Christmas Card 2021

Hello and Happy Holidays to you and your family. Here is an update from the Beck family.

The beginning of 2021 we bought our first house and moved to Waco Texas, and have enjoyed this little town. It seems that there is everything you would want in a big city (airport, college sports, children’s museum, zoo, nature, etc) as well as some tourist attractions with Chip & Joanna Gaines from Fixer Upper. There is hardly any traffic, and the people are warm and welcoming.

Because Ben works from home, we have the opportunity to travel, which we did A LOT this year. Here are a few places we went for 2021, and the people that came to see us here in Waco.

Blakely Rose Update

To know this girl is to love her. She is happy, outgoing, and a really easy kid. In February of this year (just before turning 1) she learned how to walk which quickly turned into running. She has never been afraid to use her voice, and caught onto basic baby sign language quickly. I don’t know the exact month she started talking, but I do remember her first word was “Ball”. Now, Blakely is sounding out words like a champ and linking them together. She has all of her teeth (except the canines which are coming in slowly) and LOVES to sing Disney songs.

One of my favorite things about Blakely is her ability to make people smile. As we have traveled on airplanes this year, she loves to turn around in the seats and connect with whoever is behind her.

Blakely Highlights

I can’t really say for her, but if I had to guess

• learning how to walk
• gaining a love for music. I have always sang to Blakely before she goes to bed, and back in October she started singing with me. Her voice is exempt from hesitation or embarrassment. She sings with her whole soul.

Blakely Lowlights

As parenting goes, we have had to take a few trips to the ER. The first was in Utah when she had a really high fever, and the second was a few weeks later when she swallowed a magnet. Everything is fine and more tears came from mommy than Blakely.

Molly & Ben Update

Life as a Mom is the best. I really have enjoyed settling down in a home. Decorating, and buying a bunch of furniture was more stressful than I thought, but once was all said and done, we’ve made this house a home.

I got called as an Activity Day leader which is over the girls from 7-11 in our ward. This has been fun spending time and getting to know an age group I haven’t interacted with in… decades. I also took over the women’s workout group that we do at our church 2 xs a week. This has been a good motivation to stay in shape and gives me a chance to interact with the other women in the ward.

Molly Highlights

Besides seeing Blakely grow, I really did enjoy traveling to Glacier Park. We got invited to a destination wedding in Montana by our good friends Candace and Andrew. As most of our travel is to see family, this was a great way to make some memories with just us. The area was beautiful and Blakely and I did a lot of hiking together.

Molly Lowlights

• Dealing with a bad case of Mastitis. If you know, you know…

Ben Highlights

• Work From Home Dad – This means I am able to do spontaneous dance parties & bubbles with my daughter throughout the day. She has helped me develop some awesome new moves. 
• Family Visits – It was great to have so much family come and visit us at our new home this year. Look forward to more weeks with friendly faces staying with us. 
• Growing My Team – At KlientBoost, the company I work at, i’ve slowly been growing an amazing team.

Ben Lowlights

• Dad Moving On
• Covid Shut Down –  Still not being able to visit and meet people like before.

Crazy things that happened in 2021

Murder she wrote

While we were looking for a house, we had a temporary Airbnb in Temple Texas. The day after Christmas in 2020, we get a knock on the door about 2am. It was the Police! They asked us a few questions about the neighbors and asked if we heard any gunshots. Apparently one of our neighbors was murdered on Christmas day. Luckily we were moving out of that house in 2 days. Yikes!

Texas Snow-pocalypse

A crazy snow storm hit in February across all of Texas. As first time home owners we were really worried about the pipes and not having electricity. We were lucky and no pipes burst and we always had electricity. This wasn’t the case for everyone here.

Spontaneous Combustion

In the middle of the night we heard a loud “CRACK” and I thought someone had thrown something against our bedroom window and broke it. Turns out, our closet door window spontaneously combusted in the middle of the night and continued to crackle for the next few hours. It was pretty crazy. Luckily the manufacturer sent us a new one after they saw this picture.

Merry Christmas and a happy new year!