A Year in Review

The truth is I have complained A LOT about this past year. And while we have had some stressful events happen we were also incredibly blessed! 

So here is our year in review. The good. The bad. The happy & the sad. 

I just want to start out this review by saying how blessed and incredibly grateful we are for our family, friends and each other and the adventure we are on together. 

January 2018-

At the beginning of the year, we announced that we were going to add a 3rd child to our family. A tie breaker. A little BOY!

And Thea finally got hair! (She still doesn’t have a lot but she has some!)

February 2018-

 I was getting bigger and bigger everyday and getting asked if I was “sure I wasn’t due until June” or if I was “sure I wasn’t having twins... triplets?”

And the kids attended their first Valentines Day Party! 

March 2018-

We took the kids to Disney On Ice for the first time! They loved it! And so did we!

We celebrated Easter with an Easter Egg Hunt

And Little Miss turned 2!

April 2018-



We visited Grandma Dot for another Easter Egg Hunt!

Lincoln started Baseball practice!

May 2018-

Lincoln started playing Baseball.... this season was crazy. Lincoln mostly wanted to run across the field rather than play. 

And our sweet little Cohen joined our family! His birth was insane (some day I will do a little birth story for him) but we were over the moon that he was finally here!

June 2018-

This cute dude turned 4! We celebrated with a treasure hunt and ice cream!

Later in the month, we celebrated Lincoln and my sister, Paisley, at an awesome splash pad!

July 2018-

We blessed our new little guy! We were such a mess that day.... oops. 

We celebrated the 4th of July at a parade and BBQ.

We played outside A LOT. We spent tons of time at parks and splash pads. 

August 2018-

Cohen had Endoscopic Cranial Surgery for his Craniosynostosis. 

We were so blessed during this time. The surgery was performed at an excellent hospital by amazing surgeons. One day I will post about the amazing spiritual experience I had before surgery!

Lincoln started preschool! He has loved it!

September 2018-

We celebrated daddy’s birthday with a donut cake!

My sweet grandma returned to her heavenly home. 

October 2018- 

In October we started making bucket lists to help us make the most of the upcoming seasons!

We picked pumpkins!

We went to Gardner Village with friends!

Our house flooded and our walls and carpet had to be partially taken out from October 17-January 4th! 

We made caramel apples!

We carved pumpkins!

We dressed up as characters from Peter Pan for Halloween and went trick or treating with Aunt Paisley!

November 2018-

We were on our own for Thanksgiving this year because our family was out of town. (We celebrated with them at different times of the month) So on thanksgiving day we went to Rodizio! Best decision ever! It was so good!

December 2018-

This was another month with a bucket list full of fun stuff. 

We sat on Santa’s lap and brought him letters with our Christmas lists!

We visited Luminaria  with Mimi and Papa to celebrate Mommy’s Birthday!

We partied hard in Christmas clothes!

We had an amazing Christmas!

And rang in the new year with some of our heroes!

All in all we had lots of fun this year! At the very least it was an exciting adventure! 

We have some very exciting things on the calendar for 2019 and are excited to head into a new year!

Knadler Family Motto 2019

So I am going to be honest, I didn’t know that people did yearly family mottos until like December 30th of last year. And I think they are genius! I am not super good at making and keeping resolutions so I figure a family motto or theme for us to focus on may be better for our family. So this past year (2018) I decided to actively search for a 2019 Family Theme. Which was kind of hard for me! 

2018 was a hard year for the Knadler’s! First I got gestational hypertension while pregnant with our newest addition, making my pregnancy a bit of a challenge. And when our precious baby boy came it was a bit of a stressful event. He wasn’t breathing correctly, I had severe hemorrhaging (it was not an ideal birth) (but we are oh so glad he joined our family)

Shortly after birth, we found out our baby had craniosynostosis and would need surgery. Surgery went well and helmet therapy is going great but it has been some extra stress! (Gladly doing it for our sweet boy!)

And then we had major issues with our insurance company (I will not get into that...)

My grandmother passed away.

Our house flooded with sewage water!!!! And was torn apart for more than two months! (It’s actually being renovated right now!)

Now we know things could have been worse and we are so grateful they weren’t. And individually the issues we had weren’t super terrible. It was the fact that trials seemed to be coming one right after the other after the other after the other, that made them a bit overwhelming.

I kept saying well maybe 2019 will be better?! Maybe 2018 was our year of trials?!

But then I got some news that made it clear that 2019 would have some trials as well.... And I realized that our problems were not going to go away with the new year. We will always have trials. But then I looked at all the things our little family has overcome this past year. 

In our marriage. 

In our lifetime. 

It’s not about willing our problems away. It’s about facing them and allowing them to make us stronger. Jared and I have decided that we would like to teach our children that they can do anything. So our 2019 Family Motto is..... (Drumroll....)

We are the Knadlers and we can do hard things!

The scripture we will be focusing on is....

“I can do all thing through Christ who strengthens me” Phillippians 4:13

We have been so blessed with family, friends and a support system that have supported and encouraged us throughout the past year and we could not be more grateful for them. 

We hope that you all have a very happy New Year and that 2019 brings you and your family joy and happiness and love! Be on the look out for our year in review... coming soon!

