Yesterday we celebrated the best boy I know as he turned 10 years old! It’s always very exciting to move to the realm of double digits!

Some things that Carter loves right now include:

• Star Wars (especially light sabers!)
• Reading–Big Nate comic books, Wings of Fire graphic novels, Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians +
• Sports–soccer, basketball, four square, cross net, swimming +
• Building–legos, kiwi crate style stuff, stuff with Dad, light sabers +
• Video games–Super Smash Bros, Star Wars games, Mario Party with the fam, Hogwarts Legacy +
• Hanging out with friends
• Pokemon cards
• Riding Bikes, scooters, skateboards and taking them to the skate park
• Playing trumpet (he reports that it is far superior to piano)
• Doing math

Some things that we love about Carter right now include:

• Watching him get excited about all those things he loves
• That he does his chores just about every single day
• That he cares deeply about his people–family and friends
• That he wore shorts 95% of the days of winter
• Going to his soccer games, listening to him practice trumpet, and going to band concerts
• Hearing him call up the stairs and say “start my time!” when he has earned his screen time
• That he is still the best brother to all his sisters and the best son to his parents

We love Carter a million million! He is such a fun dude to have around!

Yesterday was a magically celestial day for the Monson family. Our magnificent Portia Eve was baptized and confirmed a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and received the gift of the Holy Ghost. 🤍🤍🤍

It was so special to be there for this ultra-important day in Portia’s life. As I mentioned in her birthday post, I feel like she really has prepared for the sacred promises she made with God yesterday and that she really does want to follow the Savior to the best of her ability for the rest of her life.

I’m so grateful for myself and my children that President Nelson has taught us so much more clearly about the power of our covenants with God. (Maybe the rest of you understood better than me.) And I’m grateful that Portia wants to be part of God’s covenant family and that she wants to have a covenant relationship with Him. I joyfully look forward to watching how she continues to come unto Christ and set a good example for me throughout her life.

Happy Birthday to our BEAUTIFUL little Bianca! She is truly such a little gem and joy to have in our family that I’m not confident I’ll be able to adequately put it into words. But I’ll try my best.

First of all, Bianca just loves. She loves everybody in her life—parents, siblings, grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles. She just loves everybody. But she also just loves each day of living her adorable little life. She finds joy in all the little things—like coming with me to pick up Helen from kindergarten or wearing her hair in a bun—and all the big things—like planning and celebrating her birthday! Her love and joy are so contagious that everybody leaves Bianca’s presence happier and better than when she found them.  I’m truly grateful for her example of love and joy.

Some more specific things that Bianca loves are as follows:

• Being fancy, royal, beautiful, or any kind of grown up
• Deer. Her birthday was themed “deers and flowers.”
• Helping at home. Though this love has limitations (such as doing her assigned chores)
• Babies and dolls to whom she can be a good mommy.
• Everything about preschool!
• Choosing outfits and laying them out for the next day.
• Having curly hair.
• Baby Shark.

Bianca is the perfect little caboose to our family; she makes sure we can’t help but continually see the magic in life. We simply adore her!

Happy Birthday, Anker Bonkers!

Helen celebrated her 6th birthday this past Tuesday, March 12. She had a grand and magnificent vision for her birthday, and she lived up every moment of it!

Helen wanted a St. Patrick’s Day themed birthday party this year. I loved that because, since having two birthdays within a week of St. Patrick’s Day, I have kind of given up on planning much for the day itself. With her birthday being St. Patrick’s-y, I felt like I totally got my fill! (But Josh made sure we partied today as well, because he is the ACTUAL best person ever!)

Just a few days before Helen turned 6, she lost her first tooth and was richly rewarded! That week she also made some good progress on something from school and she jubilantly declared “This is my growing week!” She loves getting big and doing big girl things. I love watching her enthusiasm for all these big girl things.

What you ought to know about Helen is that she is good to her core. She just wants to do what’s right and learn and grow and make people happy and have fun. She also very clearly loves the Savior. We frequently casually say things about this or that family member being the best ever (see above 😂), and often Helen will say “No, Jesus is.” And she’s absolutely right. She also will mention gospel principles that apply to things every day situations, such as “I shared with Bianca, and that is following Jesus.” I am truly so grateful for her desire to follow the Savior and for her example of joyfully loving Him. Loving Helen is also a very joyful thing to do!

