2013 in Review.

This has been a crazy year for our little family. I started putting together this "Year in Review" post and when I went back to January to see what we did, I had to double check that it wasn't two years ago that I was looking at. So much has happened, and so many blessings have come our way. Here's a recap of what we've been up to:

January:
Lydia turned 8 months and got her first pedicure. We moved out of our apartment and into a storage unit while we hoped for a closing date on our house that was sooner rather than later.
 


February:
Lydia turned nine months old and we moved into our new house! We still are in awe of the beautiful house that we live in and are grateful for it every day. Our new house came with new furniture, including our first washer and dryer of our married lives. 

March:
Lydia ate a billion oranges and started balancing on her own without holding on to anything. We printed out our third blog book, started making our house feel like a home, and although David worked long hours due to busy season, we still had an awesome March Madness bracket/extravaganza. 


April:
We enjoyed an unusually warm April with lots of play dates at the park. (We love our Cooper Friends!) I held a Bridal shower for my sweet friend Cassie. My dear cousin Spencer passed away. We built a rock wall in our backyard in the same week that we sprang a leak in our family room ceiling. We started getting our money's worth out of our Pass of All Passes.




May:
Lydia turned one! And we took a road trip to BYU-I for Jenna's Graduation.



June:
Lydia and Elsie continued to develop their "best friend" relationship and I was blessed by Ashley's friendship as well. David and I celebrated our 4th Wedding Anniversary and we took a "Staycation" and packed our week full of fun adventures. 


July:
Lydia turned 14 months and was SO fun. We had the Knowles family reunion and enjoyed the fireworks at Thanksgiving Point. We took an 11-day road trip to Houston, TX; spending six days there and traveling the 24 hours to and from over the other 5 days. Some of our favorite activities were the Houston Zoo, the NASA space center, Galveston, TX, and the beach. (We also loved stopping in Albuquerque on the way there and the Bureau of Engraving and Printing in Fort Worth on the way home.)



August:
David's company HBM merged and became Eide Bailly. The Walker family canned salsa and I learned how to chop and freeze Anaheim peppers. My dad build us a laundry stand for our washer and dryer - officially turning the Laundry Room into my favorite room in our house. 


September:
Lydia attended her second annual Pirate Party at Hutchings Museum. She also turned 16 months and got her very first hair cut. I turned 26 and had a wonderful birthday due to my sweet and creative husband. 


October:
We dressed up as Little Red Riding Hood {and supporting cast} for Halloween and had a great time. We also hosted several events at our house, like a book club, murder mytsery dinner, and Halloween FHE. For people who proclaim to be fairly awkward and anti-social we felt really proud about putting ourselves out there. David turned 29 and I made him an awesome Aggie Quilt. 



November:
We had a great Thanksgiving and had fun Black Friday shopping. We bought a new MacBook computer (which I am typing on right now) and we love it! Our ward split and I was put into the Primary Presidency. Lydia turned 18 Months and is all toddler. (We also took a road trip down to Saint George for Grandma McAllisters funeral.) 

December:
The month was full of Holiday craziness, but David and I spoke in church on the Sunday before Christmas on the true Christmas spirit and were somehow able to maintain that spirit in our lives throughout the month. We went to the Alpine Live Nativity and had a wonderful Christmas. 

2013 was a wonderful year for us. Here's hoping that 2014 is even better!

Happy New Year!

The Dinner Quest

Goal: Go out to dinner together at a sit-down restaurant on our last night of vacation before David had to go back to work. Be home by seven thirty in order to get Lydia to bed at eight. 

Start time: 6:00 p.m. 

1 1/2 hours, 2 gallons of gas, six restaurants, and five dollars later we ended up at our own kitchen table with two Hot and Spicy McChickens and a large french fry.  

womp. womp. womp.

We started out with the plan of going to WizeGuys pizza in Draper because we had a $10 Restaurants.com certificate for there. We pulled up to a completely dark building. After checking the hours that were posted on the door (they said they should be open until ten) and calling the phone number of the restaurant (which had been disconnected) we called the other WizeGuys pizza locations (Draper and Orem). Apparently, they've all gone out of business. Lame. 

We were disappointed, but as we passed by the Sonic we noticed that their daily special was Mozzarella Sticks for $1.09. We decided we deserved a pick-me-up while we figured out what we were going to do for dinner. While waiting for our order - we decided that we would run home and see if we had any gift card/coupons that we could use for dinner. (Because of our Restaurants.com gift card we had our hearts set on a sit-down restaurant minus the big tab.) 

A quick glance through our things at home sent us on our way to the American Fork Chilis to use one of our gift cards. (One of our favorite places to eat.) However, the 45 minute wait time had us headed back out the door.

Next up: Wild Zucchini Grill. The astronomically long line convinced us to not even get out of the car.

