This Year's Wrap Up

 I love our family's blog books. I love capturing the moments and freezing them in time so we can look back and relive those fun memories over and over and over. I've also started tracking in my planner books I've read, trips we've taken, large projects we've accomplished so I wanted to record that here and be able to look back on it later:

Books I read in 2023:

(I joined a book club this year and read a lot of books that I wouldn't normally pick up. I really enjoyed the challenge and reading some different things. Definitely didn't love all of them and I've decided that I don't NEED to finish a book just because I start it, so a few books in the list will say *did not finish, and I also starred books that I especially loved. Also, the last two years I've discovered audiobooks which allows me to read so many more books than I would be able to if I could only read the hardcopy)

Grandma Gatewood's Walk

Miraculous Abundance *did not finish

Mennonite in a Little Black Dress

Screwtape Letters*

American Sherlock*

Man's Search for Meaning

The Gift

Salt to the Sea

Wrong Place, Wrong Time

AP World History: Modern

All the Light We Cannot See*

Remarkably Bright Creatures

Kindred

The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team

The Social Graces

Stranger in a Lifeboat

Daisy Jones and the Six

The Life and Adventures of James Gammill

The Tattooist of Auschwitz

Google's 3 Months to No. 1

The Happiness Advantage* (again)

Thursday's Murder Club

Cilka's Journey

The Midnight Library*

The Christmas Guest

Before Happiness*

Assistant to the Villain*

The Happiness Project

Also-it's not a book, but I listen to the Follow Him podcast each week which is two hours talking about the weekly lesson in Come Follow Me.

Family Adventures and Travels in 2023:

(we had planned that this would be a year of no trips since we were starting up our Restoration 1 franchise. I still wanted to track our adventures. When you are tracking, you realize that we had a TON of travels in just one year, especially a year of NO TRAVELS.

Shayne's Colorado Snowboarding trip with Jim

Sibling California trip for Jonna

Kid's Last Hurrah California Trip

Jonna and Shayne to Nashville

Jonna and Shayne to Dallas Texas for training

Jonna and Olivia in Utah and coming home

Shayne, Quinten & Collin to Disneyland for choir

Shayne work trip to Miami

Izzy California and Disneyland Choir Trip

Quinten YM trip to Utah

Izzy California YW trip

Izzy and Quinten FSY

Shayne and Jonna Flagstaff weekend

Shayne, Olivia, Izzy, Quinten & Collin Comicon and San Diego Trip

Shayne and Olivia to Utah Trip

Shayne, Quinten & Collin Carlsbad Beach Camping

Olivia home for Thanksgiving

Olivia home for Christmas

Large Projects Accomplished:

(it doesn't seem like very many projects were accomplished this year, but the ones that were, were HUGE for our family and took a lot to accomplish)

Bought a van for Restoration 1

Opened a Restoration 1 franchise

Olivia bought her first car

Izzy started West-Mec

Olivia started Nursing Program

Expanded our apiary to 4 beehives

Harvested honey and sold it

Youth temple trips-17 this year and went to 9 different temples

Quinten's Braces

Family History:

This is something I've really worked hard on the past few years and this year was no different. I am loving learning about my ancestors, and adding to our family's information on Family Search. This year I read a book about one of my ancestors James Gammill, and made 320 contributions in Family Search which includes creating records for 94 relatives/ancestors. Our family has tried to take many of our ancestors through the temple now that temples are fully open again and in the past two years (just through my account-there are more in everyone else's account but we use my account the most to get temple ordinance cards) we've completed 140 ordinances for our ancestors. I've started working on personal histories and helped both my parents (and Shayne's parents a little) get many of their stories and experiences down. I've also worked with my dad's siblings to get their personal histories down and am working on compiling all those into a small book with pictures and stories from their lives. I've been working on keeping a journal and I've now hit 2.5 years in my daily journal (just short and sweet each day of what happened) and I love looking back on all we've done over the last 2+ years with our family. Record keeping is amazing.

Nail Tech

My favorite nail tech does amazing things!!

Getting Braces!

Quinten is starting the long process of braces...finally!

Christmas Magic

Christmas Magic!

Everyone got new PJs for Christmas Eve

Santa came and spoiled us with all sorts of treasures!

The favorite gifts of the year are:

Quinten-AT-TE Lego Walker

Collin-Scooter, or PS5 and Madden game

Izzy-Birkenstocks

Olivia-a framed picture of Christ and Heavenly Mother (it is still on it's way)

Christmas Eve Sunday

We rarely do Christmas Sunday clothes, but since Christmas Eve fell on a Sunday we thought it would be fun!

Tie tying

Collin is learning how to tie a double windsor all on his own!

Holiday Antics

This year things were a little diferent than usual. The kids had school up until Christmas Eve. With the business in full swing, we were all pretty busy. So it didn't look normal, we didn't all pick our tradition to do, there wasn't a lot of hustle and bustle, but we still managed to have a few antics, and we relished being able to celebrate the birth of our Savior.

Having our light hanger (Izzy) up on the roof yet another year!

With a little help, we did get our tree decorated (only 1 this year, no Star Wars tree)

The kids made an advent calendar for Wicket with lots of fun toys and treats. The boys also opened a Marvel Lego Advent Calendar.

Our elf had a few antics of his own.

Shayne and I got to go to a Christmas Murder Mystery Dinner with some friends. So much fun!

Our friend gifts were honey themed this year.