Helen also loves being fancy! She loves the days where she gets to dress up in some way for school; she loves making dress-up out of just about anything she can find; and she loves pretending that she’s a princess or a grown-up going somewhere fancy, or just embracing a fancy moment. I must confess, I find myself wanting to follow her example in creating fancy moments more often.

Helen got high heel Sunday shoes for her birthday as well as this very fancy fur stool. This picture was the fancy moment she created when she was trying on her Easter dress. We might have to get some more official versions of this fancy moment photographed some time.

Also for her birthday, Helen received a MUCH anticipated set of Easter bunny accessories. She loves them, and I get a decent kick out of ways and times she decides to become an Easter bunny.

Around the end of January, Helen determined that she NEEDED a Valentine’s Day outfit. Here are some of the contenders. I made the dress/skirt for both outfits. (Feel free to be impressed)

Helen also just loves to play and have fun! She is six, after all!

Helen is such a fun part of our family. One thing I loved about her birthday was that she was so excited and ready to have a fun celebration that nothing anybody did or didn’t do could phase her on her day. If somebody got grumpy (which definitely happened because we were still slowly recovering from daylight savings), she just happily ignored them and went on with her birthday plans. And that is kind of how she rolls in general as well. She likes to be happy, and I would even be so bold as to say this sweet little girl already knows how to “live after the manner of happiness.” She certainly makes my life happier.

Birthday season has begun for the Monson family! And today we got to celebrate a super exciting birthday with Portia! Turning 8 is an especially big deal because now Portia can be baptized and receive the gift of the Holy Ghost! She is super excited about making covenants with God, and understands what it means so much better than I did at age 8. I have seen in Portia, her whole life, a desire to do what is right and to serve the Lord, and I am so grateful for that about her.

Some other fun things about Portia right now include:

• She still loves beavers
• She makes up funny songs
• She loves crafting, cooking, and all kinds of creating
• She loves makeup and fanciness (see her makeup she did herself in the above picture)
• She is on an adorable dance team
• She’s friendly and fun to be with
• She’s still as precocious as ever

Here’s some pictures with captions that help explain how cool Portia is!

Last week, I got to go on a field trip with Portia’s class. It was so fun to see Portia with all her friends. And I felt super cool that she even wanted to sit by me on one of the bus rides even though her best friend was there.

I also took the opportunity to get a picture with Portia and her “twin” Owen. They are both spunky little blondes with the last name of Monson in the same school class. Portia says that whenever there is a substitute she’ll ask if they are twins. I tell Portia she should just say “yes”, because that’s the closest I’ll ever get to having the boy/girl twins I always wanted.

Also, Portia is on her cute little dance team! She has been working so hard all school year on her routines and yesterday was her first dance competition! It was a long, busy day; but Portia rocked those dances! I was so proud of her! Her team even got a “white diamond” rating for one of their dances which is the highest diamond rating you can get!

And today, we celebrated all the wonder and beauty that is Portia! She picked out her meals, activities, and decorations. And, in spite of an exhausting day yesterday, losing an hour of sleep last night to daylight savings, and a two-hour break for church, she had a great day of fun celebrating!

Of course we adore this girl! We think she’s just about as terrific as 8-year-olds come!

Pictures for this post will be things I made in the year 2023.

I’m so excited to share my theme word for 2024! I knew exactly what I wanted my word to be for this year even back in October, and so far I am having a lot of fun with it! My word for 2024 is … Run! When I mentioned this to my sister, Mary, she asked me “So how are you defining that word?” And my response is:

“Physically go running.”

It’s as simple as that this year! I think it is fun to have the really nebulous words like I did last year, where there’s a jillion ways to interpret them. But I also like years of the very clear-cut, easy to not overthink words. And #Run2024 will definitely be that!

Now, you may be wondering the background for my choice of the word run. But even if you weren’t I’m about to share it!

It all began back in the year 2000. That fall, I began 5th grade. My older sister began 6th grade (Shout out to Kathryn Muhlestein Lyde!). Her 6th grade teacher was the new, young, cool, way fun teacher who everybody really wanted to get. (Shout out to Liz Lyde Smith!) One thing that Miss Lyde did with her class was have them all run in the afternoon. They worked all year to be able to run a mile. And Kathryn, being the enthusiastic and eager learner/doer she is, relished this opportunity for growth. I’m pretty sure my brother Michael–who also had Miss Lyde–also had to run the mile, but probably just tried to block it from his memory. But Kathryn got super excited about running that mile, and her excitement was contagious to me (at least somewhat). I don’t know if I actually ever went running because of all this; but I certainly had good feelings about running because of it.

