2022 in 12 Photos

This year, I wrote the fewest number of posts that weren't 7 Quick Takes, and it looks like next year may be more of the same (my new calling at church is going to take up a lot of time.)

But with my hands around a mug of hot pumpkin drink, I say let's focus on the positives, including what a year it's been!

In January I tackled my biggest sewing challenge ever, witnessed first hand someone coming out of anesthesia, and answered awkward sex questions from my 5-year-old. 

While writing this post, I realized I'd made a typo in the URL of a post I wrote about when you're going through a really tough time, and even though I could go back and fix it retroactively I won't, because the whole point of that post is that it's okay if life is messy sometimes. Even if it makes my eye twitch.

With all the snow melting, the drainage situation in our driveway got so out of control we had to bail it out with snowshovels so the garage didn't flood. (And now you'll understand why the highlight of our November was redoing the driveway and installing a giant drain.) 

I made curtains for the home office area, convinced the kids to try a family dopamine fast that overall went better than I thought it would, and went to the aquarium (the real one, not the one in our driveway.)

We got a new piano! Our high school senior (an amazing pianist) was leaving the house in less than a year, and it was the right time to replace our beloved antique upright. I can't say enough good things about pianos with a headphone feature so no one wakes up the whole house banging out Chopsticks at 6AM on Saturday morning anymore.

This month our 8-year-old was baptized, the tooth fairy fined my daughter for not brushing well enough, and Phillip and I briefly entertain the idea of doing yoga for just long enough to realize it was a terrible idea.

In April we took a family spring break trip to Miami, Florida, where my kids got out of the car and immediately said "Look, Mom, there's an alligator!" I rolled my eyes, thinking they were just being goofy. They were not. I didn't get around to finishing a post about this trip like I planned so even though there's no record of it, trust me, it was amazing.

On the blog, I posted some of my thoughts on how it felt to have all my kids in school for the first time. At home, we enjoyed watching general conference and had our first dinner party since COVID where we realized we couldn't remember how to people. At school, my daughter wrote the first and only haiku about logarithms I have ever read.

In May, COVID hit our house like a freight train. Rather than trying in vain to isolate within the family, we embraced it and tried to make the most of the unexpected break from school and work. Which I did enjoy, when I wasn't lying in bed feeling like I'd been trampled by a horse. 

I joined a language exchange site after deciding to learn Spanish, turned 40, and chatted unexpectedly with the police (I didn't know it, but this was actually only the first time of the year, lucky me!) Oh, and then my high school daughters successfully switched places with each other in class, even though they're not twins.

High school graduation time for my 18-year-old! Her graduation/birthday gift from us was a trip to Montreal, Canada.Top it all off with a lot of extended family visiting for graduation and June was an all-around insane month. But my 6-year-old still had time to make us all laugh by doing things like making this passive-agressive PB&J.

My kids spent so much time at the pool this summer. We took swim lessons at a friend's pool and two of my kids also tried the summer swim team in a neighboring town. We toured an alpaca farm, may have gotten COVID a second time, and took the kids to watch their first baseball game. We also began our annual Educational Summer Vacation, learning about the countries of Colombia, Zimbabwe, Bangladesh, and Iran. 

The summer had been so packed with visitors, activities, trips, and getting our daughter ready for college that we almost didn't take a camping trip like we usually do every summer. But we decided last-minute to do it, and the site we found was unbelievable.

Then, in what was perhaps the most insane thing we've ever done, we took the family on trip across the country to drop our daughter off at college that involved planes, trains, a road trip, a visit to Grandma's, three different states, two VRBOs, and a partridge in a pear tree. I'm still exhausted.

Just in time for school to start, we returned home and the rhythm of the school year took over. My 16-year-old is homeschooling this year, and I really enjoyed taking her on a field trip to the war museum and learning her trick to writing a first draft of an essay. I also got a pixie cut (although I did trim it up a bit at home after taking this picture and liked it better.)

Seeing as how I've successfully raised a child to age 18, I figured a few posts on parenting this month might be appropriate, so I shared 30 things you learn in 18 years and 10 things you learn in a big family. Can any of you relate? 

Being the responsible 40-year-old I am now, I got my first mammogram. I also took the little kids to an open house at the fire station and received a hilarious picture of a letter my aunt found in her house that I'd written her when I was 7.

After having new driveway drainage installed, Phillip and I passed rainy afternoons by standing outside and watching the rain swirl directly into the drain. Look at how beautiful that is. LOOK AT IT. 

We also celebrated a quiet Thanksgiving. We were going to go to a friend's house, but decided it would be more fun to get sick instead. And then for some reason, I went to the mall on Black Friday which I'll never do again.

