Merry Christmas from the Curtis and Sarah Gibby family. Here’s a little update on our lives.

Curtis is still working at ABC 4 News in Salt Lake City. After almost 2 and a half years on the morning news working graveyards, in May he changed to weekends and days. He produces both the 5:30 p.m. and 10 p.m. news on Saturdays and Sundays, then helps with other shows three days a week. It’s not an ideal situation, because Curtis doesn’t get to visit our families on Sunday evenings, but Sarah likes having Curtis home at night. He is also brushing up on his Spanish, attending the hispanic branch because they meet in the mornings when he can go to Church.

Sarah also has a new job. In October, she started working at the Kohl’s store near our home two or three nights a week. She works on the “ad set” team, putting out signs for the store’s latest sales. It’s not too much stress or time away for the family, and it provides a little bit of extra money for home improvements and other things that Sarah has her heart set on.

Audrey is the light of our lives. She started really walking right after her first birthday, and now she cruises all over the house. (She’ll even go upstairs to her room to steal a blankie from her crib, even though she knows they’re only for sleeping with.) We think she’s very smart for a 17-month-old. She can tell us pretty much whatever she wants to, and she knows all of her body parts and animal sounds. Her favorite song is “Happy Birthday” (which for her is “Happy happy happy” over and over). Audrey adores her aunt Alaura and loves to talk to her on the phone.

In September, we shared the happy news that Audrey was going to be a sister, but shortly afterward, at 13 weeks along, Sarah lost the baby. We are sad, but hope to have another child in the near future.

We’ve been lucky enough to go on three vacations this year. First, we had a free trip to Mesquite in March. We stayed in a hotel-casino for two nights and had a nice visit to the luxury spa that included two massages, which was very relaxing. In July, we stayed in a St. George condo for a week with Curtis’ family. We had a fun time going to the Grand Canyon and tubing down a river.

In October, we went on a cruise with our neighbors the Welches. It was the first time we had left Audrey for more than a day, but she seemed to do all right without us at Grandma Shefchik’s house. We drove to Los Angeles and spent 4 nights on the boat, visiting the San Diego zoo, Catalina Island, and Ensenada Mexico. We had a great time and we were happy that we went.

We’ve had lots of work around our house to keep us busy in the mean time. This summer, we sanded and stained our entire fence, over 2,000 square feet of wood and what seemed like hundreds of hours. This fall, we put laminate floor in our kitchen, dining room and living room, with the help of Curtis’s family. Because we did the work ourselves, we went for about three weeks with a torn-up kitchen, but we like the finished product. Sarah also enjoyed planting bushes, flowers and a tree in our yard.

All in all, we had a wonderful year and we hope that yours was wonderful too. Merry Christmas.