I didn’t get to have Miss Lyde for 6th grade; so I never got to run the mile at that point in my life. But I still always had good feelings about the idea of being able to run that far. I went on a few runs with my sisters in junior high, and they were honestly not at all fun. But nobody was making me run, so I didn’t have to resent being forced to do it. Plus, I still just figured that if I were willing to practice, it would get more fun.

Then came high school. In P.E. we had to run 1.5 miles, and I don’t remember having any strong feelings about it. Though I do remember the teacher telling us “Don’t think of it as a mile and a half. Just think of it as a 15 minute jog.” and that actually did help me. So, thanks Miss Tippets! But I happened to be friends with a lot of people on Cross Country. They talked all about how great Cross Country was and how I should totally join because the people were so great. I acknowledged that the people I knew who were on Cross Country were great, and I still had those residual good feelings about running, so I signed up.

I was absolutely terrible. Unlike the friends who suggested I join, I was in my first year, I wasn’t in the conditioning class, and I had some kind of conflict after school, so only came to practice some of the time. I only ran in two meets, and I did so poorly I don’t think I ever cared to know what my times were. But, even with all that, I had seen some improvement that little season, and I was proud of it. And those good feelings managed to linger.

I had little running goals through my first year or two of college; but something bigger was coming! Somehow, I signed up to run a marathon. The whole 26.2 miles!

I genuinely don’t remember the details, but my sister, Christina and I along with our cousins Asael and Benson, decided we should all run a marathon together. I was excited about it. But I can promise you, I never would have run that marathon if it hadn’t been for Asael (Shout out to you, Wigwam member!) showing up at my apartment every morning at 8:00. He was seriously the best, because by the time he arrived chez moi, he had already run a mile, and he literally woke me up with his knocking! If he hadn’t been my running buddy, the marathon seriously never would have happened. Or even come remotely close! And he tolerated all those hours of talking to me while we ran way. too. many. miles. I have one fond memory of us taking turns reciting paragraphs of The Living Christ together while we ran.

I also had a FANTASTIC room-mate that summer (shout to Meg Andrew McNary!) who loved running. And even though I was running in the mornings to train, we would go for runs together in the evenings for funsies! And we kept running for fun through the rest of the summer, long after the race had passed.

But, anyway, I ran that marathon! And I even did it in less than 5 hours, which was a big deal for me!

The following autumn, I met this fantastic guy named Josh. (Shout out to the best husband ever!) And his family was pretty into exercising at that moment in history. So he was happy to run with me! Plus, we were poor college students who would use any excuse to spend time together doing things that were free, so we ran together a bunch. There was one Saturday where we just started running, and ended up running all the way to his grandma’s house, visited a while, and then ran home. It was just so delightful to run with my love!

After we got married, I ran a lot less (#babies). Josh and I did decide to run a half marathon when Fay was 1. We only kind of trained for it, and our time showed that. But it was still fun to say we did it. And after that, I really didn’t run for a LOT of years. We always had a baby, or I was pregnant, and we had lots of little kids that couldn’t be left alone, etc, etc, etc. Plus, having 5 babies did a number on my pelvic floor, and I had my doubts if I would ever be able to run again.

But, starting in 2022, I slowly tried running again. I bravely took time away from my children (it is SO helpful that Josh works from home), I figured out what I could do to manage the incontinence, and I started small. Thanksgiving 2022, the Monsons did their traditional turkey run and I joined in for a 5k. I walked a lot; but I did the whole thing, and I was really proud of having done it. And then in September/October of 2023, I decided I was ready to get serious again! And I’ve been running multiple times most every week since then!

My brother (Shout out to Jordan!) is an avid runner, and I really like the way he sets his running goals. He simply sets a goal of miles to run during the year. He has very exciting and high numbers of miles he reaches for and surpasses each year; but I am a renewed beginner, so my goal is not so lofty. I will feel like a complete success if I run 300 miles this calendar year. That is approximately 25 miles a month. So far, this month, I have run about 21. So I feel like I’m on track for now! Another goal I have is to do at least one race. Jordan said I could join him on his half marathon this September, which sounds exciting and daunting. We’ll see if I make it!

