A brief 3 year catch up

It feels a little silly to complain about a Global Pandemic when every single person on the planet is being affected by it. I'm not sure why that when the more people there are experiencing something, the less you can complain about it. Instead we are all comrades experiencing the pitfalls of this Pandemic together.  Maybe we should start calling each other comrades, but I try my best not to copy the French Revolution even at the worst of times.

Regardless of what I just said I'm going to complain, but I'll keep it brief. I miss people, I miss non-(home, hiking, or walking) related activities, I miss eating out, I miss events, I even miss things I didn't think I would. It turns out that I guess I need people more than I realized. An obvious realization for most people, I know. But I'm an introvert and a homebody by nature and usually find I don't have enough time at home, or by myself. Now that I have had LOTS of that I realize people are actually pretty amazing and I miss them in my life. Hence why I have randomly decided to start this blog again. I know its not the same as socializing but it does make me feel a little more connected and close to people when I do it. Also I've been catching up on creating my yearly photo books and it was a little sad doing 2018 without any sort of blog post to intersperse throughout it.

Anyways where to start? Probably not the best idea to try to catch up on 3 years of time in one blog post. But I kind of want to try anyway muhahah. A photo for each month? Challenge accepted. I will forewarn you I cheated, but only a little. 

June 2017

July 2017

This year was the first year we went out to Utah in the Summer to do fireworks. We liked it so much we have done it every year since. I love at home fireworks and was too sad at the thought of not doing them because we live in California.

August 2017

Back when Nathan was attempting to grow out his hair.

September 2017

This month my dear sweet Grandma Lewis passed away. I'm standing outside of the home she lived most of her life. I still miss her.

October 2017

 

Ok, so I cheated big time this month, but October is the best month of the year. Can you blame me?

November 2017

December 2017

This Christmas we went out to Colorado to have Christmas with my sister and her family. It was a lot of fun despite us being sick most the time.

January 2018

In 2018 we had passes to Knott's Berry Farm. We had lots of  fun there, although I was pregnant for most the year and unable to go on the adult rides :'(.

February 2018

March 2018

This baby girl turned 2 this March. I feel this picture did and continues to capture her personality well.

April 2018

That one time I threw a birthday party for my 4 year old. Will I throw a birthday party ever again? It remains to be seen.

May 2018

In May Grey started showing himself, and terrible morning sickness eased enough for me to enjoy cake on my birthday. 

June 2018

One of the first hikes I took my kids on a hike. It was hot, and too long. Near the end pregnant me was carrying Emmy and the dog. Its been enough time I can look back and laugh on that ordeal.

July 2018

In July we went to Yellowstone for a Tyler family reunion with my parents and siblings. These girl cousins really hit it off.

Enjoying pig races at the fair. Its very rare for Wrenn to show this much excitement for things.

August 2018

Boating in Big Bear with the Tates.

September 2018

October 2018

November 2018

Baby Grey!

December 2018

January 2019

February 2019

March 2019

For Emmy's birthday this year we got Disneyland tickets so Emmy could meet some princesses.

April 2019

Continuing with our theme of celebrating birthdays at theme parks this year, we stayed at the Legoland hotel a couple of days for Wrenn's birthday. Also earlier that month we ditched the baby and took the older kids kayaking and it was fabulous.

May 2019

June 2019

This Summer we tried Swim team. I'm not sure any of us liked it... Still debating if I would ever do it again.

July 2019

In July my wonderful parents watched our kids for a week as we went to Florida for a cruise. 

August 2019

September 2019

October 2019

In October after searching and putting offers on multiple houses, we finally bought our first home! So it was time to pack up and move out. We love our new home I will probably talk more about it in my next post.

November 2019

In November Nathan's Grandpa Dickson passed away. This is the family taking a picture at the temple in Seattle, where his funeral was, for my temple wall.

Grey turned one in November and Nathan thirty-one. We celebrated with a zoo trip.

Starting to settle in to our new home. Also we won a game of the Oregon Trail it deserved a picture taken.

December 2019

January 2020

In January my Grandma Swapp passed away. Even though I was really nervous about it I sung at her funeral, I had Nathan take a video because I rarely sing in front of people. Even though it was a bit nerve racking, it was really nice thinking of my Grandma all week as I prepared for it. She really did love flowers and beautiful things.

February 2020

Back in February when it wasn't scary or prohibited to go to play places.

March 2020

A reptile fair at Wrenn's school. I was totally shocked when Wrenn not only agreed to, but was excited to don a snake around his neck.

I figure I will stop here because I'm hoping to do a post about the pandemic months soon. It was a fun challenge trying to pick just one picture per month. A challenge I admittedly failed at some months, but I digress. It reminded me that even though we feel a little cooped up right now we have had fun times. And despite this pandemic we are having fun times, and will continue to do so in the future. I love my little family.

I hope you and yours are doing well despite the craziness of whats going on. We love you all.

It's Summertime... that came fast

So it's been like 6 months. I feel like this blog post has been like a messy room that you look at and your like, "that's a big project, I will come back to that later." So you put it off and off and it gets so messy your like afraid to go in there.  That's my feelings right now, I'm not sure how to tackle the last 6 months in the Tate household. My hope is to not make this blog post crazy long.

