Moran Family Fun

Here's today's prompt! What is something you have accomplished? What is something you want to accomplish? What are the goals you are working on right now? What are you doing to accomplish your goals? Oh man, here's another one that's going to be tricky. Listing my accomplishments feels a lot like bragging and that's something I'm not comfortable with. I've been thinking about this all day though. What are some of my accomplishments? Asking people who know me well seemed like one way to find some answers. Jared gave me a decent list and the first accomplishment was marrying him. He's not wrong. Jared is the most amazing guy in the world so that was a big win for me. He also mentioned earning an associate's degree, which took some effort since I did things a little bit backward and got married right after high school instead of heading off to college. Then Jared decided to be a funny guy and asked if I'd lettered in any sports in high school de...

How would I describe myself? Physically, mentally, spiritually, personality? The story goes that when I was born and my parents chose my name my dad said, "Sarah Elizabeth, a plain name for a plain girl." So yeah, I'm kind of plain and about as average as it gets physically. Not stunningly gorgeous and not unfortunate looking either, just somewhere in the middle. I'm five feet five inches tall, so just an inch above the average for American women. I have straight brown hair that usually is somewhere around shoulder length. My eyes are blue, my skin is fair, and I have freckles like the daughter of a redhead that I am. Jared thinks my feet are huge, but I looked it up and size 8.5-9 is actually average for American women as well so I'm totally normal. If there's anything that's not average about me, it's probably the size of my hips? I am pretty curvy, or as Abby says, slim thicc. Mentally I think that average feeling carries over, or that I se...

I'm participating in the Family Connections Experiment , which is a three-week experiment looking at the benefits of family history work and connecting with family members. Before beginning, I took a brief survey about my emotional health and well being. Each day there is a short, simple, and hopefully fun family history activity. At the end of the experiment, I'll take another survey and see if anything has changed for the better. The experiment has several plans tailored to families, teens, and individuals. I chose the About Me Plan  which looks to be a bunch of journaling prompts focused on your life story and family memories. My goal is to complete each daily activity and share it here on the neglected family blog. Day 1 is a Timeline of my life where I'll be sharing a phrase or two, or even full sentences for those years when my memory is better, about important events that have happened in each year I've been alive. Those early years are going to be a struggle ...

Our youngest child is officially a teenager. When our oldest turned thirteen we were not sure what the teen years would bring us. Thankfully, we really like being parents to teenaged girls. Back in the days when we had five girls under ten random strangers in the grocery store would wish us luck or shake their heads and say things like "Just wait until they're all teenagers" didn't know what they were talking about. Certainly, being the parents of teenaged girls hasn't been all sunshine and rainbows and there have been some moments that have literally brought us to our breaking point, but overall we much prefer parenting older kids to the toddler years. Every year for Natalie's birthday for the last three years we've taken her on a trip to celebrate her turning one year older. She's totally happy to forgo presents in favor of traveling somewhere and we think that's pretty cool. This year, like last year, she requested to go to Germany to visit ...

The second week in December was so filled with events that it felt a little bit hectic. I'm pretty sure we had only one family dinner the entire week. Right from the start of the week, things were crazy. There was no school on Monday so the girls and I went nuts and made yummy treats for teachers, coworkers, and friends. In the afternoon we made a quintuple batch of Sister Frost's salsa which has become our favorite treat to give at Christmastime. There's so much sweetness being handed out in December and we've found that people really appreciate something salty for a change. We got out our five largest bowls, opened what felt like a billion cans of diced tomatoes, chopped bunches and bunches of green onions and cilantro, and diced up some beautiful avocados. Then it was all mixed with the perfect blend of spices and portioned out into containers ready for gifting. As if 43 individual containers of salsa weren't enough, that evening we washed out the big mixing bo...

Once we arrived home from Ireland, the busy Christmas season immediately started. The first week in December brought us concerts, sports, and one of our favorite Christmas traditions. This year Natalie chose to join her school choir. She's not really shown a huge interest in music or singing before so we were kind of surprised by that particular choice of elective, but Natalie has LOVED choir and her teacher Mr. Sands. She's excited about singing and the songs they're working on together in class each day. This is our fourth school year with a musician at the middle school so at least we knew what to expect - a hard time finding parking and kind of mediocre music. The middle school band and choir concerts are always combined with both bands and the choir all on the same night in the gymnasium. The gym floor is filled with musicians and the bleachers are packed with parents and other family members. However, her first concert with the school choir was so much better than w...

Today is our last full day in Ireland and the girls were campaigning hard for a day spent at our Airbnb playing ping pong, air hockey, and card games. To be fair, it was tempting to take their plan and run with it but we didn't want to spend a day in Ireland doing things we could do at home on any other Saturday. We ended up doing a mix of what they wanted to do and spending some time at another beautiful Irish spot. We slept in this morning and took our time getting ready before heading out in the early afternoon after which our evening was spent playing games. We've been sharing our fun house here in Ireland with our friends the Martins. Even though we've all been here together we've been doing our own thing each day and just hanging out together in the evenings. We love the Martin family! They are easy going travel buddies and a lot of fun to be around. Our girls and their boys have gotten along so well these past few days. Their son Zeke asked today if hanging out...