The 18-year-old came home for the holidays and we've been having a glorious time with her building gingerbread houses, doing fun things together as part of our second no-gift Christmas, and cleaning out the world's messiest closet. I also made some delicious orange cranberry muffins and brought our Nativity in to show my son's first grade class, just like I did when my college freshman was his age. Time really does fly.

This year was full of ups and downs (and I think it bears repeating that just because I can't share some of my kids' downs on this blog doesn't mean we don't have them) but overall, writing posts like this one makes me feel really grateful for the gloriously chaotic life we lead. Happy New Year!

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2021 in 12 Photos

What a weird year. But time marches on and this recap always reminds me what we have to show for the last twelve months.

Just like in 2020, 2019. 2018. 2017, 2016, and 2015, I distilled our life for the past year down to 12 photos and recapped our last year. 

The Evans family rang in the New Year like we always do, with the kids taking turns smashing their gingerbread houses with a meat tenderizer, They take this tradition very seriously. I had no idea what my 6-year-old's teacher thought when he drew this pictorial representation of it for school.

I discovered a library hack that allowed the kids to endure not being able to go to the library, found the no-slip solution for our sofas that I've been searching for all my life, and did our laundry at the neighbor's house while our washer was broken.

With the combination of the cold and COVID, there wasn't all that much to do, so the highlight of the 4-year-old's year was playing with the 35 feet of air pillows Amazon sent us with a case of toilet paper.

Never mind elaborate date nights, Phillip and I entertained ourselves by watching classic movies from the 40s and 50s at home or going to the fancy hipster grocery store and challenging each other to find something that wasn't kombucha.

I served the kids Benadryl-flavored treats for Valentine's Day and started taking pills the size of Jolly Ranchers for my discoid lupus, and wrote about the ridiculousness that is labor as portrayed in the movies and what a museum of my kids' messes would look like.

In March, we tricked the kids into going on a hike by calling it a "shamrock hunt" and the first grader dressed up as a 100-year-old man for virtual school. On the blog I got real about the challenges of having a big family, and since I'm still alive after a couple of years of raising teenagers, I wrote some expert advice about parenting them (arranged in alphabetical order for your convenience.)

I gave a talk in church about Christian discipleship this month in front of everyone, but by far my greatest success of this month was getting the policy of the city's art museum changed so my kids could visit without me. 

In April, the kids went back to in-person school full-time (up until now they'd done a hybrid that was at home three days a week.) I told them to clean out their backpacks and one child claimed, "There's really nothing in there." I knew better.

I discovered a minimalist YouTuber who changed my life, and to this day, our kitchen still stays clean for more than 3 seconds at a time. After a decade of picking the handtowel up off the floor every time I entered a bathroom in the house, I finally put snaps on the backs of ours and really couldn't decide what to do with all my new free time.

In the pursuit of a new and livable basement, Phillip temporarily disabled our stairs and worked on designing new ones. It was meant to be just for a weekend, but it stayed that way for 6 months.

This giant luna moth visited our house for the day and Phillip painted our KitchenAid for my birthday.  

When Phillip and I took a trip to Utah for his sister's wedding, we decided to explore our old college. I didn't see us as the old couple on campus, but all the teeny boppers walking around with their backpacks and AirPods sure did.

The last two months of massive decluttering resulted in an epic yard sale in June. We only made $670, but that's probably because we sold literally everything for $1 and gave it away free to anyone who asked. We didn't care about profit, we just wanted it gone.

With that out of the way, I started on home improvements I'd wanted to do for years but was too overwhelmed to start. First up was our kitchen broom area (which still looks great, thanks.) 

We realized this month that a cross-country family road trip is infinitely easier when everyone in the car is old enough to have full control of their bladders. 

On our way to Minnesota, we stopped in Chicago and Columbus, where we saw the sights, walked down memory lane, and the 5-year-old offended a lady by not knowing what her Pomeranians were.

Once we were home, I spent most of my time sifting through college junk mail for my 17-year-old and trying (and failing) to make appetizing snacks for my littles.

For the tenth year in a row, we dedicated most of July and August to learning about different countries of the world. 

We drew the Northern Lights in Iceland, tried some step dancing in Ireland (it did not go well), practiced writing in Khmer in Cambodia, had a canoe-building competition in Fiji, ate gelato in Italy, and were super-sad when Afghanistan fell to the Taliban just two weeks after we finished learning about it.

The kids had the time of their lives pet-sitting for our friend's dog Murphy, we went on our annual family camping trip, and the diamond flew out of my wedding ring and turned up the next day in the washing machine hose. It was an eventful month.