It's been a bit crazy here, we moved, then the holidays happened, then I decided to make two quiet books for birthday presents, then those birthdays happened, than we went on a cruise. So basically most of my free time has gone towards quiet books. Also trying contain the craziness of my house, I now have two mess maker with Emmy now walking and getting into things. They're cute though, they are playing together a lot, and fighting over stuff; turning into true siblings.

I want to show off my quiet books for a minute after all it took me hours, and hours of work... they turned out cute though I'm pretty proud of them. I got my ideas from Pinterest.

Here is Wrenn's quiet book.

And here is Emmy's. Her's is more of a touch and feel type quiet book.

Alright now that I got that out of my system. I guess we will talk about our Thanksgiving, our move, and Christmas! I know super long ago, if that just seems way too long ago to care about feel free to skip ahead. 

Right before Thanksgiving Google payed for us to do a house hunting trip in Irvine. So we got a hotel room, and ate out well each night, and looked at a bunch of houses to rent for few days. It was fun, although a bit tiring with the kids, but it payed off; we found a great three bedroom house in Irvine! It has a community pool a couple houses down, as well as a park, and it is all around beautiful. Having now lived here for five months I can say we have been truly blessed.

Thanksgiving was fun. We drove up to Utah and had it with my family. The food was delicious, no one got sick, and no giant arguments about politics occurred, so all in all a nice trip. We also visited a new temple to add to our temple wall. Yay Brigham City!

Then we came home and we had about a week before Nathan started his new job, and about a week and a half till movers came to move us down to our new place. It felt a little bit like a whirlwind; trying to get things ready... not really doing so, hoping the mover were magical, and grateful that we already had a none refundable cleaning deposit that we paid when we moved in. No deep cleaning for me!

At the end of it Nathan flew to Mountain View for his orientation; became a Noogler or new Googler, and I stayed home with the kids and attempted to direct the troops that came to move us.

 This is Emmy and I feeling a little overwhelmed on our moving day.

Then Nathan came home and it was time to get settled into our new place. It took awhile with two kids, but eventually it started to feel like home. Although I did feel like Christmas felt a little swept under the rug with all the moving craziness. We still had fun though, we had Wrenn pick out a present for everyone which was a sweet experience. 

I also don't think anyone got sick this Christmas as all the Tates got together... at least I don't think so.... I'm probably remembering wrong we seem to always get sick when we get together.

Christmas photos!

Matching PJ's!

Heading down the stairs Christmas morning!

Opening our gifts to each other at our new place.

Then 2017 rolled around, thankfully; we were really excited to leave 2016 behind us. It started off great when our friends from Colorado, the Pypers, came out to explore Legoland, and invited us to join them. It was great to see them and introduce our babies, that had been born on the same day, to each other.

Built from Legos.

Also in January we left the kids behind and went Whale Watching, woot woot!

In February we got to bless our beautiful baby girl. She was blessed in the same dress I was blessed in when I was a baby. Our beautiful Emberlyn Jean Tate.

Also in February we went to a Twenty One Pilots concert. It was a fun concert to go to, and I was really grateful to them because their music helped Nathan a lot during his worst period of depression last year.

Admist all the bigger things were the little things that make life grand. 

Then in March our little girl turned one. Can't believe she isn't a baby anymore.

Then there were some more good times.

Wrenn gazing at the ferris wheel.

Then Easter happened, and it was awesome. We had a lot of fun with our Easter Egg hunt and took a lot of photos.

At the end of the month Google had Take Your Child To Work Day, and Wrenn was barely old enough to go :)

Then a few days later our newly potty trained son turned 3. When I asked him if he wanted to have a lot of friends over for his birthday or go look at big fishies; he picked fishies every time. So we decided to go to Seaworld for Wrenn's birthday. We had a lot of fun, Wrenn loved it. After we had cake and ice cream with the Tates Wrenn loved that too,

Then May was here and we were counting down the days till we got to escape on our week long cruise. In the meantime though we enjoyed some fun adventures.

The boys resting around my giant laundry pile.

We took Wrenn to go ride the ferris wheel after  much insisting on Wrenn's part.

Wrenn took a tee ball class. He did ok. My dad thinks he was a little too young. I think he just doesn't like having people tell him what to do.

Random photo :)

As a Mother's day/ birthday present for my Mom we took my parents to a pirate dinner show.

Finally with my Parent's in town and willing to watch our kids for the week (you guys are amazing) we departed for our cruise.

Our wonderful cruise that seemed to be the thing that got us through a couple hard months; just looking forward to it. It came and now it's gone, but I loved it. It was nice to not be responsible for a little while and to be able to truly relax. We had fun reading, playing games, and resting on the boat. On in the ports we went hiking, exploring, parasailing, swimming, jet skiing, fish watching, and shopping. It was so nice. I feel like I should have missed my kids more, but I was really glad to see them when I got home. 

There is so many little stories I could write: about the ocean stealing my sandals and ruining my henna tatoo, about our awesome dinner companions, about singing a duet in front of a group, and much more, but this blog post is already long. So here are some photos.

Then our cruise was over and we came home to our adorable babies. My parents left and then we started to try to get back to normal.

Well that catches us up. We are doing alright. Some days seem to be perfect, and then some not so much. We are learning and adjusting and hopefully one day we will have much more perfect days than not. But I think we are finally reaching the point where the bad days don't frighten us as much because the good days always come too.

Love you all!