Considering the fact that I rarely leave the house, I personally don't have much to report. My classes have started, and this semester I will be taking course on autism, scientific inquiry, stuttering, and voice disorders.  I am also currently working with 3 child clients and 1 adult client. 

However, for the Lundgreen family as a whole it has been quite the busy few weeks. 

• Rachel and Liv celebrated their birthdays December 26 and 28, so the night of the 28th we booked a hotel in Scottsdale and shopped around to celebrate.  The next morning, Liv's long-time boyfriend went to the airport to begin his mission, and only a few hours afterwards we had to be at the airport to pick Adam up because his mission was ending. When Adam got home, we celebrated yet another round of Christmas.  Dallin, Adam and I opened our presents together, and then everyone opened sibling gifts. 
• Dallin and I celebrated New Years by hot tubbing with his 15-year-old sister Liv, their 17-year-old cousin and another teenaged friend. The teenaged cousin and I chatted about politics, and we almost all missed midnight because we forgot about time in the hot tub.  The only reason we got out in time was because the teenagers remembered their curfews, which they were late for.  We ran out to the front yard, where the neighbors were blowing up their celebratory explosives, and then Danny and Rachelle made the traditional New Year's waffles. It was certainly nostalgic for me--6 years ago, Dallin asked me to be his girlfriend on New Years.  I wanted to post the full story on Instagram: it was my first party, and I was going with Dallin and his two stepbrothers, the three of whom were NOT supposed to be going to this party. They crafted this whole lie to trick their parents into thinking they were elsewhere (Parley and Dallin were supposedly at one location, and Cooper was supposedly at Porter's) and then they made their separate phone calls to their mom to confirm the lie. Afterwords we all had waffles at the Urnesses. Back to the present--Dallin did NOT want me to share the story on instagram because 6 years later he still didn't want Rachelle to find out. But then as he was telling the teenagers why he didn't want me to post about our dating anniversary, Rachelle shouted from across the house, "Dallin! You are so loud I literally just heard the entire story!" 
• Mom finished her surgeries. It has been several years since the process started...She got a radical hysterectomy when I was in high school, a good decade since her own mother succumbed to ovarian cancer at age 52. My mom was supposed to get a double mastectomy the week of Valentine's Day, but since that was around the time coronavirus started entering the U.S. the surgery got postponed till the fall. She had to wear expanders for several weeks to prepare her muscle and skin for the replacement implants, and then in the end of January she was finally able to get the implants. While she was under, she also got a tummy tuck to repair the skin and muscle damage done by having 6 babies and 2 miscarriages in 9.5 years.   Rachel and I are now 23 and 24 and hoping to get genetic testing done soon to find out if we have the deadly BRCA-2 gene like our late grandmother and her late aunt, our mother, our 2 aunts, and our cousin. Obviously we hope that we will beat the odds, but knowledge is power, and we are so grateful that our mother and aunts have taken these radical but crucial steps to prevent an early death. 
• I got vaccinated for COVID.
• Adam and Liv moved to Hawaii since their school is both online. Adam goes to BYU and Liv goes to BYU-H. 
• Liv surprised everyone with a mission call to the Adriatic North Mission in Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina! Rachel and I accidentally found out because Olivia started talking about putting her papers in when Mom was on speaker phone, but aside from us, the parents, and some of her closest friends in other states, no one else knew. So we got the family on a Zoom call, and Olivia said, "Hey, wanna watch Lexi open her mission call?" She could not for the life of her get Adam to show up in front of the Laie temple with the rest of their friends...he doesn't know Lexi very well so he didn't care about being on time. Finally he came, and they asked one of their friends to say an opening prayer. Clearly this girl wasn't in on the secret because she asked for blessings on Lexi as she opened her mission call. Then Lexi went up, excitedly holding a piece of paper. "Dear Sister Lundgreen," she started. "Oh wait! Hey Liv, I think you should come up here and read the rest of this." Everyone was FLOORED. I felt a little proud because an hour before the call I had a thought, "What if she got called to Croatia?"
• Cousin Paige and her new husband Nguyen, whose small temple wedding we attended right before Christmas, had to spend a few nights at our house.  They just moved into an old 1940s home, but after their bathtub flooded with sewage they were dismayed to learn that an old crack in the pipe had led to tons of roots to tunnel through the pipes. In addition, it was likely last year's earthquake that caused two of the pipes to become dislodged so that almost nothing could go through. While that got fixed, we got to enjoy a cousin sleepover as they stayed in our guest room. They kept apologizing for the inconvenience, but it was honestly a blast! 

