A New Year

We are glad to start another year and move on past the holidays. I love the Holidays because they keep me busy, but they also keep me pudgy and poor. We had a great time together,though. I have a whole new set of fond Christmas memories after this season. My brothers Schuyler and Jamin came to visit. They have a fabulous sense of humor, so we did a lot of joking around and tried to tone down the board games for Schuyler's benefit. I felt very close to them, which is great because it is generally hard to achieve that due to the distance (they live in Chicago along with my other brother Collin). We spent time with Joel's family, too before Christmas for his brother Kris's graduation Dec. 22ish. It was fun to see them all since we were unable to go to Oregon and Washington to visit them. Lilly loved having so many grandparents and fans around. She loved them even more when she was allowed to play with the presents they left her under the tree. She loved the wrapping paper! (and the presents themselves, of course:) The Christmas holiday itself was spent with my siblings, mother, and numerous nieces and nephews. It was great! We played games, ate delectable food, ate some more, and played some more. Christmas morning Joel, Lilly, me and Michon (Joel's sister) opened presents at our house and had breakfast. It was very nice to be able to relax and focus on enjoying our daughter's first Christmas with her. This year was unique and special in that we didn't have quite the abundance as usual so we made do with mostly hand-made gifts or a few small store bought ones. I was worried it wouldn't be very exciting, but it definitely was. Lilly especially had so many gifts that we all took turns opening them or helping her open them, which took quite some time. What we did receive was cherished more than usual and we were more aware of the sacrifice and love that came with each gift. I truly only wanted to give more and not receive. I knew that would finally happen one day! Joel was so sweet about my simple gift to him. He is always grateful no matter what. He is always my favorite gift. It was initially hard this season when I realized we couldn't do what we generally do, but it turned out to be a great blessing. I definitely developed a greater talent for knitting, cooking, decorating, and being thrifty and creative. I stretched these abilities to the max! I also realized that we have a beautiful family that would never bat at eyelash at a homemade gift that might not be their favorite. Everyone was so very loving and sweet. I was constantly tearing up by everyones kindness and sincere gratitude. For these reasons and more, I loved the Christmas season this year!
On to other bits of info many of you don't know about our life:
Joel got ANOTHER job offer as a web designer! He really wanted this job for a while and was waiting to hear back. He heard back at the beginning of Dec. and quit his other jobs to work full time for Yellowstone Hotel Systems. He designs hotel websites and builds their web pages. He loves his job! He's learning a lot and will be more qualified for other jobs in a similar field when we eventually move. Lilly is doing well. She is still semi crawling, but just not forward. The last few days she has been exceptionally tumbly. She will go from sitting to laying down to a crawling position to sitting all on her own! Lilly has also recently discovered how to stiffen her body and throw herself backwards when she is mad. She is perfecting the art of tantrums and she is only 8 months old today! We have a long road ahead of us. Lillia is also fond of grown up food more than usual. She wants whatever anyone else has. She's feeding herself anything I give her, but especially bananas, peas, apple chunks, crackers, and bread. I am sure she would willingly try pigs feet if I put it on her tray, but I will wait on that one.
I am keeping busy with our own sort of visual family history. Since our computer crashed and took with it all of our pictures, I am now gathering every picture I can find for the last 3 years. I am cropping, editing, organizing, copying, printing, and saving anything I find. I am even going to put our first pictures of Lilly up in our house! I also haven't done a baby book for Lilly yet, so that is also part of this month long project. I like to be busy, especially if I can use any creative talents. Besides that, the only thing I'm really looking forward to is turning 25 on the 16th so that our insurance will drop a little after my little car wreck a few months ago.
All in all, our family is doing quite well. We're developing life skills that will help us immensely in the future. We set attainable goals that will bring us closer to our savior this year. Despite any mishaps that have come our way, we are happy and excited to be living life in the way that we are. We truly do have an overabundance of Life's greatest necessities!