miss Salt Lake a lot, however we are finally beginning to feel like MN is home now (they say it takes a year right?). We are grateful we had this calm year to settle in, as we feel 2013 might be a bit more hectic with baby #3 arriving! I am really scared to have three kids so close. I hope we can handle it all! Wishing everyone a happy New Year! Hoping I can get some goals planned out in the next day or two.