Snapshot 2016

For years, I have written snapshots of the routines, habits, milestones and quirks that make up our current moment in time. I document events with way too many photos regularly, but the purpose of these written snapshots is to remind us in the future what life was like "way back then." 

The original idea was to write the snapshot at the beginning of each school year, but it has progressively crept further and further back into the fall. This year I haven't been able to get my act together before now, so here we are in March.

I started writing this to be a snapshot back at the end of last year. I was almost done when Christmas break hit and I never got the chance to post it, so let's just go back in time for a minute and pretend it's still fall.

Here we go:

Blake makes his breakfast and lunch and is usually ready to go before I even get up in the morning. 

Nash needs some reminders to eat breakfast and we go through a battle every morning trying to think of things he will actually eat for lunch. He prefers hot foods over sandwiches. He has a thermos that we often put leftovers in.

Blake and Nash walk to and from school together. They leave at 7:40am and get home around 2:30pm. Crew cries if he doesn't get to hug each of them individually before they walk out the door. He runs down the path for those hugs when his brothers forget and rush out the door. 

The boys spend a lot of time playing in our alley. We are blessed to have friends they can play with on our street. On one particularly hot day, they needed to get some energy out so I sent them outside. I laughed when I saw that they had created a shady retreat.

Blake responds to texts for me when I'm driving or busy, but not without the use of approximately 67 emojis.

Blake loves to help cook. He can make grilled cheese sandwiches all by himself.

Blake started watching the cooking show Chopped with Troy when he was home recovering from surgery this summer. One of Blake's favorite things to do now is create concoctions with random ingredients.

Blake's grandparents gave us an extra apple peeler they had lying around a few months ago and Blake uses it every single day without fail. 

He usually whips it out of the cupboard immediately upon arriving home from school.

It not only peels apples but it slices them into one long curly piece. I get sick of cleaning up the cores and peels every day, but I can think of worse snacks he could be addicted to.

Blake's two front teeth have been out for almost a year and a half. The dentist can see his permanent teeth in X-rays, but we're starting to wonder if they will ever poke through. He has since lost 4 more teeth so he basically looks like a jack-o-lantern.

Troy and I both try to take the boys on regular one-on-one dates, even if it's something simple like getting ice cream. 

Blake is a full-fledged cub scout. 

Troy volunteers as the Cubmaster which means he plans monthly meetings involving several packs, or all of the scouts ages 8-11. I get lost when they start painting faces, talking about the wind and crossing mini bridges for advancements, but Blake loves everything about it.

Blake and Nash's favorite movie is The LEGO Brickumentary. There was a time when they watched that documentary on repeat and Nash says he wants to be a LEGO engineer when he grows up.

We joined The LEGO Store VIP club which means we can participate in exclusive monthly LEGO builds. The problem is, I have to sign up online on the 15th of each previous month in order to guarantee spots. If I don't add their names to the list first thing in the morning, the spots are all gone. And despite putting reminders in my phone, I frequently forget to sign them up until it's too late. The boys loved attending LEGO builds the few times we did get on the list early enough. They give them each a small kit that can be built in the store and then they get to bring it home with them.

Blake and Nash are at the ages where it's really fun to play games with them. We play the card games Golf and Scum on a regular basis. They love all board games but their favorites are Ticket to Ride, Settlers of Catan Jr. and Sheriff of Nottingham.

We rarely have a weeknight where we don't have any after school activities. Between Blake's piano lessons, swim team practices and cub scout meetings and Nash's basketball and baseball practices, we are always on the go. And we only have two boys with commitments so far! Thankfully, their school starts and gets out early, so most of the boys' activities are done before dinnertime.

The hours between dinnertime and bedtime are pure crazy town. We make sure to get all homework and piano practicing done immediately after school because if we wait till later on we have no chance of focus and cooperation. Crew and Finn usually do laps around our kitchen island on their wiggle cars while I'm trying to load the dishwasher. Blake and Nash rotate between pillow fights, light saber duels or wrestling matches. Having a yard to send them out to play in was definitely a luxury; we dream of having one again someday.

