Shipley Family Update 2021

 

Merriest Christmas from the Shipleys! We are grateful for this season of celebrating the birth of our Savior, Jesus Christ, and thankful for the joy each of you bring into our lives! Here's some 2021 updates:

Matthew continues his work as a freelance illustrator in addition to taking a job with Nugget this fall. He is living the dream working remotely less than 10 feet from our bed. With easing covid restrictions, he's been able to return to visiting a different bar every Tuesday night as the lone-sober member of his dart league team, participating in an adult soccer league, and spend occasional evenings playing nerdy board games with a group of friends. 

Elise recently started her 5th semester teaching online Money Management in the Family & Consumer Science Department for BYU-I. She's an audiobook junkie, enjoys her cheesy youtube workout videos, tries really hard to finish cross-stitch projects she started over a year ago, and loves teaching gospel doctrine at church. At the beginning of 2021, she decided to do a personal "Big Year" and made a goal to identify the species of 5,000 individual birds, and find at least 75 species. As of now, she has found 84 species, and has identified 4,254 individual birds... a little behind but not impossible to finish! Her favorite find this year was a roseate spoonbill that wandered a few hundred miles from its natural habitat in Florida to the triangle.

Callum turned 4 in July and has the personality and the hair of an out-of-control wildfire. He loves going to preschool down the street and playing outside with his friends on our street. He is incredibly creative and loves to build, draw, and make up weird stories and songs. He loves learning about animals. We've been on a Wild Kratts kick lately and he is fascinated with all types of weird animals and their "creature powers." We lug home a bajillion animal books home from the library every trip we make. His favorite game is "I'm thinking of an (obscure) animal." We play it every day. We tried out YMCA soccer this fall. It was mostly a train wreck, but there were some entertaining moments of him flying across the field (like... not metaphorically. He was flapping his arms pretending to be a pelican. We know this because he was yelling "I'm a pelican!") and trying to block his own teammates from scoring a goal. 

Zack will turn 2 in a couple weeks. After most of his life being bald, he finally grew some hair and he is blonde! Maybe one day we'll get a kid that inherits our brunette genes. Zack is our Hulk baby: he's either a really calm, good-natured, happy, smiles a lot, asks for hugs & kisses... or he is an angry, screechy, tantrum machine. There is no in-between and he can "go green" at any moment. It's a blast! He is stinking cute though, gets away with a lot with his big cheesy grin, and will still cuddle with me multiple times a day. He knows his colors, shapes, numbers, alphabet, and the names of all the junk foods he enjoys. He sleeps with 3 binkies- one in each hand and one in his mouth. He repeats anything and everything Callum says, loves books, and belting out the paw patrol theme song in grocery check out lines. He will jump off of any elevated object without fear. It is terrifying.

As a family, we enjoyed many visits from family & friends, relished the day we got to go back to in-person church, visited Elise's cousin's family in Kentucky (and crossed off Elise's 49th state!), ate lots of chick-fil-a, took a quick trip to Disney World and Universal Studios, spent summer days at the pool, beach, lake, splash pad and any water we could get to, made an effort to explore more local spots, moved a 1/2 mile down the street, went to Arizona for a week for Brig & Liv's wedding, and said farewell and welcome, to our ever-transient, but always wonderful Durham friends. 

Wherever you are, we are grateful to know you, and hope you are happy & well! And we love visitors!!

Much love, 

The Shipleys