20 years!

We just celebrated our 20 yr anniversary on Dec 28, 2021!  It’s been an amazing journey so far!  Our family has grown so much in these years. Jenn and I have too!  Jenn looks really young still….I don’t. We have 5 strong and handsome boys.  5! That number surprises us sometimes!  Not an easy task. We are deep in the teenage experience with Keat and Jonas. Busier lives, more challenging school work (over our heads) more complex issues, and higher stakes.  The pre teen boy stage is fun. Thad and Jude are still like puppies. They roll around and wrestle and create and play. Then we are in the toddler stage with Ollie. He is into everything right now. Climbing, exploring, teething, bonking his head, and diapers.  Regardless the stage of life, I love to see Jenn surrounded by her boys. They are each so uniquely talented.  These 20 years have brought enough hard times and good times to make us happy. We have worked hard and tackled a lot of projects together.  Each year we prioritize packing in adventures. There have been literally thousands of sporting events!  All but Ollie can crush it skiing now. His day will come. We have logged enough surfing trips that our skills on the waves are coming along and keeping us coming back. Vacations that we still dream of doing again. Church callings we have stepped up to and loved. We adopted baby Ellie and cared for her for a week. That was a high and a low. We wrestled through the adoption process in AZ. Ended up not adopting there, but we did our best to support Kendall. We fostered Harper during 2021. That was often challenging but overall so good for Harper and her parents and us. We are better from that experience. We have moved 11 times in that window. Some places were just a short stent, like our first apartment in a basement in ogden. Or 6 months in Guatemala. 16 years ago we lived in a house we gutted and renovated in Ogden. What did we know about renovating a house?  Not much really. We just did the best we could.  We started a business and had many properties that we bought and rented and sold. Most of the time it worked out well.  Sometimes it didn’t. We have won big and lost big. The last 20 years have delivered brutal real estate and stock market meltdowns that have punched us in the gut.  With the downturns we have also been on the other end where it seemed like you couldn’t lose. We have endured layoffs, meltdowns, pandemics, drought, family drama, sickness, breaks, bruises, stitches, concussions, surgeries, failed adoptions, failed IVF transfers and our lot of hard times. We have also enjoyed amazing health, built life long friendships, scaled mountains, ran marathons, had amazing spiritual experiences, welcomed new family members, celebrated  birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, sports victories, and school-carreer-family-life successes.  We also got a pool and chickens and Patzi- the worlds best Bernidoodle.  So happy 20th to us!  20 awesome years have flown by!  Here’s to the next 20!