Troy is much more efficient at bedtime than me. I linger in each room, tidying up and making sure dirty clothes are in baskets and new clothes are set out for the next day. I let the boys read. I lose focus and get overwhelmed sending instructions to get pajamas on, brush teeth and pick up toys in all directions. But Troy gets the job done with no fuss. Pajamas, teeth brushed, prayers and lights out lickety split. It may look like a tornado the next morning, but he can get them to bed in a third of the time it takes me.

Nash loves when I snuggle with him at bedtime. I love it too, but it's just not realistic to add an extra 10-15 minutes of snuggling each night. So, I told him we could snuggle on a weekend night each week. He holds me to that promise and asks almost every night which night is our snuggle night.

The elementary principal called me to give a "good news report" on Nash. It scared me at first when I heard her voice on the other end, but she assured me that she was calling because Nash's teacher had been really impressed with how much he was excelling in math and reading. It also "knocked her socks off" when Nash volunteered a well-thought out answer when she asked the class what the definition of equality was.

Nash has been really brave with sharing some of our religious beliefs with friends at school.

In general, the boys have been healthier this fall than they were last year. Finn usually only lasts two weeks in between sicknesses, but the older boys seem to be faring better. Nash has only missed one or two days of school which is amazing considering what last fall was like. That doesn't mean we don't still do breathing treatments galore for their asthma though. They are so used to having the masks on it doesn't even phase them anymore. Even Finn doesn't resist as much as he used to. We amp up the treatments via nebulizer at the first sign of a sniffle or cough to avoid trips to the hospital. When Nash and Crew are healthy, we switch over to maintenance with an inhaler which is so much quicker.

Our three month supply of medications for one child is daunting. Multiply those boxes by three and that's how much we go through. 

We have been in the habit of calling Crew and Finn "the babies" for so long. We're trying to switch over to calling them "the littles" since at ages three and two they really aren't babies anymore. But it's a tough habit to break.

It has been a long-time question amongst moms whether having a two-year-old or a three-year-old is harder. I'm here to report that it's the hardest when you have both. When you're not reasoning with one you're reasoning with the other and it seems like one of them is always having a tantrum about something or other. Or sometimes they are simultaneously having tantrums. Don't even get me started on the picky eating battles.

Sometimes Crew puts on his brothers' backpacks or headphones. He wants to be just like them. He is getting to the age where it's harder to leave him out of activities that are meant for the older boys. He just always wants to be a part of what they are doing.

Crew is the only one in our family who calls Blake "Blakey" and me "mommy" instead of mom. I love it.

Crew's nap is almost completely phased out. I still send him to his room for quiet time each afternoon, but it doesn't last long since he hears his older brothers get home from school at 2:30pm.

We waited until we were in a regular school routine to start potty training Crew. I had to laugh at the sticker chart I created for him to track his progress. I whipped out a piece of scrap paper, flipped it over and wrote "Crew Potty" on it. That's it. It was nothing like the elaborate poster board sized train chart I hand drew when we were going through the process with Blake. There were no prizes and half of the time we didn't even remember to add a sticker. Definitely third child syndrome. I wonder if child number four will even get a chart. But you know what? It did the trick.

Crew was pretty proud of that filled up chart.

Crew's favorite part of using the bathroom on his own is the handwashing. We bought him a little step stool and he spends 5-10 minutes lathering and rinsing his hands.

Crew's love for babies continues on. All of his preschool buddies gained a baby sister this year and he is often found oohing and ahhing over the babies instead of playing with his friends during free time at preschool. We laughed that he was "sister shopping" when all of the babies were lined up at a birthday party.

Which one, which one?

Crew dotes on his new baby cousin.

Crew and Finn often tap their sippy cups together at meals and say, "Cheers!" I have no idea where they got that from.

Crew and Finn can not get enough of the TV show Umizoomi. The characters in the show are robots who solve math problems having to do with shapes, patterns and counting. There are also gizmos that have switches that turn from "make clean" to "make mess" mode. They are great motivation because if I speak the words, "Make clean, make clean" to the boys in a robotic voice, they immediately dive in and start picking up toys.

When Finn gets mad, he roars at you like a lion.

