Roth Family Christmas Letter 2021

♦ Happy New Year ♦

I meant to get this done as a Christmas letter but I didn't have the mental energy until now, so let's just call it a New Year letter! 2021 was one heck of a year. It was another particularly rough year for our family, but there was definitely good in there too. Here is the big stuff.

As most of you know, we were going through fertility treatments including IUI and IVF that ultimately led to a dead end, and we eventually decided this year to close that part of our journey. It was a heartbreaking decision, but one we feel comfortable with. We remain grateful beyond words for having the twins before facing infertility as well as for the incredible love and support that we experienced.

We have also had a number of big medical events this year. The biggest was Josh having a seizure. It was of course a big ordeal and I'm so grateful that we were around family at the time. He is back on seizure meds now and things seem to be going fine, so hopefully that remains the case! He also had a particularly bad kidney stone that resulted in multiple emergency room visits as well as surgery.

In our more daily lives our trials range from mental health struggles to financial strain to parenting and general life stuff. Now let's move on to the good stuff!

Josh got a new job this year doing Amazon delivery. It's very physical and sometimes that really manifests (knees for sure), but it's been a good job so far. it's straightforward and he gets to do his thing as long as the work gets done. He also built a new computer from scratch for the first time. Ashley got a new at-home job as a web rater. It's more intensive than her other at-home work, but it's been a great addition. She also stepped down from being a moderator for the Utah Chapter of Mormon Women for Ethical Government for now.

Lauren and Jacob started Kindergarten this year, and they are crushing it. They are thriving academically and socially, they have made lots of friends, and their favorite part of school is the bus ride. I put them in the same class for now, because I can't imagine them being apart, but maybe that will change over the years.

Lauren loves unicorns, pink, purple, turquoise, and anything sparkly. She is a friend to everyone and is a natural leader in that she is not afraid to direct people when playing games and things - sometimes that translates to bossy when she's coming on especially strong, but I hope she never loses that spark.

Jacob loves red, orange, and yellow because those are "lava colors", and also rainbow. He is also obsessed with penguins as well as anything cute - I don't think I've met someone who loves cute things more than he does. He is so sweet and always tries to cheer people up, and is as curious about the world as ever.

We've felt so much love and support in our lives this year. We are especially grateful for the love and comfort we find in Christ. We love you all dearly, and wish you the best year available to you. ♥

Roth Family Christmas Card & Letter 2020

We sent out our Christmas cards only digitally this year to save on money, but wanted to share here too. If you're reading this, we love you and wish all the best. Here is our Christmas card and letter for 2020:

What a year this has been, right?? All around us there has been political strife, social unrest, economic hardship, and of course the global pandemic. That’s enough to make anyone’s year a challenging one.

For us personally, even with all of that aside this was one of our hardest years to date. Among other challenges, some of the harder things that we’ve been open about include a suicide attempt followed by hospitalization and another year of no successful pregnancy, including miscarriage and failed IUI cycles.

But there is good too! Josh got a new mental health diagnosis (Borderline Personality Disorder) along with new doctors, therapies, medications, and even a few workplace accommodations. As always it’s a long road, but we’ve seen a lot of good there too. And with my secondary infertility, we have decided to move on to IVF - a very big deal! Granted, it felt like a big deal to start any fertility treatments, but going from IUI to IVF there is a lot more to it. It’s not cheap and it sucks to anticipate that when we’ve been working to save for a bigger car and a house, but it’s also much more likely to result in a pregnancy so we’re hopeful. We are also so grateful to continue to have steady incomes this past year, even if there were some hits to our income. We’ve been able to provide for our needs, and we are so grateful for that.

Josh has gotten more crafty this year - he’s been making trinkets for his Dungeons and Dragons group in his spare time that involves woodworking, woodburning, using epoxy resin, and other exciting stuff. He also still streams on Twitch pretty regularly and loves unwinding by playing games with his friends and family. He is still working at Visa, and has had a mix of working from home and working at the office.

