A Digital Christmas Letter

Hi, friends!

I always love reading the summaries of families' years that sometimes come with Christmas cards, so I thought I'd attempt to do a version of that for our family's 2018!

Jared-specific:

• Jared had his second and third IKEA experiences when we needed to buy some bookshelves and dressers.
• He let his hair and beard grow out so we could dress as Hagrid and a glittery dragon for Halloween.

Jared has been continuing to teach Gospel Principles, though now that the class isn't going to exist anymore, he'll probably be getting a new calling soon. He also made appearances at mutual a couple of times to be fake Steve Harvey when the girls played Family Feud and also host our General Conference version of Fibbage. He's the unofficial assistant to the Beehive adviser. :)

He's been enjoying his work and seems to be decently friendly with his coworkers. He didn't get nearly as many travel opportunities as he did in 2017, unfortunately. As part of a seminar thing, he programmed a little gadget to play a few variations of Simon, which I think is pretty neat. We're still loving him getting every other Friday off.

A church friend has organized a Dungeons and Dragons group and Jared gets to spend time adventuring around as a paladin every few weeks. He beat Breath of the Wild and Mario Odyssey this year and got back into Skyrim again. His options for games to play will be expanding soon because he customized a powerful desktop computer for us as our Christmas present to ourselves. Non-gaming laptops can only handle so much, after all.

Lizzie-specific:

• I got a keyboard and started trying to get used to playing the piano again so that I could get some use out of all the books of music we have.
• I was a leader at YW camp and survived spending a few days away from Jared, the internet, and cleanliness.
• I started this blog!
• My hair finally returned to a naturalish color.

I've now been a Young Women leader for two years and I'm still loving it! Between lessons, activities, meetings, camp, and miscellaneous happenings, there's always something to keep me busy. This year, some of my favorite tasks were helping the girls learn about skincare and makeup basics, coming up with a whole bunch of mini-games for them to play (personalized Taboo about the girls and leaders, Family Feud with questions about church and our town, Fibbage with questions from General Conference, non-digital Quiplash, sphinx-ish riddles, and a page of idiom phrases rewritten with synonyms), and having everyone come to my house to play games and watch Spider-Man. It's also been a lot of fun to chaperone a few stake dances!

My church "job" can take up a surprisingly large amount of time, but when I'm not doing anything for that, I try to make my days productive in other ways. I do basically all of the standard chores to make our home a pleasant place: laundry, dishes, vacuuming, sweeping, organizing, and the like. I can also spend time on hobbies, which is awesome. I get to read, write, work on jigsaw puzzles, play piano, attempt nail art, bake delicious things, and (of course) play video games. Lately, I've been making paper snowflakes to help our living room be even more festive. I'm never bored! There's always something to be done. Some people would probably hate being home all day like this, but I love our lifestyle and feel so fortunate that this is something we can do. (Yay, low cost of living!)

I haven't finished making enough to go along the edges of the cabinet yet, but here's what I've got so far! I have plans for a snowman and the Skyrim logo to also be put onto snowflakes. :)
Top row: Avengers, Zelda, Harry Potter, Pinkie Pie, Mario, Thor
Bottom row: a generic tree and heart (my test snowflake), Zelda, Iron Man, cats, Mario

Now that we're living in our very own house, I love having guests over. We had missionaries over for dinner a couple of times in the house we were renting, but I was never really proud of how it was, if that makes sense. It was functional and as clean as I could get it to be. There was nothing to be ashamed of, I just didn't love the house. This one feels more like a home. The layout is more conducive to a fun gathering, the floors aren't permanently dirty, and everything looks brighter and more inviting. I've hosted a couple of movie nights, Jared had his D&D group meet here once, and we've been having the missionaries come for dinner about once a month. This house has helped me feel much happier about living where we do. (Still not a fan of the town's weather, location, or size, but my home is my happy place.) Oh, and our new neighborhood has at least four adorable cats that occasionally wander outside.

Family happenings:

• We went to Disneyland with my parents, which was a lot of fun!
• We bought a house! That was a huge deal. We also bought some grown-up furnishings (picture frames, a TV stand, a TV to go on said stand) for the new house.
• Our third wedding anniversary happened and was celebrated with pizza and Pokemon.
• We went to Disneyland again and also to Las Vegas to see an Avengers exhibit.
• We got a $300 gift card to Fandango from a Dunkin Donuts cup! (We still haven't actually used any of it because the only theater in town doesn't use Fandango, but we're working on that.)
• My parents came to visit us and got to experience the, uh, loveliness of town.
• We were asked to be Mary and Joseph in a live nativity and got to wear outfits with much more fabric than we normally deal with.

Everything is going pretty well! We love each other, we love our church friends, we love our house, and we love our life overall. From our family to yours, have a very merry Christmas, a sparkling new year, and a lovely time relaxing with your loved ones!

Love,
Lizzie and Jared