Nordstrom Family 2011 Year in Review

2011 has been a great year for us. We have enjoyed sharing it with family and friends, and most of all each other.

Kathryn and Juliana are growing at the speed of light, and Steven and I can barely keep up. Here's a short paragraph of some of their milestones this year. They were baptized in  June and we got to spend time with most of our families as they came to support them. The girls have been reading tons, and this year Steven kept track of every book they read. They have both read over 150 books and over 20,000 pages each! The girls got "big" bikes for their birthday and spent a lot of time on them in the summer as well. Third grade has been great for them, and they continue to love French. Just today we got to see them in a little class play in French. Apparently, they have developed a sense of the dramatic, as they were by far the most expressive little thespians in their class. They have also enjoyed piano and had their first "recital" this year. It was a small one held at our house, but through the magic of Skype, Steven's parents watched live with the rest of us. It was so fun to watch them share things they had worked so long and hard on. 

Kathryn and Juliana 

Juliana continues to surprise us with more spunk than we know what to do with. She loves to sing, so much so that I sometimes think we are living in a Broadway musical. Her French is getting better, and she has been checking out short books in French from the school library to read. She loves school, and being with friends.

Kathryn is our bookworm. I often have to tear her away to do the other things that life requires. She also loves to sing, and learned several of the songs Steven and I practiced in our ward choir while she sat in the back reading. She loves to write little notes to everyone in the family to say "I love you."

Mom has kept busy year round. Summer started with a great trip to visit family in Southern Utah for a week. After that it was pretty much "shoulder to the wheel." The yard is looking much better than when we moved in 2 1/2 years ago (I can't believe we've already been here that long!), but still takes long hours to maintain. We grew a great garden this year and in the fall, it nearly did us in. Well, had we not been given nectarines, apricots, pears, plums, and grapes from very generous neighbors and family, we may have felt less stressed and busy. As it turned out, we kept busy the whole month of October, processing and freezing everything in preparation for winter. At the time, I thought I was going crazy, but now when I send the girls down stairs for jam, fruit, or beans, I am very glad we did it. Steve did just as much work as I did, and I never would have made it without him. I am still working at the girls school as an intervention assistant in the First grade French program. It is rewarding, but there are days when I wish I could just stay home. I do love seeing the girls each day, and they are always glad to see me. This may not last much longer, so I am trying to enjoy it while is does.

This was just one day's worth of work!

Steven here. I've been busy this year working, reading, running, cycling, and spending time with family and friends. I ran over 1,000 miles this year, and rode over 2,000 miles on my bike. That works out to burning over 250,000 calories in around 300 hours of exercise. Almost 5% of my waking moments of the year were spent exercising! I met my running goal this year, running the Utah Valley Marathon in 2:58:53 (30th place overall). I'm running stronger, more efficiently, and faster now than I was back then, so I'm excited to see what I can do in 2012. The other big news for me this year was that I passed my 3rd-year review at BYU, and am on my way to attaining tenure and advancement to Associate Librarian rank in another three years. Working at BYU is challenging and fun, and I enjoy my job (most of the time). For those who don't know what I do, among other things I purchase music and dance books, CDs, DVDs, and music scores for the library's collections, and selected over 3,800 new items (with the help of my colleagues and student employees, of course).

Steven finishing 3rd in his age group at the Provo Freedom Run 10K (39:24)

Juliana in blue; Kathryn in pink; Steven in peach; Megan in cranberry

We hope you all have had a year full of love and good things. We love you all, and miss so many of you that we can't see nearly as often as we would like to. Our thoughts are with you at this time of celebration and reflection. We hope you have a joyous Holiday season, and hope that 2012 will hold happiness for you and your family.

Merry Christmas

Well it's that time of year again, and we decided to try a new way of delivering our greetings to you. There are so many of you with whom we want to reach and share our love that sending letters wasn't going to cover it (plus we're not sure we have everyone's current address anyway). So this year we are going to reach out through e-mail and Facebook by creating a blog just for a Christmas letter filled with photos from our year!

This year has brought a lot of change to our little family. After our move from Nashville to Provo last year, we thought not much could be different. But as we look back, much has changed. Our biggest news is that as of June 1st, we are now officially homeowners. Most of the first five months of the year were spent looking for a house, and finally we found a great four-bedroom home in the Edgemont area of Provo. Uncle Mark, our real estate agent, was very patient as we looked at what seemed like hundreds of houses, but we finally both agreed on a place. We thought finding the house was hard work, but then we moved in...

Most of our summer was spent working in the yard that had been neglected for quite some time. After countless hours of weeding, mowing, trimming, taking truckloads of green waste to the green waste dump, more weeding and mowing, we finally finished just in time to start raking and blowing leaves. The garden is ready for planting next year and we can't wait. There is still a lot of planting to do next year in all the flower beds, but we guess that will always be the case.

We did manage to have a lot of fun over the summer, too. We got to go camping at Navajo Lake with the Burdette clan, have a fun family reunion in southern Utah with the Nordstrom family, and enjoy lots of cooler-than-normal summer weather here. The girls learned to ride bikes without training wheels, and if they were outside they were riding their bikes.
Juliana had a accident on her bike with our neighbor's truck as he was leaving his driveway, but luckily emerged with nothing more than a couple scrapes and bruises (and a new bike!).

Steven sold his beloved bike in May in hopes of buying another, better bike, but those plans got put on hold after we found out that our car needed a new transmission. :-( So he took up running, and got to run in Tony's Ragnar Wasatch Back Relay team in mid-June. It was an inspiring event, and lots of fun getting to know Tony, Susan, Sabrina, and the other members of the team better. It was so fun that he decided last minute to run in the Deseret News Marathon on the 24th of July (Pioneer Day here in Utah). Megan and the girls were glad to wait for him at the finish line and cheer him on! It was his first marathon and he finished in just under 3 hours and 20 minutes! He almost qualified for the Boston Marathon, and plans on running a sub-3-hour marathon next year with some new running friends.

Summer went by quickly and the school year began again. The girls started first grade, and suddenly Megan's days were much more free. They love school and learn so fast. The elementary school started a French immersion program this year in first grade so the girls are doing that. It has been so much fun to see them learning, and good for us to keep our French in good form. The girls spend half their school day receiving English-language instruction from one teacher, and the other half in French with another. So we decided to put them in different classes, and we think it's been really good for them. Megan gets to volunteer in their classes each week. They are reading chapter books like crazy (mmmm librarian genes) and love doing math problems, too.

Megan has been enjoying a little extra free time, but couldn't just keep it empty. She has been learning to play violin with instruction from her good friend Marianne, realizing a dream she has had for a long time. Megan also took a family history research course at BYU focusing on English and Welsh genealogy. It has been fascinating, and a good challenge to use her brain in that way again. Finally, she has also been looking for a job that she could do part-time while the girls are at a school, but so far nothing has materialized.

Professionally, it has been a long, stressful year at the Music and Dance Library for Steven. After a long self-study of the library's activities and an external review, library administration is instituting many changes that we hope will improve library services and collections for students and teaching faculty. There's still lots of work to be done in the upcoming transition, and hopefully 2010 will bring more normalcy and less uncertainty than 2009 proved to have.

2009 has been one of the most interesting, stressful, and fulfilling years of our lives, and we're constantly reminded of how thankful we are to have you all for friends and family. We feel fortunate to be able to communicate regularly with you through the Internet, and especially pleased to have visited with so many of you here in Provo this year! Please know that you are all always welcome to drop by or stay at our home if you're passing this way. We wish you a happy holiday season, and may the new year bring you happiness and joy.