I’m already really enjoying the running I’m doing this year! And I am looking forward to, hopefully, making running a big, positive part of my life again. I have even had a chance to run with Josh a couple of times this year (big deal for him, because he hasn’t been able to run since breaking his foot in 2020), and he’s still the best running companion! I’d go running with him regularly forever!

And, truthfully, I’m looking forward to seeing how the Savior teaches me more about Himself and His love through running!

I have been so excited to share some of my beautiful experiences from this past year! I looked back at my original post about my “beautify” theme and I had said I wanted to focus my beautifying efforts in three areas:

• Myself
• My home
• My yard

And it seems like that was definitely the correct order to list them in, because that is the order of priority I gave them.

What I continue to notice as I select these yearly themes is how much Heavenly Father takes my minuscule efforts and miraculously turns them into the things I was hoping for. And I certainly saw this in all the areas I made attempts to beautify.

For the yard, I made a small effort to provide a little bit more seating outside. But Heavenly Father gave us lots of snow and rain which gave us a green lawn that our whole family was able to go out and enjoy! And the fact that the lawn wasn’t constantly on the brink of death made it more encouraging to keep trying to get the sprinklers right. (And, of course, I didn’t work on sprinklers at all. That beauty all came from Josh! <3 )

For the house, my dream was to get rid of lots of stuff, NOT acquire new stuff, and organize everything so that the house is always clean and orderly. Obviously, with that being much too lofty a goal, we didn’t get to that point. But two major things this year did make a noticeable difference in the beauty of our home. The first is that we replaced our old couch. It was a wonderful couch for many years; but it looked like it had been around for many years. Our new couches are so beautiful and have transformed the whole family room for the better! I’m grateful for our new furniture. The other huge thing that has beautified our home came in the form of an amazing deal from DI. A carpet-cleaner-wet-vacuum for $12! I am amazed at how much cleaner and well maintained the house looks when I clean the carpets. And I love that I can use it whenever I simply can’t stand the dirt in a specific room, and that I don’t have to commit to getting the whole house cleaned at the same time. And I love that I don’t have to commit to many hundreds of dollars to get things looking truly clean! I genuinely feel like finding that vacuum for so cheap was a miracle. And I am so grateful for the beauty we have experienced in our home because of it!

But now, let’s talk about what really happened this beautiful year. The changes that I have seen in my own heart and mind this year are far more beautiful than anything I could ever do in my house or yard. And they are far more miraculous than anything I ever could have done on my own–the greatest evidence of the aforementioned Divine intervention. So much of the beauty I discovered this year was thanks to the fact that I miraculously (it’s own little saga) began therapy for OCD and anxiety at the end of January 2023. I worked very hard on my exposures and found lots of relief from things that have caused me lots of fear, and have gained countless tools for nipping potential OCD triggers in the bud. But therapy was also immensely beautiful because my therapist helped me to dig deep into my own heart and ask myself why I was doing things and if those things were serving me.

A beautiful principle I have learned is that my pride–any kind of pride, no matter how insignificant it seems–adds to my mental load and makes me more prone to lousy mental health. I started typing a big long paragraph explaining what I mean by that; but ultimately decided to leave it at the original statement.

But that discovery, about the relationship between pride and my mental health, led me to the most beautiful discovery of all! I have begun to recognize and utilize the beautiful, healing, transforming power of the gift of repentance. It’s not that I have never had experiences with repentance before; I’ve been trying to repent for my whole life. But the Savior was able to show me things in a new light this year as I addressed my sins and pride in connection with my efforts to invite peace into my mind. Repentance and its subsequent spiritual healing is how I have been able to lighten my mental load in order to make space for the Savior to heal me physically and mentally.

I’m grateful for this opportunity to reflect on the changes I have seen; because they remind me that the gift of repentance is still available to me, and I can be sure that I will continue to be blessed. It makes me want to really sit down and figure out which things I can remove from my life. I know I still have a lot of pride, resentment, judgemental thoughts, and every other vice one can imagine that I still hang on to. But I know that even letting one of them go will bring the Savior’s blessings into my life. And I want that!