We discovered that when we ask Finn to say the word "Ikea," he won't say it, but instead, he moves his jaw up and down repeatedly. The boys and I often have a good laugh at dinner requesting, "Finn, say Ikea!" over and over.

Finn calls firetrucks "woo-woo" based on the noise they make. If we happen to pass one, Finn excitedly exclaims, "I see a woo-woo!"

We gave Crew's hand me down nie-nights to Finn since Crew clung more to his binky as a baby than he did to loveys. We thought it was the greatest idea to have a couple of spares around the house in case we couldn't find one at bedtime. Little did we know, that just encouraged Finn to get attached to all three nie-nights. It's a little out of control how he insists on bringing them everywhere and he cries and cries if he doesn't have them all at bedtime.

I only sneak one nie-night away at a time to wash, but Finn always notices when he's down one. He cries and sits on the drier until the washer cycle is finished. When I hand the clean nie-night to him, he's so happy to be reunited that he doesn't even care that it's wet. It's rare that his nie-nights ever go in the dryer because he can't bear to be without them that long.

Finn loves wearing shoes. He often asks me to put them on him to wear around the house, even if we aren't going anywhere.

I started cutting the boys' hair myself. Four heads of hair every six weeks was getting expensive, so after watching a few tutorials, I took matters into my own hands. Sometimes they are cooperative and other times they act like they're being tortured. You never know what you're going to get.

We have an iPad and a couple of Kindle Fires for the kids to play games on, but I hide them during the week and only take them out on the weekends.

We can all go on bike rides together now thanks to a secondhand bike I bought for Troy and a bike cart for the littles. I have a beach cruiser with a little seat on the back for Finn as well, so sometimes Crew rides his balance bike and we're all on two wheels. We're looking forward to more daylight when we can go on walks or bike rides in the evenings again.

This probably deserves its own post, but Troy is really private about the fact that he's been on a major health kick this year. He started out doing several weeks of juicing and our garage refrigerator was filled to the brim with fruits and vegetables. At the beginning of the school year, he switched over to tracking macros and weighing all his food in addition to a hardcore workout plan. He prepares his meals for the entire week on Sunday afternoons. His self control is unreal. He has lost 60 pounds so far which is truly remarkable. 

I loved how colorful the fridge looked when he was juicing.

Troy's health awareness doesn't come without sacrifice. He spends two hours at the gym every day except Sunday, which means he usually gets home right when I'm getting the boys ready for bed. The days and especially the dinnertime hours can feel really long for me, alone with four boys. But we're making it work and we have already seen so many benefits from prioritizing Troy's health. We keep saying that we're in this together and we're planning a pretty epic trip next summer to celebrate both of our efforts.

I iron all of Troy's shirts for work and usually have a few items of my own thrown in there as well. I try to stay on top of it but sometimes I don't get to the ironing pile for a couple of weeks. I actually don't mind the task, especially because it's about the only time I turn on the one show I watch (This is Us) or catch up with my best friend on the phone. But the time is so hard to find. This was a particularly long ironing session; three weeks of piled up items. It had to be documented when I was finally finished.

Sometimes when I get really behind on laundry or ironing I beat myself up for not being more on top of it. I also can't stand the clutter. I had a breakdown the day after I returned home from the hospital with Finn because it was one of those times the baskets were still filled with unfolded laundry, five days after they had been washed. Troy told me, "Don't be so hard in yourself, we had a family emergency this week!" I laughed because it seems like we have a family emergency every week. If someone isn't the hospital, someone else is throwing up in his car seat, breaking his arm, smashing a lightbulb against the wall, spilling oil paint on floor, refusing to eat dinner, in need of extra breathing treatments, having potty accidents, flooding the bathroom with bath water or accidentally tangling the tassels of a blanket in the fan creating a fuzz massacre. There's never a dull moment.