This year Ashley became a moderator for a chapter of the organization ‘Mormon Women for Ethical Government’ - a non-partisan group for Latter-day Saint women that focuses on advocacy, peacemaking, media literacy, and ethical government. Ashley has been very active in a lot of political scenes as well as loving her church calling in coordinating service and meals for others who are in need. She also still works from home as a virtual assistant, doing a bunch of computer and social media stuff.

The twins haven’t stopped growing up, despite our pleas. They have a lot of shared interests, including stickers, video games, riding their balance bikes or scooters outside, and playing pretend together.

Lauren has been conditioned since birth to like the color pink, and she has embraced that in full force. She loves everything pink, as well as all things unicorn. She loves imaginative play, is more or less content to do her own thing, loves to sing to herself, is obsessed with taking pictures, and wears her heart on her sleeve. She’s a total Daddy’s girl and reminds me of that regularly. ;)

Jacob loves anything rainbow. He has laser-sharp focus on whatever interests him, often not noticing anything else when he’s doing something he loves. He has big emotions that we are still learning how to manage, is growing more determined at trying things he’s afraid of, and prefers to play with others over doing anything alone. He is super attached to Mama, and I’m soaking it up.

We’ve felt so much love and support in our lives this year. We are especially grateful for the love and comfort we find in Christ. We love you all dearly, and wish you the best holiday available to you. ♥

Feel What You Feel

Coronavirus news is everywhere. We all know that's the big thing right now, worldwide. It's scary, overwhelming, and who truly knows what all the effects of this pandemic will be, short- and long-term?

I think it's important to find gratitude in our lives, no matter how big or small, and I believe that a lot of good can come from that. But I also am a big believer in allowing yourself to feel what you feel. If you're mad, be mad. If you're grieving, let yourself grieve. Whatever the circumstance is, giving ourselves space to feel what we need to is important.

So here I am.

Don't get me wrong, we're doing fine, we're able to provide for our needs, and the twins don't really know any better. Life as we know it is okay.

But.

Here is some of the not-so-fun stuff that I've been feeling.

I'm anxious. Just this underlying anxiety that never really seems to go away. We have some stability in our home and our lives, but who knows if that could change? Or what about our families? Our friends? Who knows who will be affected, or by how much? How many people might I know who will get sick, or maybe even die, by the end of all this? Or if any of us get sick, what could be the impact on our family? What will the financial future of our families look like? What about that of our country? And what will it mean for all of us moving forward?

And what if the effects are far-reaching enough that food and essential supplies become scarce? More-so than what is happening with panic-buying and stocking up. What if it becomes legitimately hard to find what we need to survive? Is that even a possibility? Because thinking about that scares me.

I miss my family. I live far away from most of them anyway, and there are lots of ways that we stay connected thanks to technology, but knowing that you have to be isolated while there is so much going on in the world, it feels like it just brings out how much I miss them even more. I wish I could be with them.

I'm also worried about Josh's mental health. We've mostly adjusted to him working from home, but I know it wears on him to never go out. And I know a lot of this is hard on him in other ways. What if everything compounds and his depression and anxiety take a turn for the worse? His mental illnesses have taken us down some very dark roads, and I'm terrified of that happening here and now.

And I wish I had a little baby. It feels like I'm grieving a baby I don't have yet (which feels both similar and different compared to the grief I have about Matthew). I never thought when we started trying to get pregnant again back at the end of 2017 that we'd still be waiting. I know it's not an easy time to be pregnant or be giving birth, but it still hurts. And having fertility treatments cancelled doesn't help. I just wish I had a baby to be holed up with, to snuggle, to spend my energy taking care of, to shower with love. I'm emotionally tired and I hate that aching in my arms and my heart.

I believe that things will be okay, one way or another. But there is a lot of hard in the meantime.

Whatever you are feeling is valid. Hang in there, you're not alone. ♥



Love,
Ashley