2022 Holiday Update

Another year, another holiday update. At this time of year I always have a hard time remembering what we were even doing all the way back at the beginning of the year. Apparently, I have no recollection, Facebook posts, or pictures in my camera roll of January so I really don’t know what we did at the beginning of our new year.

We started the month of February with a quick trip to the dentist to have Ellie and Gran’s tongue ties revised. I won’t go down the rabbit hole of tongue ties because I could talk about them forever. The next day was Gran’s 5th birthday. The kids were both recovering still so we spent the day at home taking it easy. A few days later, we celebrated Wells’ first birthday. We had an early birthday party for Gran and Wells before the procedure so we could still celebrate with everyone.

Our spring was slow which was nice. In April, Emery turned 3. I don’t know why all of these kids keep getting older!

Right after Emery’s birthday, Austin and I took a fun trip to Texas to see a concert. We had a blast! There’s a whole post about that trip on the blog.

Right after this trip, we found a car in Indiana that we wanted to go buy. We loaded up and told my aunt and uncle we’d be showing up at their doorstep in a few days. I think they thought we were joking until we showed up. Long story short, we didn’t get the car. We were disappointed but we enjoyed a few days there with family.

On our way home, we stopped in to surprise some more loved ones!

We got some chickens this spring. We share them with our neighbors and tag team taking care of them. We started with 25 and by some miracle we didn’t lose any until the fall. The kids love going to the coop to check for eggs every day and feeding the chickens everything that they don’t want to eat themselves. Gran has asked me at least once if he can sleep in the coop with them.

In May we were done with school and were ready for all of the fun that summer would bring. At the end of the month, Austin made his big debut as a wedding officiant. He says it was his first and last. Three of our kids were in the wedding, I was doing the pictures, and Austin was also the MC for the reception so it was a big event for the whole family.

We decided that this would be our first summer to try our hands at gardening. We worked hard getting our spot just how we wanted it and getting ready to plant everything. Right after we planted everything and started seeing things pop up, we got big news. At this point, I don’t think I even have to say it. It’s the same “big news” that we get about every other year. Yes, there’s ANOTHER Francis baby on the way.

The beginning of this pregnancy was rough and the heat made me feel even worse. That meant the garden was really neglected and we eventually gave up on it. Here’s to next years garden!

At the beginning of summer, Ellie had her year end ballet recital. This year was movie themed and her class performed a Pirates of the Caribbean dance. Ellie is still doing ballet and loving it!

We didn’t come home from Indiana with a new vehicle so Austin decided he needed a new toy. He and Drew took a road trip to Oklahoma to bring home a mini truck. It’s come in handy and helped us with a lot of projects around the house.

This summer, Ellie played softball and Gran played T-ball. He asks me at least once a month when it will be time for him to play TBall again.

Emery was in a mullet competition this summer. He didn’t make it passed the first round which meant I finally got to cut his hair! The pictures we took of him for the competition were hysterical.

Austin and I took Emery to St. Louis in June to an appointment at Shriner’s Hospital. It was a fun, quick road trip for just the three of us.

The big kids all took swimming lessons this summer and loved every minute of it. They are real water bugs. Our summer was spent mostly outdoors doing all of the summer things. Our kids are not indoor kind of people which we love.

Gran took a trip with my parents to Mackinac Island, Michigan. My aunt and uncle also took one of their grandkids so Gran got to hang out with his cousin Breelan while they both got spoiled by their grandparents for a week.

At some point this summer, Austin found a car on the internet that he wanted. Something about “I need to own every generation of Firebird and I haven’t owned one of these yet…” He told me he would be willing to take a firebird instead of a Corvette in exchange for me getting another baby. That pretty much sealed the deal for me so to get a firebird we went. I guess that means we sold zero vehicles and accumulated two this year.

Last summer we realized that we had cherry trees in our front yard but we realized it too late to do anything with them. This year we were more prepared so the kids and I made cherry pie filling and some cherry juice concentrate with them. The pie filling was delicious! We haven’t tried the juice yet. The kids really love helping in the kitchen and are always involved in these projects.

We also picked some apples from bonus grandma and grandpa’s house this year and tried our hand at preserving those as well. We had sooo many apples! We made apple sauce, apple pie filling, dehydrated apples, and some apple juice. The kids and I spent hours peeling and coring apples but they loved every minute of it.

Ellie and Gran started school in August. Ellie is in third grade and is studying countries and cultures this year. Gran is in Kindergarten and learning to read.

When school started, I started watching our nephew Banks during the week. We are at that number of kids around here where you really don’t notice one or two more. He’s a trooper! He tags along with us no matter what we are doing and puts up with a lot from our kids.

At the end of August, we took Ellie and Gran to their first concert. We took them to see the Turnpike Troubadours. Ellie had a blast. Gran was excited about the sno cone but he didn’t make it through the whole show.

Of course, we started a big project in the house this year also. With a baby on the way and a family member moving in with us, we decided we really should get the basement finished. My mom and I slowly packed Ellie’s room up through the summer and then we started demo.

In September we took a break from working in the basement to take a trip to Georgia for a wedding.

When we got home we got busy on the basement again. Drew spent some time helping Austin get walls framed and then Austin started on the electrical.

After Halloween this year Emery put on his spider man costume and just decided that he’d never be taking it off. As I’m typing this, he’s on day 27 of wearing it both day and night. We’ve convinced him a few times to take it off so we can wash it but he asks me every 10 minutes when it will be dry.

In November, Ellie turned eight! I don’t know how that’s even possible. She wanted to celebrate at Golden Corral so we left the boys with grandma and took her to dinner. Our kids had all been taking turns being sick for the whole week before her birthday so we didn’t get to have her friends join us for a celebration.

Ellie is performing in the Nutcracker again this year. She was cast as the Spanish attendant. It’s a solo role and we can’t wait to watch her performance this year!

As the weather has gotten cooler this year, the kids have adapted and continued to spend almost every day outside. Country life suites them so well! We really think that being out in the country has helped our kids to thrive. We give them a lot of freedom out here and they spend as much time as they can outside, being kids. The boys take a lot of pride in helping with the “hard work” that it takes to make things run smoothly around here. Anytime they see Austin get his coat and boots on, they do the same so they can go help with whatever he is doing. We have a lot of dreams for what this home has in store for our future and we can’t wait to see how those things unfold!

This year’s Christmas card theme evolved throughout the year as they always do. I chose the theme this year and we just let things spiral into the final product. We almost printed this card as an 8×10 for everyone but it just wasn’t feasible. We had some really good photos that we didn’t use this year. I will come back and update this post with some of them when I get a chance.

As always, we pray that all of our friends and family have a blessed holiday season!