My youngest started kindergarten and my oldest started her senior year of high school. (WHAT IS EVEN GOING ON HERE?!) 

With all the kids in school, I threw myself into tackling the ugliest area in the house: our laundry closet. After painting the dryer and navigating some confusion in the home decor aisle at Target, it turned out beautifully.

I also scheduled my 17-year-old's wisdom tooth removal and wrote about some quick tricks to get young kids to listen. Sometimes they even work!

We made the 10-year-old laugh with a made-up cake for her birthday, got a new roof, and went to the county fair.

As a youth leader in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I walked a 12.5 mile religious pilgrimage with the teenagers which went way better than I thought it would.

Now that the kitchen was mostly staying clean, we decided that it had earned some new counters to replace the forest green formica that had been there since the 90s. Can't say I was that sorry to see it go.

I had a fun time driving 45 MPH on the freeway, the 10-year-old had to quarantine at home due to being a close contact of someone with COVID, and the 15-year-old's orchestra concert marked the first time I've sat in an auditorium with other people for a year and a half.

We ended the year by watching The Nutcracker ballet and blew all the leaves in the neighborhood. My favorite new discovery was using power tools to do housework, and I'll never go back. 

I've always loved Christmas, both as a religious holiday and just a fun family time to be together, but this year will go down as my favorite in history because of how highly simplified it was. The kids didn't even miss all the extra garbage, but my stress level was down 1,000%.

Happy New Year! As we move into 2022, I'm not going to lie: I have no idea what it's going to look like. But I'm optimistic. 

I love my kids, husband, and my faith in Jesus Christ. I'll probably need to hold on to those three things tighter than I ever have before, but you know what? That's a good thing.

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2020 in 12 Photos

I almost feel responsible for the unexpected way 2020 went, because it was the first year that Phillip and I got our acts together enough to sit down on January 1st and plan out our entire year. We should've known that was asking for disaster.

We were going to travel! Use every one of his vacation days to the fullest! It was going to be such a great year!

And in a lot of ways, it was a wonderful year for our family — just not in any of the ways we were envisioning.

This year I blogged less than I have in any other year, probably because for the last nine months the kids have all been home 24/7. By the time I'm finished getting everyone snacks, it's about time to go to bed.

In January, I watched Cool Runnings with the kids, stayed up late reading a book about cadavers, and got a cold for the first and last time this year. (Turns out that when my kids aren't allowed to lick other kids at school they bring home way fewer germs. Weird.)

I wrote 56 practical tips for raising independent kids, my daughter chose an unusual violin mantra, our Christmas tree from 2019 just wouldn't die, and we went to the library and ended up watching a fire dancer.

I learned in February that if you've never seen 6 excited kids meeting 10 excited puppies, you don't know what chaos is. 

My 8-year-old got in trouble for running up a $200 tab on her school lunch account (guess it's all that independence I wrote about in January.) I tricked Phillip into making a triceratops cake and remembered why I was so exhausted when the kids were little and I had to drag them all to the store all the time.

We got new couches and I took a 90-minute dip in a sensory deprivation tank. I also took a shot at being wise and cobbled together 30 lessons I've learned from 15 years of parenting.

Watching everything grind to a halt in March felt like watching a car accident happen in slow motion. The kids were slightly disappointed when all their things were canceled, but we adapted. Having home church and spending so much time together ended up being a huge blessing.

Phillip finished his grow-a-beard experiment and ended it by trolling his parents into thinking he'd shaved it into a bushy 1980s mustache.

Lastly, an obscene amount of traffic suddenly started arriving at my post 20 Things to Do When You're Trapped Indoors with Tiny Humans, which unfortunately was a sarcastic post I'd written years ago that was no help whatsoever for beleaguered parents in quarantine, so I decided to write a real one.

Quarantine still felt like an excessive April Fool's joke, but we tried to make the best of it. Phillip made some serious progress on finishing the basement while the kids and I floated homemade boats in our driveway puddle and made up themed days of the week.

We watched General Conference and made one teensy visit to urgent care so the 6-year-old could get his head stapled shut. Apparently where there's a will there's a way, and kids can hurt themselves even when they aren't allowed to leave the house or see other children.

My blog joined Instagram but just between you and me, I think I'm about 10 years to old to even be on the platform. I have no idea what I'm doing there.

We called 911 when my 11-year-old fell and had a seizure, and in tamer moments, we made our own ice cream and I celebrated my 38th birthday.

After a full year of pleading from the 8-year-old, we finally caved and got two pet rats. Though we love Scout and Piper, both turned out to be pregnant and we lost both litters in the most traumatic way; none of us even want to talk about it.

