December 2022
Happy Holidays everyone! I hope you are all enjoying the blessings of another Christmas season. As I sit here and think back on 2022, it feels as though every new year goes by faster than the one before.
This past year has been a busy one for us! We started off the new year with breaking ground on a spec house project just south of our house. Working through the building process has once again been an adventure full of ups and downs! It is nice to look back through the photos we took since January to see the progress we made on it through the year! The house is now finished and on the market where we are waiting (maybe not always so patiently) for it to sell.
Another project I took on during January and February of 2022 was revamping the nursery at Lynden PRC. Kaity Hanko and I are on the nursery committee; with a lot of help from different church members, we were able to repaint the nursery walls, chair rail, and cabinets. We also removed some built-in cribs from a room in the back in order to put in better storage shelves and regular cribs. It was a fun project!
Through the early spring months, the kids enjoyed playing in the (very muddy) construction site right outside our house on sunny and rainy days alike. Darren was busy working on the spec, though not as involved as he was with our own place. During that time, I was able to put my poetry to print via Amazon’s self-publishing service, and to begin work on the next children’s book I hope to publish in 2023: God Made Weather. It has been a great process working with a local illustrator, graphic designer, and publisher. As 2022 is coming to an end, the graphic design phase is almost complete!
In early April we enjoyed a visit from my parents and Jamie (during her spring break). We were able to celebrate Aria’s 2nd birthday a little early with them too. Right after they left, Darren and I were able to leave the kids with his parents to spend a week in Arizona. We flew into Las Vegas and rented a car to drive around to many different places, the highlights being Zion, Bryce Canyon, and the Grand Canyon National Parks. We enjoyed seeing the Hoover Dam before flying back home. That area of the country displays God’s handiwork in such an amazing way!
Not long after getting home from this trip, we got a Facetime call from my family and were told that Jordan and Nicole were expecting a baby in November! And not long after that, on the morning of Mother’s Day 2022, we had a positive pregnancy test ourselves. We praise God for this precious addition to our family that is due in January of 2023, and for a new nephew and cousin born to Jordan and Nicole!
The rest of spring and early summer passed by in a bit of a blur for me, with experiencing morning sickness for the first 13-14 weeks of pregnancy. Aria turned 2, we made our annual trip to the Skagit Valley Tulip fields, and May - June was filled with prep for Darren’s sister’s wedding. The week before Titus and Lisa’s wedding, I was able to fly back to Iowa on my own for my Ten-Year High School Reunion. It was so fun to help plan this event and to connect with old friends!
On June 24, Titus and Lisa were married! It was (I’m quite sure) the most beautiful sunny weekend we’d had so far in 2022. It was a wonderful day, and I was quite thankful Camden & Aria made it down the aisle as ring bearer and flower girl too! :)
July was filled with painting the outside of the spec house, tending our first garden, and making our annual trip to Minnesota for the Kooima/Schwitters lake vacation. We always enjoy lots of love and memories during this week! By the time we got home, our garden was overflowing with cucumbers and beans. The kids had so much fun helping me harvest during the late summer months.
In August, we celebrated Camden’s 4th birthday! The weekend right after this, I made another unexpected trip to Iowa by myself for my Grandma Kooima’s funeral. She was taken to her Heavenly home on August 17 and is very dearly missed by my Grandpa Kooima and our whole family. I was so thankful to have seen her when I visited in June, as I’d gone to her nursing home to tell her about my pregnancy. Her funeral text was Psalm 16, my favorite Psalm, and we were reminded of that fullness of joy she is currently experiencing in Heaven!
Our summer ended with my 20-week ultrasound and a fun few days of camping with Darren’s family in Eastern Washington. On September 8, Camden had his first day of preschool. After anticipating this with so much trepidation, he surprised us by absolutely loving school and doing so well being away twice a week. He has been learning and growing so much, from letters and numbers to Psalter verses and Bible verses. We’ve just been so thankful to see him come out of his shell and learn how to behave in a classroom with new friends and new teachers! The best parts of my week are spending his school mornings with Aria and then having Cam excitedly show me his schoolwork when we get home.
This fall we enjoyed several trips to the pumpkin patch (one with Camden’s school), watching Jamie’s volleyball games on livestream, and prepping the baby’s new room. In mid-November the kids and I made a trip to Iowa to visit nephew and cousin Jay Brooks, who had been born on November 9. The kids handled flying much better than I did at 32 weeks pregnant! They even know to help me through security by putting their water bottles, tablet, and shoes in separate bins! :)
Upon getting home from Iowa, our whole family got quite a nasty flu that lasted 2+ weeks. We spent all of Thanksgiving weekend on the couch! We’ve all been feeling much better in the recent weeks, finally having energy back to decorate for Christmas, go to the Christmas tree farm, and to enjoy Camden’s first Christmas program. I’ve been doing a lot of nesting lately too, as baby is due in about 4 weeks. We’ll finish out the year with holiday parties and waiting for this new baby’s arrival!
We give thanks to God for another year of blessings and look forward to His plans for us in 2023! He is always a present comfort through all the ups and downs and is so good to us.
Love,
The Heysteks - Darren, Kelsey, Camden, Aria, & Baby
“Thou wilt shew me the path of life: in thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.”
- Psalm 16:11
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