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Merry Christmas 2023

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Has it been a year already? What a year it's been. Because of the normal/abnormal craziness, I asked each of the families/individuals to write their own blurb this year (and added some of our thoughts too).  Vance Throughout 2023, the family joyously settled into their newly purchased 1927 home in Springville, Utah, benefitting from the previous owners' renovations. Despite encountering minor setbacks like water damage early on, they relished becoming part of the community. Vance, working as a sales operations manager, dedicated his year to conquering trail races, winning a 25k and securing third place in a marathon before celebrating his 31st birthday by running 31 miles. Afterward, he opted for a running hiatus. Katelynn embraced motherhood, cherishing moments with Livi and Parker, exploring parks, museums, and mastering sourdough baking. Olivia excelled as a big sister, enjoying swimming despite disliking putting her face underwater, starting preschool, and proudly participa
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Merry Christmas 2022

I love Christmas letters! I feel old fashioned but I love writing them and I love reading them. I love recapping the year and remembering the highlights. I've thought a lot about how to do this but for me, I like doing it by each child so here it goes: Vance and Katelynn live in American Fork and work at Vivint in Provo. Vance had a busy year of outdoor running. Katelynn spent the better part of the year growing a baby. She worked three days a week so she could spend two days a week at home with Olivia. Not only did Olivia turn three in November, but she became a big sister to Parker Lynn who was born on the 23rd. We love this sweet addition and can't wait to meet her in person.  Marly and Hayden spent the year finishing up Hayden's optometry schooling and rotations in Oregon and then Lake Havasu and are currently in Utah before heading to Idaho. It was fun having them close for a while and spending time with them and their cute boys. James turned four in July and Alex turn
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The Headache That Never Ends

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Will it ever end? I've stopped wondering actually. I'm trying to live life as if they are here to stay so my new goal is to #suckitup like I always tell my kids.  My most recent hypothesis was spurred on by a class I was taking as part of the Professional Development that my company offered. We were given the opportunity to take a class through Arizona Trauma Institute . It was a class called Trauma and Resilience Life Coaching and it was AMAZING. There was a lot of sciience and stuff to learn about in the beginning but if I had to explain my takeaway in one sentence, it would be this: Trauma and Toxic Stress can look the same and when a person experiences one of them, their body sometimes reacts with physiological responses that affect behavior and THIS IS NORMAL.    The critical part of that is that it is a normal reaction . While it is and will be incredibly helpful to my job as a teacher of students in an online high school , it also became very personal.  For many of the e
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Summer Goals

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Anny had a great idea to plan our summer around the youth goal setting pattern. You can find more about that HERE . It has been nice knowing that each day there was a plan (or at least we tried.)  We picked a day for each of the areas of improvement; physical, social, spiritual and intellectual. Some of our plans worked out easily and others didn't go so well. Sometimes we combined plans to make them work.  For example, the physical days were hard (you thought that would be easy for us didn't you?) Going to the pool took a quick detour when our grandson broke his leg and was in a cast. It's too hot to do much more than go swimming, but we tried. On our vacations, we did a lot of walking and hiking. As for myself, I spent a lot of time on the river. Would you believe that I could get almost 60 minutes of exercise paddling my arms and walking to and from the car? Ben and I walked almost every day before Derek and Anny would wake up. Intellectual was probably the hardest for D
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I Love Being a Woman

I feel eternally grateful to have been born a woman. I feel like my opinion is unpopular at times, but spending time this weekend learning more about the journey of Joseph Smith and the restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ has caused me to reflect on how much value I have as a woman, especially a woman in the LDS church.  During our trek this week, we watched several re-enactments or vignettes portraying major events that took place after Joseph Smith prayed to know what church he should join. It was touching and thought-provoking as we considered ourselves witnesses to these events and were given questions to think about and ponder on our own.  My favorite vignette was actually a video about Emma Smith, Joseph's wife, and the struggles and trials she endured as she supported her husband and her faith in the Lord. I sobbed as I thought about how much she must have felt when her parents didn't support her marriage and as she lost babies to sickness and disease. How terrifyi
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Three Months Post Op; The Headache Saga

It's been three months since my nose surgery to alleviate the headaches. I'm down to one per day still, sometimes two. I notice that dehydration, lack of sleep, and dryness (in my nose) are headache triggers. I now sleep with a humidifier and carry around a saline mist bottle that I attempt to use discreetly. If you ever see me without my water bottle, ask me where it is. My goal is to get 100oz per day but I'm allowing myself one 44oz diet Pepsi per day too for my sanity. The ENT is still confident these headaches are nasal related. Our next working theory is allergies. I've been to the allergist to be tested. I'm moderately allergic to everything in our AZ air so that's super helpful or not. I've been on a prescription nasal spray for about a month now. That doesn't seem to help as much as we hoped, so tomorrow I will start adding another prescription spray and pray for the best.  I'll also start the food journal again soon. The allergy testing did
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One Month Later and The Real Bloody Nose Story

Today marks one-month post-surgery. I'm still glad I did it although there have been a few days that I have not been glad.  The headaches are better. I only have about one per day and generally, the pain level is much lower than it used to be. I'll take it. But why am I still having them? That's the question we still need an answer to. I did have a friend suggest that I could be having rebound headaches. I went cold turkey off my Tylenol and ibuprofen and two days later I had the bloody nose from hell. I mentioned it to my doctor and he said he didn't think that was the cause so I'll never know.  My nose is still tender and painful but I'm allowed to blow it again (who thought I would be excited about that?). I am still taking the migraine medicine Gabapentin but I don't think it is working and I hate it. I'll admit that I'm now paranoid to take Tylenol or Ibuprofen and during the day, I often try to wait the headache out before I take one Naproxen a
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