2018 Holiday Blog
Letter
Thank goodness for Facebook and a phone full of photos to
remind us our adventures over the past year.
It’s been a super busy one and in the midst of day to day life it’s easy
to lose sight of the highlights. So many
of you have likely seen these throughout the year on Facebook, but it’s become
a great way to end the year with reflection and gratitude as we compile the
highlight reel.
Q1 (January –March)
January in Minnesota is cold, but we’ve learned to
cope. This year we spent a night at the
newly opened Great Wolf Lodge in town.
In between the waterslides we ordered take out and Drew got to see the
Minnesota Vikings with their miracle play.
As the month continued Drew celebrated a milestone birthday
with his lifelong friends. Chris and
Octavius must really love him and have adventurous spirits- they traveled to
Minneapolis and then I sent them 3 hours north to a friend’s cabin. They snowmobiled, sauna’ d, ran across an icy
lake and just had some quality guy time. (I think some beer was involved).
February is a big birthday month in our family and this year
was an epic 5th birthday celebration for Blake and Leslie with a
family trip to Disney World. Nothing
beats hearing your child say “my heart is full of joy”. Krista also celebrated
a milestone birthday, which includes a yet to be determined vacation of her
choice!
March brought an opportunity to bring a Disney princess to
life in the preschool play of Cinderella.
Blake & Leslie both were cast as mice. Super cute dancing mice.
Q2 (April – June)
Within a day of us getting back from a Kentucky road trip
for Spring Break our dog Libby got very sick.
She had emergency surgery and was in ICU for several days. We spent days and nights taking turns cuddled
up with her at the hospital, but she made it home and is doing well.
You’d think by April we would start to have glimmers of
Spring, but this year we got over a foot of snow on April 14th. Minnesotans called it the soul crushing
spring storm on 2018. Amazingly our kids
made it to school the next day and moms in the neighborhood sent thank you
coffee and doughnuts to the snow plow drivers as a thank you. I don’t think anyone over 18 years old wanted
to have another snow day.
But Spring did come and we got back to biking. This year with a tandem tag along. We can’t be missed around town on this
contraption!
Drew and Leslie attended a princess ball and mom and Blake
spent the evening at the Roller Garden.
I think we all had a great night!
Leslie worked hard at dance throughout the year and we loved
watching her at the Spring recital. This
year Drew took the stage with her as a part of the Dad’s dance.
Blake and Leslie celebrated their first graduation. Golden Years hosted a beautiful event. Afterwards we spent the afternoon at the
local amusement park, Valleyfair.
We kicked off summer with our annual week at Breezy
Point. This year’s trip included the
usual biking, boating and visiting playgrounds.
We added a trip to the ER this year and some derma-bond (aka “skin super
glue”) for Blake’s forehead from one of those playground visits.
Q3 (July – September)
We had a great time in Kentucky for the fourth of July and
even stopped at our favorite Gummy Bear Factory on the way. Drew got to repeat the drive just 2 weeks
later as a chaperone for the church youth group Appalachian Service Project (ASP)
trip to Hancock County, Tennessee. It was an amazing trip and Drew, along with
another adult leader and five senior high youth, built a 16’ x 10’ deck (yes,
to code) for a family who their current deck had mostly rotted away and had no
railing despite a five foot drop off of one end. The family was expecting a new
baby just two weeks after the new deck was completed, which left Drew and the
entire team full of joy knowing the family would be able to spend their time
outdoors safely with their new family member.
Blake and Leslie started Kindergarten. We’ve chosen to send them to a language
immersion school in our school district which happens to be French. As a part of the program the school hires
interns from France (typically recent college graduates) to help in the
classrooms. As a public school they look
for families to host and we signed up to host this fall. We’ve had a great time with Cleménce
living with us. She’s from the Alsace-Lorraine
region of France near Germany. She loves
to cook and she’s been teaching us to bake homemade bread.
Drew got to check off a bucket-list item of seeing his
beloved Aggies play Alabama in Tuscaloosa.
We had a great time catching up with friends who moved from Minnesota
four years ago. We even got to catch up
with one of Drew’s Aggie friends and their family, who was a roommate of Drew’s
after A&M and a groomsman in our wedding, on our way back through
Atlanta.
Q4 (October- December)
Fall can be beautiful in Minnesota and we wanted to get out
and enjoy it so we headed Up North one weekend.
To our surprise one of my favorite musicians, Jim Brickman was in
concert in Grand Rapids about 20 minutes away.
What a treat! It was a small
venue and the kids did remarkably well.
For Fall break we did a quick drive to Louisville and
back. We’ve got it down to a fine art-
when we do the drive in a day we leave early in the morning and can make it in
about 13 hours with three stops. Snacks,
movies and toys are the key! During our visit we also had fun surprising Great
Grandma who didn’t know we were coming, and getting grandma and grandpa’s house
ready for trick-or-treaters on Halloween.
Leslie has been enjoying Performance Dance team and Blake is
enjoying Cub Scouts. So far they’ve done
an egg drop and rocket day through Cub Scouts.
I’m sure they will be doing a race car derby in the Spring. Please share
your tips!