While we're talking about disasters, let me share this text I sent to Troy and a few close friends:

I remembered today why I NEVER take all of the boys to Costco. Strangers stopped us in every. single. aisle. to ask, "Are those ALL yours?!" or "What is the age gap between them?" or my favorite, "You are SO lucky it's not four girls!" (while aiming a gun at her head). As if we weren't drawing enough attention to ourselves, all hell broke loose in the food court. Finn was chucking his shoes at strangers while climbing between sections of our overflowing shopping cart. A grandma was shooting me dirty looks while telling him to "sit down, honey." Once we finally got our food, Crew started screaming bloody murder because I wouldn't let him fill up the drinks. I gave Nash that job, who of course spilled soda all over the floor. While dealing with that disaster, Finn escaped, barefoot, and threw an epic tantrum as I attempted to scoop up and contain his squirmy body. Every pair of eyes was locked on us when I declared to my children that we were D.O.N.E. and going home. I threw their uneaten food back into the cart and booked it out of there with two screaming toddlers on my hips and Blake running into people left and right with our shopping cart. It was humiliating.

I feel like this would be a good time to mention that Troy still picks up fresh flowers for me for no reason a few times a month. 

Now that Crew is in preschool a couple of mornings a week, I usually plan my errands for when I only have one child in tow. As long as I have snacks packed, Finn is the best errand buddy. Our Costco trips go much smoother sans three additional brothers.

We go through two gallons of milk and one case of apples within a week. A Costco size container of grapes usually doesn't last more than five days and a bunch of bananas is gone is two days. That's with half of our boys not being great eaters. We are in trouble for when they get older!

In addition to being the Cubmaster, Troy also volunteers as the church building cleaning coordinator. Every three months, our congregation is in charge of cleaning the building each Saturday for the entire month. It starts at 7:30am and Troy always picks up donuts for those who come and serve. The boys love to go with him; it's the highlight of their week to wake up early on a Saturday, pick out donuts and help be in charge of the cleanings.

I still volunteer as the music leader for 120 children ages 3-11 on Sundays. It is a demanding responsibility requiring a lot of prep work, but I'm getting more comfortable in front of the kids and other leaders. And the icing on the cake is when I can convince my husband to dress up as a scripture hero and he goes to the store and puts together his own costume for the part.

I go baby showers twice a month on average. It's inevitable in a town full of young families. From February to June, I went to nine baby showers, all for girls. At least I'm making my mark in the girls' side of clothing stores.

In addition to baby showers, it seems like it is always time to celebrate the birthday of one of my friends. We usually go to dinner but sometimes we switch it up with a trip to the beach or go all out for a girls' weekend. Add in our weekly viewings of The Bachelor or The Bachelorette and the calendar fills up quickly with social events. I really value my female interactions; especially living with a house full of boys. Even though Troy is home less than ever, he makes sure that I go to girls' nights on a regular basis.

When we have company visit us, which was often this fall, the boys all shift rooms to accommodate our guests. Nash regularly sleeps in the queen-sized guest bed, so when we have visitors, we move him to an extra twin-sized mattress on Blake's bedroom floor. Crew shares a room with his grandparents when they are here, but if friends are visiting, we stick his toddler mattress up in our master loft. And if we have a family of six staying with us, we move all of our boys to our room and spread them out between our closet, floor and loft. We love sharing our beautiful surroundings with visitors and even though we're in a small 3-bedroom home, we make it work.

We have limited storage so I go through and purge our closets and drawers every few months.  I actually love that we don't have the room to store extra "stuff." I'm a purger by nature, but I like that it is a necessity for me to stay on top of my game without a storage room as a crutch. It is freeing to have less stuff and it sure accumulates quickly with six people under one roof.

I stock up on Grandma Sycamore's white bread whenever I'm in Nevada, Utah or Arizona, and if we have visitors from those states, my only request is that they bring me a dozen or so loaves. I freeze them and ration one loaf per week, mostly for my morning peanut butter toast. When I have excess on hand I'm more willing to share with the boys. Trust me, I've tried all of the California breads and nothing even comes close to comparing.

I still try to fit in design work whenever I can. It's never as much as I would like, but a little coding and designing here and there helps keeps me sharp. 

Troy can't go to sleep at night without reading first. He usually lays on his back, holding his Kindle in the air above him. Without fail, that Kindle almost always falls on his face when he starts to doze off.

That's life 2016 in a nutshell. Some days we feel like we're barely surviving and others we feel like we're thriving. Some days feel heavy and other days we are overwhelmed with gratitude for the blessings in our little family.