Thank you for reading 

Love the Knadler Family 

You Can Do Anything For One Minute

Back in high school, I took aerobics for three consecutive semesters. No, I didn’t fail. I just loved aerobics! And I loved it because my teacher was awesome!

She looked just like she popped out of a 80s workout video! She had big hair and wore sweat bands and had a head set microphone. From the second I saw her, I idealized her. 

But her awesome hair do is obviously not what made her a great aerobics instructor and a great mentor. I mean she was fit and knew aerobics forward, backwards and sideways. But she taught me a lesson that I still use every single day! Her motto was “You can do anything for one minute!” (She would alter the timing as needed but you get the jist) 

If we had to do plank for 30 seconds, it was “Come on ladies! You can do anything for 30 seconds!”

Last lap around the track? “It’s just one more lap! You can do anything for one lap”

I heard her say this so many times, I can still hear her voice whenever I say it to myself. 

Yes, I say it to myself! Daily! 

Recently, our house flooded with sewage water. (That’s a story for another day. But I promise it’s coming!) We had to have a disaster recovery team come out and tear out walls and carpet and they left these huge, loud, (very necessary but very annoying) fans in our tiny condo. And right in the middle of it my husband had to go out of town for a business trip!

He has ONE. One business trip a year! And it had to be that week! (Cue sigh) Fortunately it was only for two days. 

And did I mention me and my 4 year old were sick. I had no voice! No voice and very loud fans. My three small children ran the house for those two days. And there was nothing I could do to stop them. 

And I know that there are some rock star single moms out there or awesome moms who deal with dad being out of town all the time, (dads too) but this was really hard for me!

I sat on my bed, folded laundry and bawled during nap time! My husband called and couldn’t understand a word I was saying because I had no voice an was sobbing uncontrollably! After that phone call, I took a few more minutes to cry. I needed it. (And that’s okay) then I wiped my tears and said to myself, “Two days. You can do anything for two days.”

And you know what? We survived!

I recently started working out again. And it has been a LONG time! Like 5 years! And I was hesitant to do so because A) I have gained a lot in the last five years and was a little embarrassed to be seen at the gym in such bad shape. & B) to accommodate my schedule, I have to wake up at 5:30 AM and go to the gym!

“I can’t wake up at 5:30 in the morning” I told myself. By almost as soon as I said my high school aerobics teacher’s voice chimed in my head. “You can do anything at 5:30 in the morning”

She was right. So now, 5:30 AM three days a week, I head to the gym. 

Now like I mentioned, it’s been a LONG time! So as I am sitting there on the elliptical, I have to keep telling myself, “It’s only 30 minutes. You can do anything for 30 minutes!”

“15 minutes left! You can do anything for 15 minutes!”

“Almost there. One more minute. You can do anything for one minute!”

This life gets hard! And I have to motivate myself to get through it!

So next time you’re anxiously waiting for that last hour of work to go by so you can go home to your family, remind yourself, “it’s just one hour, you can do anything for one hour!”

Or next time you struggle to get things done around the house, set a 30 minute timer and remind yourself “You can do anything for 30 minutes”

I have full faith that we has humans can accomplish any goal we set our minds to. 

YOU can do anything!

Cohen is 5 Months Old

This last week our little Cohen turned 5 months old!

He is almost as big as his sister at a whopping 18 pounds! Yep. You read that right! 18 pounds! (Without his helmet!) He is going to be our little line backer!

He maintains his cute little figure by eating 3 solid meals a day followed by bottles. And of course a 5:30 AM bottle and a bedtime bottle. 

He is sleeping .... better. Some nights he wakes up between midnight and 1 AM for a snack and then always around 5-5:30. He does go to bed pretty early. And never naps!

We love our little baby boy! He is the happiest most peaceful baby (Well as long as he’s not hungry or tired!) We couldn’t ask for a sweeter  soul to bless our family!

Pumpkin Pickin!

Today the Knadler’s kicked off October at the Pumpkin Patch! Mimi & Papa invited us to go to the pumpkin patch to pick out some pumpkins and then go out to lunch. We have been looking forward to going all week!

When we first arrived Thea felt a little overwhelmed with all of the choices and people. She had a really hard time finding a pumpkin she liked. Eventually, with the help of her Papa, she found the perfect pumpkin. 

Lincoln, on the other hand, found many “perfect” pumpkins. Daddy had to help him empty his little wheelbarrow a couple of times so he could refill it with more “perfect” pumpkins. 

Cohen didn’t really care about the pumpkins but he was loving the cuddles! 

The pumpkin patch had a really big slide that Lincoln has been excited to ride all week! And it did not disappoint! Lincoln and Paisley went down it several times!

Thea, however, was a bit nervous to try the slide... so she just climbed hay bails!

After the slide we went through a corn maze! Thea thought we were in the jungle and took Papa on a hunt for pink elephants and pink giraffes and monkeys. 

After doing one corn maze, my sister says “That was fun. Can we do the other one?” “Sure.” We said. 

Little did we know that the second corn maze was way harder! We got very lost and eventually Papa and Thea cheated to get out. 

The rest of us eventually found our way out!

Then we had some lunch at a mommy favorite, Olive Garden! Lincoln loved his spaghetti so much his face was covered in it! 

Me, Jared and the kids are super blessed to have such an awesome family and to be able to make memories with our children!

Thank you so much for reading! Look forward to more Fall Fun with the Knadlers!