 We stayed at Disney's Grand California Hotel, where the lobby was full of cheerful carolers.  I have officially been spoiled for all future Disney trips! It was so nice to be able to get into the park an hour before the crowds and to be able to come in for a nap in the middle of the day or go swimming in the evening before going back to the park! Rachelle was also the perfect planner and was so good at getting fast passes for the whole family. For the first day, everyone stayed mostly together, and on the other days we split up.  Some favorite moments from Disney were exploring brand-new Star Wars Land and testing gravity at the Tower of Terror, which was recently rebranded for Guardians of the Galaxy.
Everyone took turns with the baby, and when Danielle and Matt wanted to ride the bigger rides, Dallin and I were more than happy to take Mavvies on the Cars ride or the Pirates of the Caribbean ride.  I have never been so baby hungry as when I was with him! People definitely thought I was his mom as I balanced him on my hip.  By the end of the trip he was so sweet, calling me Kiki! When someone asked where D-Money was, he pointed to Dallin. Haha. That was Dallin's proudest moment as an uncle.
 At the end of the day is when we would visit the wet rides.  On the first night, Dallin, Matt, Danielle, Olivia, Cooper, and I switched into our swimsuits and made a deal with the workers to let us ride Grizzly Rapids over and over without getting off. "Just don't say it was me!" the worker instructed, and so when we came around the second time, we told the next worker "[made-up name] said we could stay on!" As we got splashed by the freezing water, we laughed so hard that our abs ached.  When the ride got stuck momentarily, we screamed old songs at the top of our lungs so that the other boats full of Spanish-speakers looked at us oddly.
On another night, we did the same thing on Splash Mountain, but this time tested out what would happen if we put people of different weights in the front.  It was nearing the end of one of the guy's turns in front when the ride froze.  We waited for quite a long time, rocking our little boat until finally one of the workers came to fetch us. She helped us out of the boat, and we got to walk backstage of the ride, shivering and wet. At least I escaped my turn up front.
 For the New Years countdown, we barely made it out of the Indiana Jones ride on time. Our group got separated as we booked it towards a crowded spot where we could see the brilliant fireworks explode as the countdown ticked to zero. Dallin and I kissed as the music blared and people cheered for the beginning of the new decade.







 On one notable day of the trip, our family got kicked off Space Mountain and somehow let back on.  That's a story for another time.

   At first, I hesitated writing anything in regards to New Years resolutions for 2019.  After all, with both an obsessive and an anxious personality, I tend to 1) work myself to exhaustion and 2) beat myself up black and blue when I feel I failed in some way {even if it wasn't that big of a deal}. Trying to set goals might only lead me to guilt and frustration when I don't measure up, especially considering how I rarely feel satisfied even when I do accomplish my initial goals {i.e. weight lost, distance ran, or number of hours worked per week}.
  Then I realized that goals don't have to be about setting high standards for myself.  My goals can be a means of improving my very own well-being:

• Making time for friends and loved ones.  I won't survive the next couple years of school if I keep on studying from sun-up to sundown and don't make my relationships a high priority. I hope to be more thoughtful and endearing towards those I am already close with, and opening myself up to new friendships as well. 
• Eating all three meals a day.
• Not exercising as a means of self-punishment but instead exercising because it's something I want to do, because it sounds fun, or because I truly want to INCREASE my weight via muscle.  
• Not succumbing to my own guilt-tripping thoughts, and instead paying attention to my mental and emotional needs. The additional $10 made working are not worth that hour I could use to unwind on a day when I am actually feeling burnt out {I dictate my own employment hours}. 
• Allowing myself to spend money to both feed my needs but also to make memories.  I'm not going to end up on the streets just for not pinching every single penny for my savings account. 
• Thinking kindly of myself. 

1. Intermediate German
2. Writing in the Social Sciences
3. Clinical Phonetics
4. Hearing Science
5. Language Science

For the first time since I was probably six, we took our Christmas morning picture on a different set of stairs.

As always, my vacation time with the Lundgreens was wild.  The dog was in labor three nights in a row before we finally took her to the vet on Rachel's birthday for a C-Section.  Every night, everyone took different shifts watching the puppies to make sure the mom didn't accidentally roll onto one.  Rachel's convinced it was a pride thing for 14-year-old Eric to say that he had stayed up EVERY SINGLE NIGHT, so even when one time Eric was passed out and the sick mama dog had an accident on the new carpet, he wouldn't admit that he had fallen asleep on his watch. Haha. We were so grateful for all his efforts anyway!

Some of the coolest Christmas presents were, in my opinion, Sophie's hoverboard and my Kitchen Aid.  Thanks mom and Dad! The hoverboard came most in handy when Eric put on Adam's blow-up TRex costume from last year and rode around, spooking our male dog Borris, who refused to look, before running outside so our girl dogs chased him barking.

Teppanyaki Grill, our yearly tradition

Night shift with the dog.

- "Hello, we're missionaries and we're sharing a message--" "A message?" The elderly lady said, before launching (with thick dialect) into some spiel about all the funds she has had to pay lately but how she could probably scrounge something up. She disappeared, and then came back with €2.50 in change. "Ohh no no we are actually here as a service!" "Wait what? You're not here looking for money?"