Snapshot 2015

Life is swirling around me so quickly and often so chaotically that sitting down and recording memories helps me to sort it out and make sense of it all in a way that is meaningful.

There are only a few days left in 2015 so I want to make sure I record our annual snippet of everyday life before we ring in the new year.

I know, like I need more records along with the hundreds of pictures I take to document life. But I mostly write about specific events and not as much about the full picture. I recently read our snapshots from past years and I love that I can remember those little slivers of time all in one spot. 

So here we go; 2015 in the here and now:

Troy and I were recently at the Ear, Nose and Throat doctor for consecutive appointments with three of our children. We were both filling out paperwork and Troy was stumped when it came to their prescriptions as well as dosages. That led to him stating, "I wouldn't have a clue what to do if you died." We had a good laugh about it and I asked, "Would you know that Nash has to bring his library books to school on Tuesdays, Blake needs gym shoes on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, and Blake has to bring book share books on Wednesdays, reading counts books on Thursdays, and library books on Fridays? Or that Blake's math facts quizzes are on Thursdays, I drive the kindergarten carpool on Thursdays and every third Wednesday, and on Tuesday afternoons I pick up Nash after school while Blake stays for an extracurricular class, and then after I pick up Blake from his class, he has 15 minutes to change into his scouting uniform until the carpool for scouts arrives...?" Troy cut me off right there and exclaimed, "Stop, just stop!"

I guess you could say we are full swing into the elementary school years and all of the assignments and carpools and extracurricular activities that go along with that phase of life. And somehow all of those commitments and their corresponding days are safely tucked away in my brain, with the exception of some missed book returns.

After 10 months, California is really starting to feel like home. I was driving home from a late night meeting a few weeks ago thinking how familiar the streets felt and how blessed we were to live near friends we have grown close to in a short period of time.

The boys love spending time outside. With such nice weather, they can be outside almost every day of the year riding bikes and skateboarding and swimming and making up all sorts of games. The second they hear other kids' voices, they want to peel out of our house immediately to join them. It makes squeezing in homework time quite a challenge some days, but I'm thrilled that they are thriving in our new community.

I can't say I mind the lack of seasons one bit. I never thought I would miss winter and so far, I'm right. The boys have mentioned missing snow a few times, but not me. I'm perfectly content that our "fall" contains a few clusters of changing leaves here and there with palm trees in the background.

The only thing that made us crazy were all of the crickets that ended up in our garage over the summer. I started out being slightly terrified of their sudden movements and shiftiness, but ended up being so mad at all the noise that I crushed them any chance I was given. I starting dreaming of crickets and I get agitated every single time I hear a cricket noise.

The biggest change to our day to day lives this year was the diagnosis of asthma for two of our sons. Nash chronically coughed for six months straight and Crew ended up in the hospital for a night with his first asthma attack.

After Crew's incident, doctor appointments and breathing treatments took over our lives. We started having appointments every week with the asthma specialist, ENT, radiologist and pediatrician. For a few months, each time we went back in for follow-up appointments, we found out the boys were worse. Their bodies were resistant to multiple rounds of antibiotics. Every time I thought we were getting a hold on their symptoms and treatments, we received more bad news. 

My heart broke for our boys and their constant breathing treatments and syringes of medicine. They eventually grew accustomed to the nebulizer, but some of those oral prescriptions were so awful we had to think of every trick in the book, including pinning them down, in order to get them to take them. It was not uncommon for us to walk out of appointments with five or six prescriptions for each of them and complex instruction sheets.

Our countertop became our asthma medication station for several months.

They seem to both be responding to our current treatment plan much better than they did a few months ago. Our nebulizer time is our reading time and I actually really enjoy having the consistent reminder to sit down and read with them. Their medicine load is waning and I am enjoying less frequent trips to the pharmacy. My eyes have been opened to the world of children with medical issues and even though the appointments and treatments can be difficult, I feel so grateful that their diagnoses are manageable and will not affect may aspects of their lives. 

Finn had his own medical setback when his ear ruptured three times within eight months. We added him to our ENT visits and he will have surgery to have tubes placed in his ears in a few weeks.