We did an end of the semester breakfast for the kids' seminary class.

We got the whole family together (very tough to do with schedules) and went out for some Texas Roadhouse.

Cookie decorating for Santa on Christmas Eve!

The kids got new ornaments this year:

Collin-nerf football

Olivia-nursing is a calling

Quinten-Pokemon

Izzy-hairtools

It has been a whirlwind of a holiday season, but I am so grateful I get to spend it with these wonderful people I love to much!

Averi Michelle Black

Averi Michelle Black

January 25, 1982November 7, 2023

Averi Michelle Black passed from this life in the afternoon of November 7, 2023 at the age of 41. She was taken by ovarian cancer, which she valiantly fought for nearly 4 years.Averi was born on January 25, 1982 in Roseville California. She is survived by her parents William and Lynette Black, two sisters, and two brothers, Stephanie Isom, Shayne Black, Jenna deHoyos, and Thomas Black, along with numerous aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, and cousins.Averi graduated from Kentwood High school in Covington, Washington in 2000, and in 2004, earned a bachelor’s degree in Marketing and Communications from BYU-Idaho. Although she worked in marketing, advertising, and customer support for radio stations and software companies after graduating from college, her real passion was photography. After working for almost 15 years in the corporate world, she ventured out on her own and built a small photography business, which specialized in family photos and corporate images.In her photography, Averi was self-taught. She was a true genius behind the camera. She had an incredible talent for capturing special moments, poses, angles, perspectives, and colors. Photo editing was her specialty. She consistently brought out the best features of everyone (and the places) she took pictures of. Her photography business was rapidly expanding through referrals and exposure to her work.In her personal life, besides spending time with her family, the thing that Averi enjoyed most was traveling. She and her brother Thomas, who was her constant traveling companion, went on several international trips which included the United Kingdom, Italy, Prague, Iceland, and Greece. One year, she convinced her sister Jenna to go to New York City with her during the Christmas holiday in order to see the sights and take pictures. Of course, a big part of her travels was to take as many pictures as she could.Averi was very passionate about our country. She loved the U.S. Constitution and our founding principles. During each election cycle, she always studied the issues and candidates. She also made sure her family and friends took the time to vote.Her favorite holidays were Christmas and the Fourth of July. Her favorite time of the year was Autumn because of the myriad of colors in nature. During the Fall, she was always looking for places that had lots of color in order to take scenic photos.Averi loved to sing and had a lovely singing voice. She also enjoyed a wide range of music including songs by Abba, Frank Sinatra and many hits from her favorite era the 80’s. One of her favorite songs (maybe her most favorite) was “Forever Young” by Alphaville.Averi was a friend and inspiration to countless people, including family, friends, schoolmates, colleagues, clients, and business associates. She had an incredible gift of seeing a “bigger picture” in any situation and seemed to know how to give the perfect advice when it was needed. Her ability with people was a blessing to everyone who knew her, not only in her personal life, but in her professional life as well. She always seemed to know exactly what to say to help someone through a problem. She was a fierce defender of those she loved. She was funny and cheerful and always made people feel important.Heaven truly gained an angel when Averi passed from this life.

Diversity Santas

This cracked me up. We got a bag of Reese's Santas and they made sure that Santa wasn't just a white guy, they have all sorts of diverse santas in this bag...

Work visits

While we were out running errands, we decided to stop by Izzy's work and check in on her (or give her a hard time which is way more fun!). She's loving her new job at Sephora, loves all she's learning about make up and skincare, loves the girls she works with, and loves the break from Kohl's.

Clean room

Izzy's room is a constant battle with cleanliness. However, she finally got it all clean and showed it off to Dad. He however, wanted to look in the closet which SHE COULD NOT LET HIM DO!! 

Squeezing in some sleep

Izzy has had the craziest past two weeks possible. She has all of her regular classes that are winding down with final projects and tests and quizzes and finals. She also attends West-Mec Hairstyling each day for a few hours after school. Even though it is VERY hard for her, she wakes up in the 5:00 hour to attend seminary each day. She has yet another class of Physics that doesn't fit into her schedule (there are just too many classes she wants to take) so she takes it independent study and had to finish the semester. She's in Vocal Thunder which has an after school rehearsal for two hours each week and serves on Choir Council which planned and carried out a holiday party. She hosted a holiday party for her friend group at our home. AND she has worked between 30-40 hours at her new job at Sephora each week. To top it off, she got hit with a pretty nasty head cold and couldn't take off any of her other commitments. She pretty much hasn't slept in the last few weeks trying to close out all of her commitments and it made my heart very happy to see her peacefully sneaking in a nap inbetween school and West-Mec.

She rocked it. ALL. She has been such a trooper trying to do her best in all of her commitments. Hopefully next semester isn't as crazy...It probably will be.

Recent Quotes

A few quotes that I've come across recently that have really hit me hard as we struggle through this new business. So many ups and downs. So many unknowns. So much anxiety and completely new experiences.

Hunsaker Farewell

Our good friends the Hunsakers moved up to Utah. So we had a final dinner party and the guys had a final game night before they left. Truly awesome people, they will be missed!

Thanksgiving

We had the really unique experience of not hosting anyone for Thanksgiving this year. Just our family (Izzy's friend Chloe came over for dinner but pretty much all week it was just our family). It was super low-key and we all really enjoyed it. Everyone helped with part of dinner, and we ate on our newly inherited china from Nana. We have so much to be grateful for this year, especially having our family home during this season.