And we are back! Aka picture overload

It has been almost a year since I have done a blog post! But it is not without good reason and definitely not because we haven't had anything going on in our lives. The main and simple reason that I have not done a blog post is well, because we haven't had a computer for a good 9 months. It was a strange time in our lives, ha ha. When we moved at the end of May our computer pooped out on us about the same time. Since we had just spent our lives away on buying a home, plus some unexpected expenses on things like car repairs, home improvement, etc, we just kept putting it off. We are not the most money smart people, but we don't use a credit card and we refuse to finance most things, so that's how we went a good 9 months with no computer. We both have smart phones, so it wasn't like we had no internet connection or anything. But here we are, with a new computer and now I can pick up my blog.

It really is a shame that our computer died because I use this blog mostly just for myself as a sort of record keeping kind of thing and I am pretty sure only maybe 3 people read this. But for you 3 people, and for myself, here are some things that happened in the last year. Ready for an overload?

Almost a year ago, my sweet Grandmas passed away at 93 years old. I think I will do a separate blog post on this next month, but it was very hard on me and my family. My Grandma was old and in often in pain and I know she is at rest and free now, but it doesn't make me miss her any less. She had a beautiful funeral and graveside service. I am just grateful to have had her as long as I did and to be as close to her as I was. I am grateful that Gavin got to meet his Great Grandma Haney, and I am grateful to have her as my guardian angel now.

Even though my Grandma Haney is gone, we are so grateful that we can still enjoy visits from Grandpa Haney. My Grandma's passing has been so hard on my Grandpa. He moved to a senior residency in Twin Falls and we are going to visit him this weekend actually. I wish we could go up more because I want to cherish my time with my Grandpa while I can.

This past year we had all these grand plans of camping all summer long, but instead we decided to move! So that ate up a lot of our money and time, but right before we moved (like a week before because we are crazy) we still got to sneak in a trip to Moab with some of my siblings. Moab is and will always be one of my favorite places and I think we have gone every year since being married. This trip was particularly fun because Gavin had so many cousins to play with and he just loves being outside. Everything with kids is just more fun.

This picture cracks me up! Snot and sand.

Even though we were pretty busy and were pretty broke last summer, we still made time for all the fun stuff. We went to lots of parades and had a lot of BBQs with family. 

 Centerville City 4th of July Parade

 4th of July at the Miller's annual party

 Provo Falls/Mirror lake day trip

 Bountiful Handcart Days Parade

One of the cooler things we did this summer was make the drive up to Idaho to see the total solar eclipse. We had planned to do it months in advance and had arranged an overnight babysitter for Gavin and everything. We had planned to drive up and sleep in the back of our Subaru (to avoid crazy hotel prices) and then just drive home the next day. Well, just before we were going to leave our Subaru ended up needing car repairs that we couldn't immediately do, so we ended up driving up and coming home in the same day in our other car. It kind of felt like everything was telling us to not go, but we were spontaneous and went anyways and it was so worth it! The drive up was not bad at all but the drive down took maybe 8 hours for what is normally a 3 hour drive. It was the most awe inspiring, amazing, beautiful experience of my life. It felt unreal, and yet it was such a memorable moment that I will never forget it in all my life. It 100% exceeded my expectations and I hope to see one again in my life. 

By far the biggest thing this year has been our move. A little backstory will help understand the significance and amount of work it took. In almost all of our marriage we have lived in someone else's house. We lived in a little apartment for the first 6 months, then one year house sitting for my sister and her husband, and then the last 3 years with my parents in my brothers house. Yes it is a little confusing and strange. We were grateful for the opportunity to live in nice homes and all the help it brought us but we soon became very eager to just live on our own. We were very ready to just live in a space that was ours only and that didn't have anyone else's stuff in it. Finally it was time for us to look for houses and we were so excited! But our excitement quickly diminished when the financial reality of buying a home hit us hard. When Sam and I first started dreaming of buying a home we were both working full time and did not have Gavin yet. Also, the housing market was still definitely a buyer's market and homes were pretty affordable. In only about 18 months from the time I quit working and we had Gavin the housing market totally changed. Home prices jumped and we had a lot less money to work with being on one income. Despite all of that we were able to find something that worked for us. It was a bit of a stretch but we felt right about buying instead of renting. Unfortunately that meant that we needed to look at places that we never thought we would end up, which took us to good old Harrisville. About a month before our move we moved my parents out of the Centerville house into a condo and to make a long story short it was a very long and epic move. By the time it was our turn to move we were already kind of burned out. We did a lot of painting before we moved in because the ceilings were brown and everything needed new paint. We are so close to being done painting but we still haven't finished! We have the stairwell and upstairs hallway to go and we just haven't been able to bring ourselves to finish.

