2020 - In Review

Although I understand why many people are referring to 2020 as a dumpster fire, for my immediate family and me, it wasn't that terrible and actually offered many opportunities we might not have had otherwise. With that said, I recognize that we are incredibly blessed to have good health, good jobs, and good schools for our children. I fully understand that my year's success are just that: mine. Yours may be different, and that is okay. For many, this year was merely one of survival.

Highlights:

• One marathon, one half marathon. I joined a Facebook group for running mamas, and now I'm signed up for a trail Ragnar in May 2021!
• Felix learned to ride a bike.
• Trixie learned to ride a bike.
• Felicia is potty trained!
• Canoeing 88 miles on the Yellowstone River with lots of Eric's extended family.
• Connecting with my big sister, an old friend, and my niece on MarcoPolo.
• Joe Biden won.
• I won tickets for our family to go to Lagoon. We had so much fun!
• I made my own sourdough starter and can now make an adequate loaf of sourdough bread. I like this recipe.
• We got a Costco nearby. There are a handful of things there that I really love, especially the giant bag of spinach for my green smoothies.

Places in 2020:

• Cruise along the western coast of Mexico right before Covid-19 hit the rails. We even got a bonus day aboard the ship.
• Lots of camping, including a couple of nights in Fremont Indian State Park in a tipi, camping near Moab, and camping on Orcas Island in the San Juan Islands.
• A trip to Seattle (and environs) to visit Eric's sister and her family. I am a bit in love with the San Juan Islands.
• Jackson Hole for Thanksgiving. (We defied the CDC.)

Birthdays/Traditions

Same traditions as usual, but this year we added Stockington Day the Monday before the first day of school. It was such a blast, and I can't wait to do it again next year!

Review of 2020 Goals:

• Run a sub-30 5K. DONE!
• Log 400 miles of running (outdoors and treadmill). DONE times 2.5. Yes, I ran over 1000 miles in 2020.
• Catch up on all the books I have downloaded to my Kindle. Ha! Not even close. The problem is that Amazon gives me a free book every month, and I joined a second book group this year!
• Read the Book of Mormon as a family. We gave up on this pretty early. Our little girls just cannot do it. I did read the whole thing, and I think Ike might finish before the new year.
• Start a social media hashtag called #forrealfriday where people take pictures and post about real-life stuff, not just the beautiful stuff. This hasn't caught on quite like I wanted, but we'll keep working on it.
• Crochet 20 beanies for a service project run by a family in our ward. I didn't do this one, but our ward did a service project for them, so I made five and put them with entire bundles for the project.
• Crochet 15 new snowflakes for my Christmas tree. I didn't count how many I did. It may have been 15? It may have been 10? I genuinely do not know.

2021 Goals:

• Run another marathon (or two, or three).
• Keep teaching my kids to cook. (Before the reinstatement of tighter lockdown (which, to be fair is hardly tight at all compared to other places), each of my kids helped me cook one night a week, and they got to have a friend over that night. It was working really well, and they were learning real skills besides just, getting food out for me.)
• Read daily with my kids. This should be a thing we do already, but we just don't. Sometimes we will check books out from the library, and I never even crack them open.
• Reinstate dates with our kids.

2020 focused a lot on myself, especially in regards to training. I am looking forward to being more mindful about the time I spend with my kids going into 2021.

Felix is Eight!

Felix turned 8 in early October. He was baptized later in the month, which was a special day for us. It happened to be right before our state again toughened up on gathering limits. We were able to have many family members present for his baptism, and then we wore masks at our home afterwards for a lunch.

Felix's big accomplishments in the last year have been:

• improving his reading
• learning to ride a bike
• beginning piano lessons
• learning more board games
• becoming a better hiker

He still loves to set up intricate and detailed battles with his army guys and often invites friends over to do so. Felix also enjoys playing outside with his friends in the field (usually football, but I believe other sports are in the mix), playing video games with his friends, and watching Studio C and Mark Rober. Lately he and his brother are also into Coyote Peterson. He also loves Legos and Minecraft.

Felix and Ike watch so much Studio C that they are often regale us with their own narrations of the the show's funniest sketches. I believe the Studio C cast is funnier. A few weeks ago we were telling the boys about the plot of It's A Wonderful Life when Felix informed us there is a sketch about that! (We showed them the real movie; they thought it was alright.) Then, last week Felix found me in the kitchen and started telling me about this hilarious sketch with a band singing a song called "Gary's Girl," which is a spoof of "Jesse's Girl." He was not as impressed with the actual song.

This year at Felix's annual checkup we learned he is smaller than usual. That visit has been followed up with visits with an endocrinologist, who refers to himself as Felix's "growth coach." Felix is such a fan of fruits and vegetables that it is hard to get fat on his bones! We have introduced many high-fat and high-protein items into his diet, but I still have to remind him daily to eat at least one "gain weight snack." He'd rather just eat a plain apple than have apple in a yummy dipping sauce. He still remains my least picky eater, which is lovely. He finally lost some teeth just before turning 8! This coincides with being a very late teether as a baby. (He got his first two teeth at 11 months and then nothing else until about 18 months, when he got six at once.)

For his birthday we went bowling at Fat Cats with just our family. It was a fun night out together.

I love Felix's logical and inquisitive nature. He likes to know how things work, and thinks practically. For the most part he does his household jobs quickly and efficiently so he can do the fun stuff sooner. We stared the year off with kid dates with the parents. Those fizzled somewhere along the way, but here's a photo from an early one with the two of us to the ropes course at the Museum of Natural Curiosity.

Due to Covid, our boys entered the world of babysitting much earlier than anyone would have guessed. The boys are quite good at caring for their sisters, even if their sisters are not great at being cared for. Felix loves to save his money and is so conscientious about spending it wisely. He scrimped and saved all spring and summer for a child-size kayak. They were constantly sold out. We looked at getting a used one and just couldn't luck out. Felix loved borrowing from friends when we were there with a huge group of people this summer. He was so patient to take his sister out over and over again. Luckily, we found a great deal on one on Black Friday, so he has one now! It was a big surprise for him on Christmas morning.

Last year was Felix's first year to play Junior Jazz basketball. His confidence far exceeded his skills. At one game when I was shouting at him to go down court (instead of trying to play full court press) he looked at me and yelled, "I KNOW HOW TO PLAY BASKETBALL!" All the parents got a good laugh from that (and also agreed with me, that, no, he does not know how to play basketball.) There were many times that he lobbed the ball in the general direction of the net, then turned around and started celebrating what he was sure was a goal. (It usually wasn't.) Despite these challenges, I signed him up for another round for 2021.

I sure do love my Felix. I am enjoying (mostly) working with him on the piano, and I love to hear him come up with creations all on his own. He has a great ear for music, and he'd rather learn to play by memory than reading music. (He is Eric's child in this regard.) He's been cooking with me more this year, which is also a great experience. I'm excited to see how he develops and grows over the next year, but I'm pretty sure he'll stay 8 forever.