You know how some people joke about sending out Christmas cards for Valentine's Day instead of Christmas? Well, here I am with my virtual Christmas card the day before Valentine's Day. I meant to be totally caught up for 2021 long before now, but oh well. Better late than never. 😅
2021 was a wonderful year for us, every year just gets better and better. Obviously, we had our ups and downs, but overall, we are very happy with the life we live and wouldn't change much.
Ryan started the year off taking a semester off from school, and working full time in the tire shop at Sam's Club and part time nights at Heritage Community Center. It was exhausting, but he's used to long hours and working hard. He stopped working nights at Heritage in April and then over the summer he decided that he'd had enough of Sam's Club (hip hip hooray!) and got a job working at Hoyt Archery, where he makes bows for a really great company. They treat him really well and he doesn't have to work customer service/retail. He really likes being there, and I'm glad that he's happier at work. Ryan also started back at school in the Fall and switched his major to Family Studies and Psychology. It's been so fun for us to talk about the things that he's learning at school and apply them to our family life. (We are both kind of family science nerds...) Some other noteworthy things from the year: Ryan ran a 7 mile Spartan race up in the mountains in July after volunteering for 12 hours the day before and it sounds like it was really difficult! I'm proud of him for training so hard for it. He also got his associate's degree from UVU and qualified for a scholarship for the rest of his degree. He's a wonderful dad and husband and he just works so so hard for us and sacrifices so much to take care of Rose, Lucy, and me. ❤️ We adore him!
I (Kinsey) had a really great year too! I took a self reliance class on growing a business and had the best year ever for my photography business. Tripling the amount of money I made from photography in 2019 AND 2020. I'm looking forward to seeing how my business grows in the next few years. Other than that, I work full time as a really devoted mother to my two sweet girls. I love being their mom and gain so much joy as I teach them and watch them grow. Some of my accomplishments include potty training Rose in May and helping her learn almost the entire alphabet and teaching Rose and Lucy about Jesus and prayer so that both of them love finding pictures of the Savior and learning more about Him. I'm also proud of myself for getting into a routine of washing the dishes and doing the laundry so we never run out of clean dishes or clean clothes. That has always been a struggle. A few other things that I have done this year are work out more consistently than I ever have by going to a Barre class at the rec center 2 or 3 times a week for almost the whole year, and running my fastest mile in just over 7 minutes 3 times this summer. Mostly I've just been trying to develop good habits that help me to be a good wife, mother, friend, and disciple. The last couple months of the year were difficult with morning sickness, and I was pretty devastated to stop doing most of the good habits that I had developed over the last two years, but it's February now and I've started picking up those good habits again. It's nice to know that there is a time and a season for everything, and hard times don't last forever. The sun always comes out again someday, and changes can be made.
Rose really grew up this year. She's now 3 1/2 and she is so smart! She picks up on new words and phrases all the time and will drop a long word into her vocabulary out of the blue (sometimes incorrectly, but I love it always.) Some words she's tried using lately include: obnoxious, disaster, consequences, and exoskeleton. 😂 She learned how to use the potty in May and has been awesome since then. She's become very independent and likes to do everything herself. She loves watching movies and listening to music and she has the most incredible memory ever. Some things she has loved doing this year are going to story time at the library (the big kid one!) and spending time with her friends. She also likes going to "her exercise class" at the rec center while I go to mine. (aka: child watch). Like I mentioned earlier, she has been learning her alphabet and knows almost all of the letters. When she learns them all she gets to go on a special date with mom and dad to get ice cream and she can't wait. 😂 She likes to pick her own clothes and is QUITE the fashionista. She also frequently tells people that her name is Elsa or "This Girl is on Fire" She's so spunky and fun to be around and talk to, being her mom is one of my favorite things.
Lucy also grew so much this year, she is almost 2 and has learned how to walk and communicate really well this year. She's just barely picking up on the fact that there are so many words and is picking them up like crazy so that she can communicate even better. (She gets VERY upset when we don't understand what she wants.) She is also starting to develop the cutest little personality. She wants to be just like her sister and follows Rose around everywhere. Just like Rose she wants to do everything "MYSELF" even when she doesn't have the first clue how to do it. She loves to drink water, be a pest, throw away trash, help pick up the dirty clothes, and help with loading and unloading the clothes in to the washing machine and dryer. Oh, my other accomplishment this year was moving Rose and Lucy into the same room and not having our whole world rattled. They love sharing a room.
A few other fun things from this year: We went to Cripple Creek, Colorado for a week long Warburton Family Reunion and the girls did amazing on the 9 hour drive. We camped in Southern Utah with Ryan's Family. Ryan and I took our longest trip away from the girls in April for my birthday and our anniversary and we went to St. George for 4 days. In September, the girls and I went to Texas for 2 weeks to visit my parents and where we also had a trip to the beach (probably Rose's favorite thing from the whole year). We started growing another baby, which is definitely not something to sneeze at. And we survived another year of college, working, parenting, family life.
Congratulations on if you read all the way to here! I'm done now, and can't think of anything else noteworthy to share, so now you can just look at the cute pictures of our family that my cousin snapped for us around Christmas time. And for the first time, it's really not that many pictures! (Although, more than it would be if I had just sent out cards. 😉 Merry very very late Christmas from the Vorkink Family! And... Happy Valentine's Day! ❤️
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