Blake is our only son without any major medical issues this year. I walk him half way to school in the mornings and he walks the rest of the way with hundreds of other children that fill the streets along the school. Nash starts kindergarten two and a half hours later and we have a carpool rotation with three other boys in his class. Blake and Nash walk home from school together and it is life changing to have them appear at home while the babies are already down for naps.

Blake packs his own lunches for school and is allowed to buy lunch one day a week. It has been a game changer for me during busy school day mornings.

Blake ranks the order in which he likes particular meals. For example, when I make Italian chicken, he says it is his "number 47 favorite meal." Stroganoff is his "number 1 favorite meal" and broccoli cheddar soup is his "number 3 favorite meal."

Blake loves to use Siri on my phone. In fact, he changed my name from "Lindsey" to "Awesome For The Rest of Your Life." Now, all of my emails go to "Awesome For The Rest of Your Life," as well as my home navigation and contact information.

Blake recently passed all of the swim levels required to join the swim team and he will be starting that endeavor in the new year. He is currently taking a LEGO engineering course where they build Battle Bots. Now that he is eight, he is officially a cub scout and whether I'm ready or not, we are adding scouting to our schedule.

Nash has always been a collector and his latest collection consists of nature's souvenirs. Whenever he is at the park or on a walk, he picks up acorns and seedlings and twigs and mini pinecones to add to his bags full of what he considers "ordinary stuff." In fact, "ordinary stuff" is now a well known term on our street and sometimes the neighbor kids join him in collecting items from nature.

Nash is a fanatic about ice cold water. He fills up his entire cup with ice from the ice-maker and adds only a tiny bit of water. It takes him several minutes to go through this process and he'd rather have no water than room temperature water. We always know that the cups filled to the brim with ice belong to Nash.

Nash also usually goes straight for the Otter Pop popsicles when he gets home from school.

Nash's love for drawing grows greater and greater month by month. I think it began during all of our wait times at doctor's appointments. He began doodling in a notebook I kept in my purse and now it is his preferred activity. He makes elaborate drawings of stories and mazes and good guy vs. bad guy scenarios.

Nash is involved in swimming lessons as well, which have moved to the indoor pool for the "winter." He will be starting Little League with his buddies from kindergarten in February.

Whenever I have bobby pins in my hair, Nash thinks it is hilarious to grab his magnetic fishing pole and "fish" them out of my hair.

It still surprises me how much boys want to have their shirts off. When the roughhousing begins, the shirts come off. When it's dinner time, the shirts come off. When it's bedtime, the shirts come off. Blake especially likes the feeling of his sheets on his bare skin. I'm pretty sure they would go to school shirtless if I would let them.

We've been working really hard on nixing the phrase "Me and so-and-so." It is one of my pet peeves. They are starting to remember to use correct grammar; "Blake and I..." or "Nash and I..."

Blake and Nash love to collect Box Tops to help earn money for their school. In fact, the minute I get home from the grocery store, they scour all of the boxes while they are still in the grocery bags and cut out any Box Tops they find. We have a special system in place to make sure they are evenly distributed or there would be a war over the Box Tops.

We started giving baths to two children at a time because four bodies in one little tub is a bit crowded.

Speaking of four bodies, it's pretty crazy how many comments we get from strangers when we are out in public. The boys feel like celebrities. It's so funny when they start quoting the things that are said to us. Here are a few of our favorites:

"Are those ALL yours?"
"Four boys? Your husband must be stoked!"
"Are you going to try for a girl?" (Super original. Never heard that one before.)
"Just stay tough. Boys really need that."
"Oh honey. It will get fun in about 5 years."
"Four boys and you're wearing earrings?"
 "You're half way to a full baseball team!"
...and my favorite...
"Are they all from the same dad?" 

Nash and Crew are still roommates and for the most part, that arrangement works out wonderfully. Sometimes Nash is annoyed by Crew's chattiness when he wants to go to sleep, but he often tunes him out and conks out. Blake has his own room for the time being because Finn still sleeps in a portable crib in our closet. It's dark and quiet in there and it just works for now, but eventually those two will be roommates.

I love spending time with Crew and Finn during the four hours that the older boys overlap at school each day. Errands are a breeze and lunchtime is so quiet.

