Hello again, friends! It’s been a great year in the Koser house, full of ac­tiv­i­ties that have brought us closer to­gether as a fam­ily.

Three birth­day par­ties were among the high­lights of the year. In February, we hosted a mur­der mys­tery es­cape room for Melissa’s brother Tim’s birth­day. Melissa set up the es­cape room and en­joyed watch­ing every­one try to solve her rid­dles and clues.

Murder Mystery Escape Room characters
The Murder Mystery sus­pects

Brian’s birth­day in April fea­tured a root beer tast­ing party! We cer­tainly had­n’t re­al­ized there are so many dis­tinct kinds of root beer.

Melissa got a sur­prise birth­day party in August where we played The Last Banquet, a game for up to 25 that we’ve been try­ing to play for years.

Maybe our most mem­o­rable out­ing was to the National Shrimp Festival. Brian and Melissa went for the food (fresh shrimp, crab cakes, Brian’s first taste of shark, and fried Oreos), while Lydia re­ally en­joyed get­ting her face painted for the first time!

Lydia with her Rainbow Kitty face paint
Rainbow Kitty!

Some other unique ex­pe­ri­ences from 2018 were pet­ting a kan­ga­roo at the Gulf Coast Zoo, at­tend­ing a deluxe movie the­ater (complete with re­clin­ers and wait­ers who bring you fancy food!), and vis­it­ing New Orleans with Brian’s sis­ter Megan and her hus­band Josh to check out the Audubon Aquarium.

By far some of our best mem­o­ries came from our sum­mer trav­els. In late May, we went on our Midwest Road Trip: 14 states, 12 stops, and lots of friends and fam­ily crammed into two weeks. The girls han­dled all of that dri­ving like champs. You can hear all about the trip on our pod­cast.

One week af­ter we re­turned home, Melissa was able to fly out to Colorado with baby Amber and sur­prise her sis­ter Melody.

Union Station, Kansas City, Missouri
Union Station in Kansas City

September saw us check an item off our bucket list: we at­tended a standup spe­cial fea­tur­ing Brian Regan, our fa­vorite co­me­dian! That night may have been the hard­est we laughed all year.

The last big event we at­tended was our first NFL game in November. We met up with Brian’s fam­ily in New Orleans and watched the Eagles play the Saints. Since half of the fam­ily are Eagles fans and half are Saints fans, only half left the game happy. 🙂

Kosers and Tim at the Eagles-Saints game
Fly Eagles Fly!

Brian also made it to his first NBA game with Tim to see Tim’s Miami Heat beat the New Orleans Pelicans. Tim also fin­ished the year with us, spend­ing the Christmas week play­ing board games and in­tro­duc­ing Brian to some Binzel-favorite Christmas movies.

Amber started walk­ing and knows what cows, pigs, and sheep say.

Lydia was fi­nally potty trained this past February! It has been so nice to only have one di­a­per to change in this house. She also started do­ing some preschool classes at a home­school co-op hosted at our church. At the end of the year she sang her first church spe­cial with Melissa.

Melissa and Lydia singing “God’s Been Good”

Melissa ac­com­plished sev­eral home pro­jects, in­clud­ing a busy­board for Amber, an apron for Lydia, a dice tray for Brian, and a framed board game for them all.

Brian started be­ing more health-con­scious and lost 20 pounds. At work he got a pro­mo­tion and started a ping pong league. And his ma­jor pro­ject was sfc.blue, a lis­ten­er’s guide for our fa­vorite pod­cast, The Sci-Fi Christian.

It was a great year, and we’re very ex­cited about all that 2019 has in store for us. Wishing you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!