We got in touch with nature and made birch beer floats from scratch (we boiled sticks from the woods and everything) and played with a mole we caught in the yard. 

On the blog, I published some musings on when you're done having babies as well as a roundup of 7 Zoom features I wish I could use in real life. 

In July we bought a van! Our old one was on its last legs and hardly made it to the dealership. I also wrote what reality shows would be like if parents wrote them.

With nothing else to do all summer, our calendar was wide open for our annual pretend trip around the world. Usually we have enough free time to cover 4 or 5 countries; this summer we covered 9. 

This month we lost our minds over falafel in Israel (in general it was a really good summer for international food), visited a butterfly garden in Mexico, and got totally confused about how Komodo dragons work in Indonesia.

In August, we took a family camping trip to the most beautiful campsite I've ever been to in my life... even if it did have pit toilets.

In our continuing fake trip around the world, we learned about Morocco, Thailand, Saudi Arabia, Cuba, and Somalia (my favorite moment: when we sat down to watch a movie about Somali pirates and the standard pre-show warning came on that "piracy is not a victimless crime.")

In real life, we sourced two huge couches from Facebook Marketplace and put them stadium-style in the basement to watch movies, I fell in love with Alanis Morisette all over again, and the kids entertained themselves with a bag of rice and a package of balloons for an entire weekend.

Society hesitantly decided to try life again this month. My 14-year-old had a weird outdoor masked violin recital and the kids started hybrid school, which sure made for different "first day of school" pictures than in years past.

We met our friendly neighborhood black bear for the first time (but not the last one), my 9x13" pan shattered in the oven, and I was almost maimed by shards of glass from an exploding bottle. 

It was an exciting month.

I could not stop drooling over the fall colors in October. This unedited picture was taken with my about 15 minutes from my house. (I don't have a nice camera, I just live on the cover of a Hallmark card.)

I enjoyed the simple moments like watching a tree removal company at work with my little boys, and even when our town made the jerk move of cancelling trick-or-treating at the last minute we still had a great time at home. 

I got trapped in a giant hedge maze with a child who needed to pee and stayed up until 2 A.M. making a massive rainbow surprise birthday cake. On the blog, I suggested some new parenting-related dictionary entries for consideration by Merriam-Webster. 

In November, I started teaching my oldest how to drive, Phillip turned 40, and we took a quick couple's trip to a little artsy town on the coast while our kids held down the fort at home. 

A friend's teenager taught me how to use a record player and my 9-year-old talked us into letting her get a crayfish named Phredd. Phredd kind of creeps us all out, but it's not his fault. We're just not that into disgusting-looking crustaceans.

Since we didn't really go anywhere (remember all those plans we made at the beginning of the year? Pfft.) Phillip took all his vacation in a big chunk at Christmastime and got a ton of work done on the house. 

The kids drew names for "Secret Sibling" and told the secret immediately, but I guess it's the thought that counts. We also waited too long and couldn't find a Christmas tree anywhere, so we had to improvise and I actually loved the end result.

2020 was an unconventional year that called for bottomless reserves of adaptability, understanding, and resilience. Pretty much everything from March onward was either canceled or bore little resemblance to how it usually looks. 

But it was a year where my kids became better friends and our family scripture study became more regular and meaningful. I think we're all thriving, and a lot of it is directly due to the unique circumstances 2020 handed to us.

Happy New Year's, and see you in 2021!

(Want more? Never fear, you can still read the Evans family's "12 Photos" updates from 2019. 2018. 2017, 2016, and 2015!)

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2019 in 12 Photos

I feel like I say this every year, but I think my largest accomplishment of 2019 was being even less on top of things than I was last year.

True as it may be, I still can't deny there were plenty of amazing moments along the way. And the ones that were complete fails? Well, they at least make entertaining stories later on.

In 12 photos, here  they are: the Unremarkable Files memorable moments of 2019.

In January, the kids enjoyed our annual gingerbread house smash. We went sledding in -1 degree weather and finally figured out why we can't arrive at church on time. Not that it helps.

I wrote a 6-month update on giving our high schooler a phone (well, it's technically our phone that she's permitted to use as long as she follows the rules) and the best way to stop refereeing your kids' fights.

I also wrote descriptions for TED talks my preschooler could give and a sarcastic post inspired by watching my children picking apart their lunches and realizing they don't know how sandwiches work.

Visiting an ice castle in February was a fun experience for everyone, except for Phillip and the child who threw up on him in the gift shop.

These 7 funny text exchanges between Disney characters were mostly likely prompted by a viewing of the original Little Mermaid, where I had the horrifying realization that Ariel has no fingernails.