An hour into our search and loosing steam, we decided that maybe we should give up on the "sit-down" restaurant idea. After flipping through our coupon book, we found a buy-one-get-one, and headed to Gandolfos in Lehi. Songs were sung when it appeared to be open and there was no line. We spent some time perusing the menu and finally selected our sandwiches only to present our coupon and be told that it wasn't authorized for that specific Gandolfos location. Dejectedly we thanked her - and headed out the door. 

Minutes later we pulled through the McDonalds drive through and headed home with our consolation prize of a dinner. 

----

Although nights like this are not exactly what you think of when you think of a fairy tale ending... We laughed, enjoyed being together, and are ending the night with some popcorn, Dr. Pepper, and White Collar. This is my favorite "Happily Ever After" and I'm glad that I get to spend it with this guy: 

Christmas 2013

We started out our Christmas celebrations with a casual but fun Christmas party with some friends. We had the Coopers, the Shields, the Griffins, the Flints, and the Newbolds all come and eat some delicious dinner and chat. David and I are not the most proactive when it comes to hanging out with people, but we've decided to that we want to make that effort and we feel like we've done really well over the last couple of months. We kept it super casual so that there wasn't any stress. We just did dinner, no games, no movie, no extra preparation - and it was perfect. We loved catching up with friends that we haven't seen in a while, as well as spending time with friends that we see more often. It was kind of an eclectic group of people - but everyone had at least one connection besides us, and that made it really fun. Apparently we kept it so casual that we didn't take any pictures until the last two families were heading out the door - (sorry Shields, Coopers, and Griffins), but we did manage to snap this photo of the Flints and Newbolds. We are very blessed to have such good friends in our lives. 

Next in the lineup of Christmas Festivities was the Peaden Family Christmas Party! Michael and Melissa organized the party this year and they did a great job. We had our traditional White Elephant gift exchange - but with a twist. Instead of drawing a number, you had to answer a Christmas trivia question. It was super fun and David and I scored some sweet gifts. The rest of the night was filled with Christmas cookies (which I had come up earlier in the week to help Sue bake) and lots of games.

We were planning to head to Morgan on the 23rd, but I had been sick the day before and David woke up sick that morning. I was SO sad. Like, so so so sad. All I wanted was to be with my family - but this bug that we keep getting is awful. (Like, you are convinced you have food poisoning because you are so violently ill, awful.) We didn't want to share, so we let it pass and came up on Christmas Eve. We tried to jam-pack all of our Christmas Fun into one day, and we did a pretty good job of it - if I do say so myself. (Although, we did forgo our trilogy movie watching in the basement because we were all so tired and someone forgot to bring the Toy Story Movies.) We worked on a crazy hard puzzle, made some delicious homemade pizza, and played games. 

Our favorite game that we played was actually a Christmas present from Jenna and Kevin. We all had to leave around noon the following day so Jenna casually suggested that we might be able to open their present to us early - not one to pass up that kind of opportunity, David and I jumped on the suggestion and we opened the game BANG. They taught us and we really enjoyed it. Little did we know that it would quickly take its place as our favorite and most played game of the break. We love it!

 

I searched for pictures of BANG, because of the 20 times that we played it over the Christmas break - we didn't get a single picture. When I found this picture, I laughed because it describes really well the point of the game. Once, Sam walked by while we were playing and he made the comment that it seemed like a really violent game - which, I guess it is. The Sheriff tries to kill the outlaws, the outlaws try to kill the Sheriff, the renegade tries to kill everyone. Super fun. 

Speaking of opening presents early, my mom gave Lydia a little early Christmas present of two little dolls. She loved them! She calls them both "baby" and wants to carry them both around everywhere she goes. My mom got them because they look just like Lydia and Elsie, one has short hair and one has longer hair. They are darling and we love them. They also came with a little bottle/juice cup and bananas and spoon - all of which Lydia loves. If she could carry every item all at the same time, she would.  It was so fun to watch her play with them, and play with David, while we were cooking and eating our pizza and playing all of our games. 

We all slept out under the tree and had a great time opening presents Christmas morning. Lydia got a puppy that she loves. It barks and moves it's legs and it cracks her up every time. We all felt very loved and were so grateful to be able to have everyone home. (Including Matthew - sort of - because we were able to Skype with him later in the morning!) Funny story about the shirt that Jacob got. He and I have this special love of all things "font" related and he especially loves the font HelveticaI. He joked about wanting a shirt that said "Helvetica" that was printed in Arial Bold - so that he could see if anyone would correct him. So we gave him one for Christmas. So funny. 

 

After we talked to Matthew we headed to the Peaden home for the second half of the day. Again, we felt very loved and very blessed to be surrounded by the people that we love as we celebrated Christmas.

We had a wonderful Christmas and as I look back through these pictures I can't help but feel overwhelmed with how blessed we are. So many family members who mean so much to us. A wonderful daughter and an incredible husband. 

Merry Christmas!