Sunday, December 30, 2012

The New Year

2012 was a great year. We learned lots, laughed a lot and were productive in many things.

As I look back and think of where life started this year and where it ended, I am blown away at how blessed this family is and how lucky I am. This is what exciting things happened to us this year:

We started it out by celebrating our 3rd wedding anniversary in Jamaica. 
Celebrated our sons 1st birthday party with a dinosaur themed party and were surrounded by many friends and family.
We ended up finding out we were pregnant again 2 weeks after our sons birthday!
We finally got settled in our home by getting the things we wanted to make it complete (office furniture, a leather ottoman)
We hung everything left that needed to be hung and can say we are officially moved in and happy with the home we built last year.
We found out we were having a girl!
We made several trips out to the lake house and spent lots of fun times with family and friends.
We travelled to Chicago and Santa Fe!
We had our baby girl!
And we finished up the year with time with family.

This year was also a year of a few hard things. We had a really bad couple months this summer. Our son got really sick, our lab had to have two sets of stitches within a month from two separate injuries, our german shepherd had to get on joint medicine because of a bad hip, we had an infestation of ants in the house and had a couple of house things that cost way more than we wanted it to! We found out some good friends were getting divorced, we had our daughter who is still dealing with a heart murmur and then to round off the year, we found out another set of friends were divorcing.

I have learned many things though through it all. I learned that no matter what happens, God is always in charge and will get us through. I learned that sometimes you have to sit back and laugh, Just laugh at everything that is going on because you can't control it. We couldn't make it all go away fast enough and sometimes we felt that we had to just duck our head and bear through it. Laughing helped. We learned that we can in fact raise two kids, and do it successfully at that. We may only be 8 weeks in, but we have a pretty good handle on it thus far. I learned that I am an awesome mom, I love staying home with my kids, I love having two kids and I am in love with pinterest, cooking, blogging and being a homemaker. I learned several things like just because the detergent bottle is almost empty does not mean that its ever empty enough to just pour directly in the washing machine and forgo the little cup that comes with it. Result: detergent all over my wall that I still am trying to clean up. I've learned that multitasking is not only necessary these days but it can be an art form! I have learned how to live doing everything with almost one hand. I breastfeed using one hand while I play with my son with the other. I cook with one hand and carry a baby in the other while feeding a toddler in a highchair in between stirs and hey, I learned to blog with a squirming baby on me.

My husband and I also learned how deep our love for each other is. Believe me, having two kids this close together is not a little reward for your marriage that says, "good job on your marriage so far! Heres a treat!" Its more like, "ha, you think you guys got this and can handle this, watch this....BAM!" And you get a curve ball that smacks you in the back of the head before you know whats coming. Meaning, life didn't get easier. It is certainly filled with more joy, more love and compassion and more laughter and smiles in this house, but with it came hardships, sleep deprivation and work...ALOT of work. :)  We have learned that we got this even though we learn new things daily. As my husband likes to say, we went from zone defense to man to man. And he is so right (as he is almost all the time. Just don't tell him I said that). We have learned that at the end of the day, even if its just 5 minutes of silence, we need it for us and we take it. Now because we have amazing children we usually get more than that, but I make my point in saying that our love for each other has grown deeper and we have bonded in ways I never thought possible. We have also watched two of our very close friends go through a divorce. Thats been hard on us because we looked up to them. We wanted our love and marriage to be like theirs. Happy with two kids and both following their dreams. Little did we know, that whats on the surface is not always whats behind closed doors and we had NO idea how bad it was. It scares us, it saddens us and it makes us want to hold on to each other a little tighter and do everything we can to make sure dreams come true for us as individuals without sacrificing our unity, our friendship and our marriage. We are brokenhearted about our friends, but it makes us more thankful for one another.

As 2013 approaches, I hope to learn more, to love more and continue to blog and manage my household in a way thats efficient and leads to a happy and healthy home and family. We have a few trips coming up this coming year that I am super excited about! We are going to Las Vegas for Philip's 40th birthday! We are going to Oklahoma to see Matchbox 20 and going to San Antonio for a conference in which Philip will be learning and me and my kiddos will be playing. Next year I want to continue to create recipes for my cookbook, I want to learn how to sew so I can actually bring my pins from pinterest to life! I want to continue to raise my kids to love one another, to play with each other, to respect their daddy and to cherish the time they have with their mommy. Our son will be starting a mothers day out program this year which is exciting and sad for me all wrapped up in one and our daughter will continue to grow this year, learn how to roll over and probably learn how to walk! Wow! 

So heres to another year full of fun, laughter, joy, happiness and life lessons. I look forward to alone time with my husband as our children grow and I look forward to all the milestones they will accomplish this year! Here's to baking, cooking and making mistakes in my kitchen and here's to hoping Philip will buy me a sewing machine knowing full well that I will do my best to learn how to use it and create many things and know the possibility that I may only use it a few times. :) 

Happy new year every one! Don't drink and drive, be safe and cheers to new beginnings!

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