It has been hard to be further than I am used to from my family because we do so much with them, but it also has been so good for Sam and I to be totally on our own again and focus on our little family without being quite so involved in everyone else's. We ended up in a town home, which was not my first choice, but was the best thing for us in what we could afford. I love having our own space. I like that where we live is newer, which means bigger closets and bedrooms. I like that we don't have a basement that will flood and that we don't have yard up keep and stuff like that. But on the flip side I am so sad that we don't have a yard to play in anymore. We were so spoiled before to always have nice backyards and a vegetable garden and patios for entertaining. So while we are liking our new home it is definitely not where we want to be forever but for now we are happy. 

Last night at the Centerville house, Gavin has an orange in his mouth :)

We spend a lot of time at the Ogden Treehouse Museum, at least we did this past summer.

We finally got to visit Grandpa Haney at his new apartment for his 96th birthday in July.

Pioneer Day part at Ben and Melodie's house, it was so fun and reminded me of the parties we had at my house growing up complete with street fireworks and everything.

In attempt to check out more things by our house we went to the Weber County Fair and had a blast, we will for sure go back next year and maybe get something more exciting to eat than these giant corn dogs.

Fall finally came after a long, hot, somewhat stressful, summer. And those who know me know that I love everything about Fall. It also helps that Gavin's birthday is in October so that makes it all the more fun. We had our annual trip to Logan to watch the USU Homecoming came. Fun fact, Gavin really could not have cared less about the football game (we aren't really football people) but he absolutely loved the marching band at half time, which made Sam's band nerd heart so proud.

Our future Aggie!

Grandma Pam's Ward Halloween Party

We had a pretty great Fall and basically celebrated Halloween 200 times will all the trunk or treats that occur now days. Seriously, why are there so many trunk or treats? We had like 50 pounds of candy that our 2 year old acquired before Halloween, not to mention the actual candy that he got on the actual holiday.

On October 28th Gavin turned 2 years old! I am so sad that I didn't get to do a whole blog post on its own for his birthday. We has such a fun day (aside from me and Gavin both being a little sick) with our family. We had a farm party at Wheeler Farm where we ate lunch, played with cousins, ate cupcakes, opened presents, played games, hit open a pinata, and of course looked at all the farm animals. It was a beautiful warm sunny day and such a fun birthday. We love our little man so much and he is so much fun. He is crazy, rambunctious, sweet, smart, and literally the light of my life.

Then just 3 days later  we got to actually celebrate Halloween (as opposed to the 200 times we had already celebrated it). The start of the day was great. I had put my full mom skills to use and made Gavin the most adorable, if I do say so myself, cow costume. Gavin loves cows and used to talk about an allusive baby cow all the time. So I thought that a baby cow would be the perfect costume and I was pretty happy with how it ended up. Gavin looked crazy adorable and had the time of his life. Unfortunately I developed a terrible case of the stomach flu as the night went on. Of course we had overbooked ourselves and went to 4 different places in order to see as much of our family as possible on top of already taking Gavin to Sam's work earlier in the day. By the time we made it to my parents at the end of the night I was feverish and ready to puke. It was a fun night but I learned the lesson that now that we live further away, we might have to start doing some holiday things without our families, especially when one of us is sick.

