End of Year Post

Our cell phone company sends us a "year in review" email and David and I laugh at it every year. I thought that it was fitting to share the data in our end-of-year post. 

David on left, Shantel on right.

David: 

Amount of data used - 14 GB

Time on the phone - 1081 Minutes

Number of texts sent - 441 Texts

Shantel - 

Amount of data used - 29 GB

Time on the phone - 3159 Minutes

Number of texts sent - 11,121 Texts

Are you laughing out loud? And are you asking the question of how many of the time on the phone and text messages of David's were shared with Shantel? 

We are. 

We celebrated New Years Eve in Morgan at the Walker house - but the year isn't really over until David and I sit on the couch with hot chocolate and apple cider, respectively, and watch While You Were Sleeping.  I love the Christmas mess still scattered about the family room in the picture above (we got home from Morgan late, put the kids to bed, and snuggled down to watch a movie. 

We will clean up in the morning and get a start on our new year. But for tonight, we are grateful for this wonderful year that we've had. After some really hard (Covid) years, this year was a breath of fresh air. We had some amazing vacations and even more joy in the ordinary moments. There is no one I would rather spend my years with than David and I'm grateful to end another year with him by my side. 

Walker Fam + New Years Eve

Because we spent Christmas at the Peaden's house this year, we made sure to block off a whole section of days out of our Christmas break to spend in Morgan. We filled our days with family, laughter, game playing, and lots of memory making. 

Skeet Shooting with the Crew
My dad is always so proud that Jenna and I are such good shooters. We went a lot when we were young and I remember holding my own against my high school guy friends. It's funny that he's still so proud about it, but it just means so much to him that we care enough to try/succeed at something he cares about so much. We had a great time, and my dad said that this was definitely "True Fun" for him. 

Hanging at the house- Baking, games, grandpa working on rockets with the kids. 


New Years Eve brought out our traditional paper-plate countdown. 

Some of the things that we included this year were:

**Glow rockets and remote control cars at the church. (Plus a spontaneous Cousin-Crew-Primary-Chair photoshoot)











*Playing Cousin-Crew Dungeons and Dragons with Uncle Matt


**Favorite Things Gift Exchange




**Prize Punch (Lucy was so tired, she just couldn't hang. 




**Glow Dance Party featuring several rousing renditions of "The Macarena". This was my favorite thing! (Backstory, in 1999 - my Aunt Kim and Uncle Marti hosted the best New Years Eve party EVER and this song was key in that celebration. Going into this year, my mom wanted to recreate that celebration. Even though this looked significantly different than that did - we had a fantastic time and it was probably our families best NYE celebration! 




**Countdown with the kids, then games until the countdown for the adults! 


Our family has adopted Brooklyn's family's tradition of having everyone make one prediction for the coming year. It's fun to write them down and look back at them the following year. (We keep them on top of the bookshelf on a random piece of paper.) This year we also included one goal for the year. In addition to that, we added another piece to the tradition. We used plastic cups to toast Martinellis and before we toasted, we all wrote down one thing we liked from the past year and one thing we were looking forward to in the coming year. I really liked that and would love to continue to incorporate that into our traditions. 

Shantel: 

Prediction- at least one country goes to war with Russia (Ukraine survives and begins a valiant recovery) 

Goal- Learn to make Sourdough Bread

David: 

Prediction- Utah Jazz wins the #1 pick in the draft

Goal- Learn to make Birria tacos

Happy New Year! 

Christmas Day at the Peaden Home

As soon as we finished our Christmas Morning celebration, we hopped in the car and headed to West Jordan to spend the next couple of days with the Peaden Family. There was much present opening, treat eating, game playing, and quality-time-spending. We are so grateful to be able to spend Christmas with these people that we love and who wholeheartedly love and support us. I think that one of the greatest gifts of our life is how well we get along with each other's families. When I am at the Peaden home, I do not feel like an in-law, I feel like a cherished part of the family unit and I hope David feels the same. This is especially notable during the holidays when we truly want to be with our extended families. 

We love it here. Love this home, love this family. 


Lydia has been asking for a robot dog for years. When it was still the first item on her Christmas list this year and I saw it come on sale for Black Friday we decided we should do it. She will eventually grow out of this stage and the fact that this is still the thing she wanted most of all is really really sweet. She's loved learning to play with "Bailey". 

These family pictures we took in October look even more gorgeous blown up on canvas. What a treasure. 

We had a wonderful couple of days together. Canasta tournaments, nertz battles, and laughter-and-bruise filled rounds of Santa Cookie Elf Candy Snowman. 

Merry Christmas to these wonderful Peadens. (and Renchers).