I had a beautiful experience about that in the temple a month or two ago. I was pondering on how willing the Savior is to forgive sins, even my vilest of all sins. And I was feeling grateful for His loving willingness. But I also felt like a mere pardon wasn’t really what I was seeking. In my mind, I told the Savior, “Thanks for the forgiveness, really. But what I really want is to be different! To never make that mistake again! To not be proud in this way anymore ever. To never go back to the kind of mindset that leads to that sort of behavior. I want You to change me. I want you to make me like You.” I know that such longings of my heart are exactly what the Savior promises. In Ezekiel 36:26, He says ^“A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.” But I’m also learning (again) that His timetable is absolutely GINORMOUS compared with mine. I sometimes tire of “line upon line” learning and just want Him to lay His hands on my head and make me a completely new creature today. But He knows that becoming is a process not an event, and that these baby steps forward and the frustrating failures and shortcomings are actually what create anyone. Even Jesus Christ Himself did it that way. In D&C 93:12-13 it says “And I, John, saw that he received not of the fulness at first, but received grace for grace; And he received not of the fulness at first, but continued from grace to grace until he received a fulness.”

So, if even the Savior of all mankind had to learn and “become” one step at a time, I suppose I’ll do my best to tolerate it. 🙂

In 2023, I saw the Savior magnify my efforts so many times in so many ways! He taught me so many things and gave me so many miracles that it would take approximately forever to put them all in writing. But if you ever feel like having a very spirited discussion on beautiful lessons from the Savior, please hit me up, and we’ll have tons of fun and probably do quite a bit of joyful crying!

And now, we have a new beautiful year! I have my theme verb all picked out and begun, even, but in the spirit of blogging more than once every three months and keeping you in infuriating suspense, I’m going to make you wait for another post to hear all about it. (mwah ha ha!!) But I can already tell you that I am SUPER excited to see how the Savior takes this (of all words) and teaches me more about Himself and His love for me in 2024!

Up until October had already begun, I had no idea if Josh was going to put anything together for Halloween or not. In years past, he has commenced dreaming/scheming/planning in about July or August; but this year, he just couldn’t come up with an idea that really felt like a winner. And work was busy, and we went on a big expensive trip, and we still have five kids, etc. etc. etc.

But things at work slowed down and people started asking Josh about his plans (peer pressure power!) at the optimal time to facilitate the quickest turn-around for Halloween we’ve ever had! He built this custom animatronic, interactive Halloween game from start to finish in 11 days!

If you were lucky enough to come and play it, you already know how impressive that 11 day effort was! An exciting new thing that helped things go so quickly was that Josh got AI to do the grunt work (like coming up with a base script that Josh improved upon, coming up with random examples for the categories game, creating a poster image, etc). I don’t, personally, care very much for AI; but I can’t deny that Josh was really able to profit from it this year. I told him that it is now officially his responsibility to teach our children to use AI in appropriate and upstanding ways. 🙂 If that part of education was left to me, we would all probably swear off any and all technology developed post 2010. (Only half-joking.)

But we had lots of Halloween fun this year even outside Josh’s legendary yard attraction!

We had our family Halloween party where we let all the siblings and niblings play the attraction.

Early in October, I was able to convince 3 of the girls to come up the canyon with me to enjoy the autumn leaves. Last year, I only convinced one, and another was brought along forceably.

And with the advent of cooler weather comes the compulsive need to “yarn.” So I have crocheted approximately a thousand pumpkins (okay, only 10), and I knitted this sweater for Portia. I am newer to knitting, and I made this sweater 3 different times before it got to be something that Portia would even consider wearing. But I am very pleased with the end result, and even MORE pleased that it is, indeed, the END result.

And then came the magical day, itself! The three bigger kids went out trick-or-treating by themselves this year (BIG DEAL!) and I took the two youngest with me. Everybody got lots of yummy candy, and we even got over 100 trick-or-treaters at our house! I forgot to take a picture of the post trick-or-treating spoils, and I’m genuinely bummed. That is one of my favorite parts of the day.

Josh has some analytics attached to his attraction and it looks like the game was played about 400 times over the course of the month! So famous!

And now that the spooky magic of Halloween has past, we are enjoying being thankful! I love celebrating the Thanksgiving Season with “thankful minutes” during the day, and keeping our growing list of gratitude on the kitchen door. I am truly thankful for this life of mine, and for this season of the year!

There is so much I could say about this trip that Josh and I took, just the two of us! But I fear that if I try to go into much detail I’ll get discouraged by the grandeur of the task and never record anything. So this will mostly be pictures. But just know that Josh and I had a positively heavenly vacation together on Oahu, and we would recommend such a trip to anyone who can manage it. 🙂

The best part of the trip was that we just did whatever we felt like whenever we felt like doing it. If we didn’t see everything there was in Oahu, it didn’t matter! The point of going was to just be together in a fun, lovely place without kids. And we did, and it was wonderful!

