I’m just going to go ahead and start these “little things” posts starting from January and forget (for now) all those other months that I’ve missed.

Gotta start somewhere when you get so far behind, right?

So here we go. January started off with a New Year’s Day bike ride with these three to catch some New Year’s breakfast:

Lot’s more about New Year’s Day back HERE.

Started out writing up some goals in our “dream books” HERE.

Enjoyed the gorgeousness of winter in the desert over and over and over again.

(Poor Bo Jangles)

More pictures from those sisters in the sunset back HERE.

We watched lots of volleyball from our phones:

(They stream the games, and I’m so grateful for that! Lots more about Claire’s new volleyball club back HERE.)

We get to talk to Grace each week. And sometimes we get other kids in on the conversations as well. I think this one was when Elle was on the iPad and the girls had Grace and Elle talking together. Love.

Claire cracks me up with her clothing choices. She thought (and it was quite a quickly-fleeting thought), that it would be cool to paint some old shoes to make them extra cool:

She also decided it might work to cover up a hole in some thrifted jeans with a fabric cut-out heart. And then proceeded to balance that one heart with a bunch of other hearts…with a glue gun:

Gotta give her an “A” for effort on that one!

The trees in our yard made me so happy…well, except for that pomegranate tree in the middle down there below…the birds like that one a little too much, poor guy:

Our married kids got to see each other in Utah and I love that Abby’s mom sent me this picture:

Lucy got these new series of Babysitter Club books her cousin recommended for Christmas from my mom:

I’m not sure if she thought she’d be able to read those tiny words, and see the pictures, or if she just hoped it would be a good opportunity to read with her mama, but I hope it was the latter because that’s what we’ve done. I sure love reading with that girl.

We left up our Christmas tree for longer than I ever have before. I don’t know why I was so attached to it this year but I sure was. Before we took it down we decided we better at least read our favorite Christmas story under it, since we were pretty awful at reading this last Christmas season!

We did sure watch a whole slew of sunsets from our “sunset spot” though!

Lucy also put together a pretty awesome “winter” picnic:

More about Lucy taking action on that back HERE.

Dave and Lu got to go on a date to Wisconsin for her doctor appointments:

I got to hike lots and lots out in all this glory:

Another good sunset spot…a good place to work on Relief Society stuff:

We rearranged our whole ministering in our church congregation and boy howdy it took a lot of work! SO grateful for my counselors and all the women in our congregation who make this job so beautiful.

A little date with my high school girl to one of our fav. places:

Josh had a birthday:

All about that birthday and some girls at the temple back HERE.

We basked in the golden beauty of winter desert evenings:

Played some pickleball under the most gorgeous sunset with my handsome opponent:

More sky another night:

Reading with my girl:

Loved and was so inspired by reading Atomic Habits:

(Lots more thoughts about that great book back HERE.)

More hiking and ode to MLK HERE.

This is how tiny some type is that Lucy is supposed to read and write on for school:

Yes, that is a Chick-Fil-A job application form there, it was one of her assignments to learn about economics or something for one of her classes. All of her teachers would so gladly enlarge or help her with that kind of assignment for her unique needs but she will not allow it. Makes me so frustrated that she won’t use all the wonderful resources available to her. But I do understand and also admire how fiercely independent she is. We just need to find some sort of middle ground and it’s a constant puzzle to figure it all out.

Dave and I worked hard on a project to move around the electrical outlets in our bathroom to make things more convenient:

And Claire and I finally fixed her Roman shades that had been broken for a couple months:

Hallelujah on that one!!

Love these sweet friends who joined me on a little service errand one day:

More volleyball streaming…

Some pics from the “big kids:”

(Elle’s showing her hand healing up there…you can’t tell from the picture but man those fingers were sure black and blue from where she got her surgery…did I even write about that yet?? And Max where he spends most of his time working his heart out on computer science.)

Claire had a birthday, and I’m putting this picture here to show a little bit of the style around here:

Here’s another:

Claire’s birthday report is back HERE, and my seventeen things I love about her are HERE.

FaceTiming with Max and Abby…ahem…I mean our dogs were really FaceTiming…

These two are sometimes at each other’s throats, but more often they are pretty great little companions as being the remaining stragglers at home:

Our friends from when we lived in DC all those years ago happened to be in town and they came for a quick visit:

Oh it was SO good to see them and to reminisce old times as well as to catch up on all that has been happening. Life has taught us so many lessons along the way! I love them so much. (This is the famous Shelley from “Shelley’s everyday flatbread” we STILL make practically every week…you can find the recipe and a pic. of us laden down with babies galore back in the old days HERE.)

I had a birthday too, and it was a good one:

I wrote all about it back HERE, but I may not have included these clues to my treasure hunt Lucy set up:

Dave organized a little birthday dinner for me. Gosh he’s so nice:

Love these people!

We had book club and discussed this book I talked about back HERE:

We went to dinner with these good friends:

This tree was killing me with it’s beauty:

We have started doing this family zoom with my siblings and parents each Sunday and I love it so much. I am usually on my phone so I didn’t get everyone in the pic…I’ll have to catch them all some time. I am usually in between lots of church meetings so it’s tricky to get there for the whole thing lately, but man alive I love these people and all that I learn from them.

We usually have a topic someone brings up and we discuss the dickens out of it 🙂

IT SNOWED IN THE DESERT.

Ok, just in the mountains, but it deserved a hike out to see it from afar:

See that snow in the background?

I got to have a little date to drive my BrainFood delivery route one day while we were still in every-other-day school:

Bike rides:

I LOVE that Lucy will write me all kinds of emails like this from school. She tells me all kinds of things and I adore it.

(She didn’t barf, luckily!)

Lu and I had a quest to make the perfect waffles, and we succeeded (at least in our opinions):

(I’m so mad I didn’t save the recipe, we were just trying to find it yesterday and couldn’t! But if I do I’ll be sure to relay it here!)

And last but not least, our missionary rocked it out in Texas during January:

There’s nothing quite like having a missionary out there serving her heart out and filling herself with knowledge of Jesus and goodness. Love her so much.

And love that she sends us things like her sunsets:

Ok and wait a minute, to add to the birthday celebrations in January, I never wrote about Carson’s birthday. Oh my word I’m slacking on my mother-in-law responsibilities! 🙂 He had a bday at the very end of January so I’ll have to come back and do a little ode to him at some point, because he sure deserves to be celebrated!

And so, for now, there’s a wrap for at least some large portions of January 2021!

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4 Comments

  1. Hi Shawni! I am an eighth grade paraprofessional and one of the kids I work with is visually impaired. The teachers know what percent to enlarge his assignments and when they’re printing out any materials for their classes they enlarge one for him. During classes when they pass out papers they make sure to give him the enlarged one but they don’t say anything or make a big deal of it so he doesn’t feel singled out. Just one strategy that’s worked for us that I wanted to pass along!

    1. Thank you Katie! Lucy’s helpers have sure tried that, and every other route under the sun, but she somehow knows, and gets so frustrated with anyone who tries to help her. She’ll figure it all out some way or another, but there sure is a lot of stubbornness there! Keep any information coming though if you have more good ideas!
      xoxo

  2. Hey Shawni, would you mind sharing where your blue/white strip shirt is from (in the pic of Josh’s bday).😆

    1. Hi Caiti, I got that from a random Gap clearance last year, sorry that’s prob not a lot of help!
      xoxo

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