Year-End-Close-Out!

As the 2009 year comes to an end, we begin a blog! Welcome to the Holladay Inn! We have had a year filled with excitement and disappointment. Michael travelled back and forth from Guatemala for work. This was difficult for the family, but great for his career. We moved our family from Tucson to Las Vegas and bought a house! Yeah, no more renting! Mikaela turned twelve, entered Young Womans and went to camp. Lexi got cool new glasses and earned a citizenship award at her new school. Bella successfully lit a Christmas tree (twice) at a special charity event in Las Vegas for her new charter school for the deaf. Olivia lost like 6 teeth and also earned a citizenship award in the first month at her new school. Our family has a new addition as well this year. No, I did not have a baby. We got a puppy! I have survived and thrived on being a mother and wife with a family going in lots of different directions...and, oh yeah, I tore my ACL, again!

After living in a hotel for 3 months, we finally moved into our new house in November. The girls were thrilled! (Not as much as I was...) 10 days later my family came out for Thanksgiving. Then 3 weeks later, we enjoyed a fun week of Christmas in California visiting family. We didn't see everyone :( We missed Aaron's family in Dallas and Brandon's family in Bakersfield. We really enjoyed those we did see! I wish we all lived a little bit closer -- I always regret that, after we say our goodbyes and go our separate ways. But we had something waiting for us in Vegas! Our friends, the Justesens, came to visit us from Kansas City! They were in SLC with Lynette's family and took a small detour to Vegas and plan to bring in the new year with us!