Crew is a chatterbox and every word he exerts is the most exciting thing on the planet. He is so animated and so enthused about life. Some of my favorite things he says are, "swi-soup" (for swimsuit), "What the heck?" and "Check it out!"

Crew begs to watch the television show Team Umizoomi. He just can't get enough of those mighty math superheroes.

Crew is a baseball enthusiast. He could swing his bat and play catch for hours on end. 

When Crew repeats phrases for prayers, he always whispers them with a quiet smirk on his face.

I usually get Crew and Finn down for afternoon naps less than a half hour before Blake and Nash get home from school. They get out so early at 2:20pm. Sometimes if I'm really on top of it, I have a quiet house for one whole hour.

Finn still takes a morning and afternoon nap which limits our daily ongoings. But in a way I don't mind being trapped at home. I get too frazzled on the days we are away all day. The older I get, the more of a homebody I become.

Finn uttered his first words, took his first steps and broke his first teeth this month (at fifteen months). I'm conflicted between wanting to be his biggest cheerleader and dreading each moment he moves further away from babyhood.

Finn is becoming super attached to me and insists on holding on to my legs whenever I'm trying to make dinner or get ready. It's equal parts charming and frustrating.

LEGO bricks somehow make their way to every countertop in our house.

The boys have all been really interested in vocal beatboxing lately. When Troy gets home from work, they watch YouTube beatboxing videos together and do their best to compile their own versions. Dinner time is L-O-U-D.

We reworked our family job system for the school year but we have been awful at it lately. It was working really well when I was on top of it and following through. I'm looking forward to a fresh start in the new year. Family systems have to be tweaked so many times.

The boys weren't so sure at first about our 10-20-70 system. But in time it became second nature to put a portion of their dollars aside. 10% goes to tithing in our church (giving money helps to remember that in the grand scheme of things it's not really our money in the first place), another 20% goes to savings and the remaining 70% is theirs to save or spend.

I am hooked on Amazon Prime. I order everything online from folders and ink cartridges and birthday presents to diapers and shoes and school supplies. Amazon is my go to for just about everything. That two day free shipping is always worth one less trip to the store with several children in tow. I am also a huge fan of Prime Now. Groceries and household goods delivered to my door within two hours of placing my order? Sign me up! It is only available in select U.S. cities and we are lucky enough to fall within their delivery range.

We have really loved using our Disneyland annual passes. I remember thinking how amazing it would be to go to Disneyland whenever we wanted when we came out for vacations. Sometimes I have to pinch myself that this is our reality. Our passes expire in February and we're planning on taking a year off so that our "on" years can be more of a novelty.

I get together with friends every Monday night when The Bachelor is airing. We have the best time, mostly chatting over the noise of the TV and occasionally rewinding to catch tidbits we missed.

I have had to cut back my design work significantly with the addition of child number four and the move to California, but I love it too much to give it up completely. 

In our church, we all take turns and volunteer in different positions. Nobody is paid and we are asked by our ecclesiastical leader (our bishop) to serve in various "callings" or responsibilities. Right now, my calling is Primary Chorister. I lead singing time with 120 children ages 3-11 every Sunday. It is way out of my comfort zone and I often feel inadequate and unqualified. But I am serving and trying my best and finding brief moments where I do enjoy the responsibility. Maybe not at 2am when I have ink all over my hands after fighting with my printer, but certainly when the children are attentive and singing their testimonies with their whole hearts.

Troy arranges volunteers for all of the church building cleanings on Saturday mornings every three months and serves as a Scoutmaster for the Boy Scouts program.

Troy deems every Friday "pink shirt Friday." I actually didn't catch on for a few years that he wears a pink button down shirt every Friday. But now that he has to take his clothes out of the closet the night before work since Finn sleeps in there, if he is ever away on a Thursday night, I make sure to follow suit and grab him a pink shirt option for Friday. 

He managed a team in Virginia Beach and traveled out there several times this year. One week while he was out of the Southern California office, his co-workers played a little prank on him and replaced the photo on his desk with their own version.

I'm sure I could keep going, but there you have it. 2015 in a nutshell.