Monday, December 31, 2018

2018 in 12 Photos

The decorations are coming down, the Christmas cookies are finally starting to run low, and needles are falling from the tree faster than a kindergartner loses Hatchimals.

Phillip and I just celebrated an early New Year's with the kids before putting them to bed (the older ones clinking their goblets of sparkling cider with a "crappy New Year!" before heading off to a New Year's Eve party,) and now it's time to hit the archives and see what we've done over the last 12 months.


In January, I broke the power door mechanism on the van, Phillip had to leave the new Star Wars movie during the most exciting part to take someone to the bathroom, and the toddler applied half a tub of Vaseline to his hair with a toothbrush (pictured above.)

My Never, Never Have I Ever post made the rounds among frazzled parents on Facebook, and I also wrote about things you're probably doing right now if you have kids and how mine think I'm a walking Kleenex.

(Since you can see my daughter's lunchbox on the floor in front of the toilet in the picture above, you can assume I wrote zero posts about home organization.)


Having Reynaud's in February in New England is fun! My fingers may go numb and turn yellow whenever they get cold, but at least my family volunteers to put away the frozen groceries because this freaks them out.

I visited the art museum sans kids, made a shirt for 100s day that my kindergartner definitely didn't appreciate, shared my tips for making your kids into hard workers, and brainstormed uses for our built-in Jacuzzi that has never been used to take a bath.

To this day, I still daydream about the carpet lines after getting our kids' floors professionally cleaned.


Spring cleaning this year did not go well, as evidenced by this step-by-step guide.

The toddler figured out how to escape from his crib and we went to the playground to see what it's like to slide down into 15" of snow. Phillip and I also made the mistake of sitting right next to the audio recording equipment with all the little kids at our 11-year-old's orchestra concert. Never again.

On the blog, I shared my awesome school lunch packing system and recommended some kids' books and movies with positive family dynamics.


This month I ranted about complicated captcha codes on the Internet and got some raised eyebrows after putting my daughter alone on the subway (spoiler alert: I would totally do this again.)

Our family may or may not have caused a noise complaint to the police, we had an amazing weekend celebrating Easter and watching general conference at the same time, and I sewed together a doll's buttcrack.

If you need to know any more about my life, please see this list of 50 reasons toddlers freak out (including that the socks you put on your hands don't have thumb spaces like mittens) and 30 things parents can't believe they need to say out loud (such as "If you can't stop pulling down my pants, we're leaving.")


I got the best welcome mat for my 36th birthday (see above,) bonded with my girls over our shared hatred of comic sans, and finally finished the massive jumbo OMG super-economy sized bottle of pepper Phillip bought at the grocery store in 2015.

In other news, I performed my civic duty as Juror #28 just before having a suspicious mole on my foot checked out by my dermatologist that turned out to be a squashed raisin.

My kids also invented a game where they call the toddler "Sir" and scramble around to get him everything a 2-year-old could want. (It's December now, and he answers to 'Sir' in addition to his actual name.)


Phillip and I went to Quebec City for our 15th wedding anniversary, and I'm not going to lie, the highlight of the whole trip was sleeping.

I did my one crafty thing per year and made a ghost-shaped cookie cutter for an end-of-year school function, and was weirded out by some naked mannequins in J.C. Penney.

I also wrote some funny Yelp reviews of a toddler-themed restaurant and voiced some concerns about The Runaway Bunny after reading it for the first time.


Phillip's parents came to visit and we took a family vacation to New York to see Niagara Falls and some historical sites for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

We started our 7th annual around-the-world educational summer vacation, took a disastrous boat tour, and had what I can only describe as a once-in-a-lifetime Port-a-Potty visit.

I also did some thinking about what a toddler would put on his bucket list after observing mine and wondering what in the world he's thinking about half the time.


I developed an eye condition called blepharitis (which is just as unattractive as it sounds,) took half the neighborhood to play at our friend's pool, and got a new phone.

Our family of 8 went camping with friends who also have six kids, and the people at the front desk were SO confused at how we could possibly be making a family reservation for 16 people.

Oh, and a wild turkey showed up and started hanging around our yard so much the kids named it Harriet. After she moved on we found she was actually a guinea fowl and probably not female, so now when we speak of her we call her Harriet the Male Guinea Fowl.


The kids went back to school and I thought it would be a perfect time to potty train the toddler. It was rough but ended well.

I wrote about spending one-on-one time with kids, International Talk Like a Pirate Day, and being totally confused at the movie Jumanji.

Also, I was made aware of an ongoing problem with eating the grass at soccer practice and really hoped my kid wasn't the one who started it.


My 6-year-old enjoyed eating Reese's for her first time after outgrowiing her peanut allergy and my son enjoyed wearing a banana costume to the zoo.

A coworker of Phillip's brought me a special mother's pin from Mongolia and I made a really weird Halloween craft with the kids that was like a butterfly garden but for fruit flies.

I took a 10-day break from the blog, wrote about 6 fall knits that pair well with your child's snot on the shoulder, and wrote about why my church has requested that we stop using the nickname "Mormon." It was quite a month.


After stewing in my feelings since at least September, I finally wrote about my kids getting older. I didn't anticipate how much I would struggle with the transition of having a high schooler and a baby who's no longer a baby.

Phillip was out of town for half the month while a stomach bug ripped through the family, but he was back in time to bring me French chocolates and argue over whether his favorite hoodie was gray or green.

It's green, by the way.


Over the holiday break, Phillip took to calling the kids to dinner with a whistle and I'm not saying anything because it works.

I saw the Hip Hop Nutcracker with the kids, heard Handel's Messiah with Phillip, and completely mutilated a mug of hot chocolate in the microwave, so I guess you could say I had a pretty well-rounded Christmas.

I enjoyed writing yearly recaps of my favorite posts of 2018 and my funniest parenting memes of the year, and now it's about time to start the new year.

And in typical Evans fashion, I finished this post just under the wire and now my plan is to collapse into bed, exhausted. Maybe I'll sleep more in 2019.

Maybe.

A funny look back through the year filled with hilarious memories, laughable kid moments, and relatable blog posts about momlife in a house full of children. Happy New Year from Jenny and the rest of the Unremarkable Files crew! #yearinreview #recap #hilarious #funny #relatable #real #kids #momlife #unremarkablefiles

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2 comments:

Rachel said...

Happy, happy new year! The "sir" game still makes me laugh. Many adventures have been had in your household!

Jenny Evans said...

To you, too. I really hope the kids are still jokingly calling him 'sir' when he's 30.