My absolute favorite project on the blog this year was working with my kids to create this video Why Moms Can't Practice Mindfulness. (They were total naturals at demonstrating why.)

I also wrote about our family's Valentine's Day traditions and how parenting sometimes means getting woken up at 6AM to look up booger facts online. Parenthood is weird.

The children kept themselves busy by vandalizing the sofa (pictured above) and I was the sickest I have ever been with a stomach bug. When I recovered, I humiliated myself in front of the high school health teacher and attempted to cook vegan meat which went exactly like you imagine.

If you'd like to know more about what I was up to all month, please see this visual representation of all the ways your kids will push your buttons as well as this alphabetical list of reasons my toddler has cried. It may help you to understand.

My children tried (and failed) to be diplomatic when I made disastrous rolls for Easter dinner, we dyed Ukranian Easter eggs, and my teenager proved you can find absolutely anything on the Internet, including someone playing Canon in D on a rubber chicken.

On the blog, I wrote about the top 5 most awkward situations I've been in (believe me, it was hard to narrow them down.)

I also created these 13 hilariously appropriate sympathy cards for parents. Please share one with a friend when the right occasion arises.

For my 36th birthday I was thrilled when Phillip bought me a new set of dishes to replace our broken ones... and even more thrilled when he served me a brownie and ice cream inside them and told me he got them on clearance for $11.

I went to a friend's college graduation, dropped my phone in the toilet, and ranted about the Thomas the Train book from hades that my child brought home from the library.

I wrote an article on all the weird food my 3-year-old served me from his play kitchen, unhelpful tips for date nights after you have kids, and some slightly more realistic inclusions for your next Mother's Day coupon book from your kids (save it and send to your husband in 2020.)

School let out and we started our educational summer vacation. By the end of it, my kids had learned all about the countries of New Zealand, Poland, Vietnam, Panama, and Rwanda, and I was completely exhausted.

There was a 16th wedding anniversary, bushes that looked like poop emojis, and more poison ivy than I ever want to deal with for the rest of my life. Phillip tricked me into singing a duet in front of everybody and apparently I have nightmares about things like buying a new couch now.

I also have NO IDEA what I'm doing parenting a teenager. None.

A good part of July was dedicated to an epic family vacation to the West Coast. After two weeks, we came home from an Evans family reunion and a tour of the Oregon/Washington coast with a ton of memories and dirty laundry.

I was proud to win the award for World's Meanest Mom for refusing to let my kids eat popsicles for breakfast, and even found the time to write a killer acceptance speech for the honor.

The older went to visit their grandparents for a week and we all drowned in leftovers because I have no clue how to cook for a small group.

The 7-year-old started horseback riding lessons and I was diagnosed with cutaneous lupus after a biopsy where I almost passed out, and the kids were late for swimming lessons every day.

My writing style was described to me as "passively-aggressively funny," which I kind of like and am in the process of trying to fit on a business card, and I wrote this recap of the odd jobs I've worked in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

In September the kids started school again, and I may or may not have tried a few of these back-to-school spells and incantations to avoid head lice. Lice is probably my #1 fear as a parent.

I mused at the disappearance of the parenting village and how hard it makes 21st-century parenting, tried to stain the deck while the little kids tried to help, and solved the mystery of a sneaky Wal-Mart delivery guy who left footprints in our newly resealed driveway. We're on to you, man.

After a decade of devoted service, our master bedroom closet gave up the will to live, so that was fun.

I was thrilled to join the elite 1% (it's probably not what you think) and pleased that cod liver oil doesn't taste as bad as I thought it would.

I forget most of the time that our family is what many people would consider freakishly large so I don't write about it that often (to me it's just everyday life,) but I decided to write this post about 7 big family misconceptions that I was told many times hit the nail exactly on the head.

With a whim and a coupon, I walked into Great Clips and cut off my hair. It turned out to be the best haircut I've ever gotten, according to my husband.

I looked at some cute baby pictures, took my family to get Christmas photos taken and cleaned up pee in the studio, and discovered that my 3-year-old apparently knows how to change a toilet paper roll. That was weird.

The highlight of December, and probably the highlight of my entire life, was a trip to Florida. Getting out of the New England cold during the winter is an out-of-body experience.

At home, I introduced the kids to Chuck Norris jokes and gave away a copy of a Christmas board game called Stella Nova (congratulations, Amanda!) I watched a lot of Christmas movies with the kids and enjoyed all of them that weren't The Polar Express.

I finished off the month by creating these motivational posters for toddlers and rounding up my 10 funniest parenting memes, and now I'm ready to settle down for a long winter's nap.

I read that was a thing in one of my kids' Christmas books.

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