After spending almost the entire month of November with the terrible stomach flu that went around we were finally mostly better by the time Thanksgiving came around. I was glad because we had multiple rounds of throw up nights. It felt like it was either me, Sam, or Gavin that was sick all night long and we just kept cycling through being sick. So we were happy to enjoy a delicious Thanksgiving feast without worrying about it coming back up after. We had Thanksgiving at my brother Matt's new house in Farmington. He smoked the turkey and I must say it was the best tasting turkey I have ever had.

Then came the Holidays. December has become kind of a double edged sword for me. I love Christmas and all the family time but sometimes it can be a lot and pretty stressful. I have tried to scale back on the time commitments and unnecessary things in order to actually enjoy Christmas. This year I think I did a pretty good job of that. This year I also felt like I went full on mom for the holidays in sending out Christmas cards and doing neighbor gifts. For the last 3 years I had lived with my Mom and kind of let her take on that role, but this year it was all me and I kind of liked it. We ended up having a great month and were able to do the things we wanted without overdoing it.

My Mom has started a party where Santa is always a surprise visitor at the end of the night and the kids love it! He is the real deal ;) Another fun fact, my child loves Santa Claus and is totally that kid that calls every man with a beard Santa. He loves pretty much anything in character like mascots and things like that. He still talks about Big Blue from the USU football game 6 months ago.

On the Prusse side we have an annual bingo party where Sam's mom Julie buys a billion tiny presents and we all get to unwrap one every time we get bingo. It is one of our favorite traditions. Of course we also have a little nativity dress up and this year Gavin was the cutest little shepherd.

Utah had such a mild winter this year, but we had a Christmas miracle and it snowed a few days before Christmas. We made the most of it and took Gavin out to play.

First Snowman

Lights at Temple Square

We actually celebrated Christmas at our own house on Christmas Eve and chose to spend the night at Sam's parents for Christmas morning. Even though we only live about 40 minutes away, it can be a lot of driving on Holidays and we really wanted to just enjoy the day and not worry about weather or being late to anything.

So Gavin was lucky and got two Christmas mornings and between us and both our families he was sure spoiled. We are always spoiled each Christmas. It was fun to wake up at Sam's parents and I think they liked having a grand child at their house in the morning. We spent the morning at the Prusses, then we drove to Sandy to visit my Mom's cousin Shirley, and then spent the evening at my sister's to eat our annual Bethlehem dinner.

When we were growing up my family used to visit my great Aunt June and her daughter Shirley every Christmas. June passed away when I was in high school, but we kept on visiting Shirley. It is one of my most vivid childhood memories and sadly I have never taken Sam there on Christmas. She has the most amazing collection of Christmas things and so it was really fun and special to finally take Sam and Gavin there. Gavin was in Christmas heaven and ate a lot of candy.

My birthday was on December 31st and I turned 31. People kept saying "It's you golden birthday!" and I was like yeah... because I had no idea what that meant until the end of the day. Ha ha ha, I felt like an idiot. If I had realized that was special I would have planned something bigger. Honestly it was a pretty great birthday. The day before Sam and I went to dinner and a movie and just enjoyed a child free night. My birthday was actually on a Sunday so we went to church and at first I thought that would suck the fun out of it but actually it made it great. Everyone was telling me happy birthday which made me feel pretty special. After church I got to snuggle Gavin for his nap and he fell asleep in my arms which was sweet because he almost never does that anymore. Then we had my parents and my sister an her family over for just a low key night. We had noise makers and sparklers for the kids, which we did at like 9 pm. We just spent the night eating shrimp and other good food and fit a giant and impossible puzzle that we didn't end up finishing until like 2 weeks later. Everyone went home around 10 and we rang in the new year quietly just the two of us and I kind of liked it that way. Unfortunately we did not take any pictures, but oh well. That's how simple and low key the day and night was.

Valentine's Day

Gavin snuggling his stuffed ice cream cone that he got for Valentine's Day

February is always a busy month for us because in one week we have 4 birthdays. But this year I felt like I was really prepared and it ended up not being too stressful. For Sam's birthday we had a great day just spending time as a family. We saw the movie Black Panther (not with Gavin) and ate dinner at Maddox which is always delicious!

So now we are all caught up. We are ready and excited for spring! So goodbye winter, you have been great to us but now we are ready for some new warm weather adventures!