Hindsight on 2020

 Well, it has been 6 years since I wrote on this blog. The last post I entered was to share the news that Matt had quite his job and we had bought a restaurant! Yeah! So that happened. From 2014-2019, we've been on a wild ride, which included 

• buying 2 more restaurants, 
• going through some really tough times,
• convincing Dickey's to let us close on Sundays, 
• Matt going back to work as an engineer after 6 months of looking for employment, 
• Ashley taking over running of the restaurants, 
• closing one of the restaurants, 
• preparing for bankruptcy, 
• taking our children to Europe as a last farewell to a life of comfort, 
• miraculously NOT going through bankruptcy, 
• and finally, hiring Cortes Enterprises to run our business so I (Ashley) could return to part time work for the restaurants!!!

 Of course, 2020 has been no less exciting! Besides all the normal life adjustments and growth (i.e. World-wide pandemic, earthquakes, floods, fires, water contamination), there have been plenty of big changes in our lives personally.

For starters, we had Emma Lagoutte join our family for 2 months. It was cut short due to the pandemic, but we made the most of it while we had her visiting local sites like The International Peace Gardens, the Salt Flats, The Great Salt Lake, Camp Williams, the local universities, etc. After school was shut down we made a point to have daily bike rides and nightly playing of  board games, frequent "Just Dance" parties, and an occasional treat of her French cooking! Crepes, stuffed tomato with chorizo, and a few other things which I don't know what to call. 

Nathan's  big news was that, like many things in 2020, his mission was cut short due to the pandemic. But we were plenty happy to have him arrive back home on April 1st after several weeks of uncertainty! What a joy to have him in our home again. Although he left for the fall semester to live on campus at the University of Utah, we are privileged to have him at home once more for the end of the semester until mid-January.

Shadrach had a stellar year. He aced 5 AP tests, graduated from high school, accepted a mission call to Kobe Japan, fulfilled 9 weeks of missionary training from home over Zoom, and is now serving in Minneapolis, Minnesota with his best friend from high school while he waits for the opportunity to go to Japan! He's steadfast and immovable (and very funny!). Watch a neat video he made here: https://www.facebook.com/matthew.araki.3/videos/2645029265714143

For Crispin, receiving his Eagle Scout award in January was a great accomplishment. We are so proud of him for his hard work and determination to achieve this! He also finished up the running season at Bountiful High School and then picked up mountain biking after our move to Draper. He's only had one accident, but it did put him in the emergency room for 5 waiting for a plastic surgeon to stitch up his lip. He's now going to school at Corner Canyon High School.

Eden is delighting us all with her music. She plays the piano beautifully and just started playing marimba and other percussion instruments in the percussion class at Draper Park Middle School. It is the highlight of our day to hear about it.

As for Matt and I, I already let our big news slip: we moved to Draper in June! This happened so quickly that we hardly had time to say good-bye to anyone. We're loving everything about our new home and neighborhood especially being so close to Ashley's family and being able to recreate outside! (Sorry, Foxboro had one thing we never learned to love: mosquitoes). At the same time, we're missing terribly all of our friends from North Salt Lake. Through it all, we've managed to find plenty of reasons to celebrate, serve, and find joy. Check out my other blog to read about our 100 Days challenges: https://jensen100daychallenge.blogspot.com/

We'd love to hear from you! Please email or write us:

aheinrick@gmail.com

12786 S 600 E
Draper, UT 84020