And a HUGE thank-you to Josh’s mom for making the “without-kids” aspect of the trip a reality! She is our hero! <3 <3 <3

We decided to make our vacation the grand finale to our summer break, going to Lake Tahoe the week before school started. The last time we went to Lake Tahoe was in 2018. It was beautiful and so much fun, that time, but it was also so. much. work. Helen was a 5 month old baby, and Fay was only 6; so it was a lot of effort to keep 4 little kids alive in the water. Plus, it is just a lot of work to keep 4 little kids entertained, occupied, happy, etc. anywhere, but especially when they are so far away from their comfort zone.

But I’m glad we did it, even with all the effort it was. And I didn’t realize until this past trip how many family traditions we unwittingly established on that trip.

The first tradition we established was that of stopping at the Salt Flats and the obligatory “model poses” thereat. This tradition began because of this picture I happened to take of Portia back in 2018.

We joked, as we reviewed our pictures after that trip, that Portia looked like some kind of magazine model with her head-tilt and ultra blonde hair standing out in the winter-white salt flats.

And now we always need to take “model pictures” when we are there.

Except that Carter really didn’t want one. So I got what I could from him.

Another tradition we happened to start back in 2018 was that of turning all the girls into sand mermaids (see above). I think I probably made 8ish mermaid tails this past trip, and that was with me saying “no” multiple times. 😂 But I’ll spare you every iteration, and just show you one picture.

Carter didn’t care to be turned into a merman; but he did make himself a sand thrown that was pretty impressive!

Another tradition we kept was the beaches we went to. We got some tips for some pretty picturesque beaches; but we found that we really preferred to just go back to Pope Beach. It was close to our airbnb, had good sand and convenient bathrooms, and was just our favorite. I’m not opposed to trying new beaches in the future; but I’m also not opposed to going back to Pope.

One thing that we did that was not a tradition, but definitely shall be is take a paddle-board with us! I have learned that I LOVE being on the water (more so than in the water)! We would take turns rowing out with different assortments of kids in tow, and every time I went it was just delightfully relaxing and exhilarating! It was so good!

Anyway, our days at Lake Tahoe kind of went like this

• Wake up, get dressed, and have breakfast leisurely
• Leave to go on some kind of hike or nature walk (because the mornings are rather chilly for swimming)
• Return to the house to change into swimming stuff
• Head to the beach and have lunch casually between trips to the water and breaks to become a mermaid
• Return to the house because we got rained out of the beach
• Watch a movie
• Play outside (if the rain stopped) or around the house
• Have dinner
• Play card games, read books, have a dance party, etc.
• A long, extra-arduous bedtime routine

Obviously there was some variation between the days; but it really did kind of follow that pattern. It was funny that it rained most of the days we were there. But I wouldn’t even call it unfortunate. I loved having the relaxing movie-watching late afternoons. And I loved that it never got hot. And I loved smelling the rain. And I loved even being out in the rain when it was more along the lines of drizzle status than torrential downpour. 😊

Here are some more pictures of the trip starting with

The kids room in the house!

And here are some views from our time in the mountains!

One of my, personal, favorite things to be found around Lake Tahoe is the assortment of tiny to ENORMOUS pine cones! I keep meaning to bring some of the really big ones home to use in Christmas decor somehow and always forget. (But the kids all got home; so I consider that a success!) Here is Portia demonstrating the array we were able to round up mostly from the trees in “our” back yard!

I told Josh, as we got back on the road to come home, that this family vacation was the most fun, relaxing vacation I have had since 2013 (when we only had one child). Josh said he felt like it was a lot of work. So, I want to make sure I acknowledge how much Josh personally took care of. Josh loves to plan trips, and he REALLY planned this one! He found the house, he packed the car, he planned and prepared ALL the meals, he found fun things to bring in the car to entertain the kids, and he kept the diabetic girls alive when they went low in the night. He was truly so So SO good to us all! I’m so grateful for him!!! But I also hope that next time we can be a little more of a team with all the things so that he feels as good at the end of the trip as the rest of us do.

Thanks Josh. I love you more than everything! ❤️‍🔥 😍😘 🫶 🥰 😚 ♥️