Merry Christmas and Happy new year everyone! We had a wonderful year as a family. We kicked it off by welcoming home Jacob Killpack from his mission!
Kyle and I each started off with some good, solid goals, which always keeps things interesting.
We wanted to get into better shape. Kyle tackled this issue by joining a HaiDong GumDo class to learn Korean sword fighting. He stayed with it for 7 months and advanced quickly and passed his brown belt test. He likely would have kept at it, but in February we found out we were pregnant. His class was down in Midvale, so he decided to move on for the time being and use the commute time in other ways. Pregnancy also interfered with my exercise goals. I started out the year running and rollerblading. I really enjoyed rollerblading, and William loved being pushed so fast in the stroller, but the bigger I got the more dangerous it became. I switched to walking, and I think I likely logged several hundred miles walking around our beautiful little city. My friend Aundrea Carlson joined me a couple times a week, and we had a great time. Now Aundrea is looking forward to a new edition in her family, so we’ll likely be walking regularly in 2016 as well. Maybe I’ll actually keep track of my miles this time around.
We also started out the year pushing through the paperwork for our adoption. The picture above is Kyle grinning as we finally put everything in an envelope to send to our agency. We decided to adopt in the fall of 2014, but we didn’t really dig in until Christmas time and it took us a loooooong time to get the paperwork done. Part of that is because we’ve both moved around so much. We were required to get background checks and child abuse checks in every country and state that we’ve ever lived in and every city that we’ve lived in over the last five years. We even had to get a notarized affidavit saying that our 2-year-old son is not a sex offender. We needed letters from all of our doctors, from both our employers, and letters of recommendation from friends and family. We had to take pictures of our house, all around the outside and in almost every room inside. (Imagine how much cleaning and gardening we’re talking about here.) It took forever.
In the end we had 70 pages of signed, notarized, and apostilled documents. By October they were translated and sent over to Eastern Europe. Now we are just waiting for a match. We’re hoping to get our baby home by the end of this year, but it’s impossible to tell how that will go. It could be anywhere from 6 to 36 months. We’ve got our fingers crossed! Pray for us and our baby!
We grew a little garden again, but this year we were able to put it in our back yard. We didn’t get as much from it this year as we did last year, but since I was 9 months pregnant for canning season, and enormous for most of the growing season we thought it might be wise to cut back.
Our first crop of blackberries were HUGE.
Our blueberry bushes grew enough for me to make several batches of homemade muffins. I’ve got my fingers crossed for even more next year.
Our peach tree grew it’s first peach, and it was delicious.
The apricot tree bloomed too early and the buds froze. We still have plenty of apricots and jam from last year, though, so I was kinda happy about it.
In the springtime we got to see Jens, Joe, and Jacob launch some rockets. They built the rockets, the launch, and the ignition box and then wrote a program to run it, all over spring break.
They even 3D printed the ignition switch box. It was pretty fun to watch.
We took William to the zoo with Great-Grandma Brandt.
He really enjoyed himself.
We were actually home for the Fourth of July this year.
My parents came down from Logan and watched the parade with us from our lawn.
We took Kyle’s family with us to Grandma Gee’s cabin for the 24th of July and hiked Intermittent Springs.
This is not a flattering picture of me, but cut me some slack. I just hiked up a mountain, 7-months pregnant.
We started potty training William after that trip. This is a picture of him with his brand-new, Lightening McQueen Underwear.
Soon after that the baby was born! Honestly we didn’t do much but potty training until she came, haha.
And soon after that, Beka left on her mission!
We had the baby’s blessing the beginning of November. The weather was absolutely beautiful, and it was so fun to have our families over for the occasion.
I hand-quilted a wholecloth blanket for the baby’s blessing, and I finished it at midnight the night before, haha. Goal accomplished!
Winter finally arrived and it came with a bang. All in all a pretty awesome year.
