2017!

I generally think I have a pretty good memory but every time I sit down to write this post my first thought is "What did we do this year???".  The big highlights stick out - vacations, birthdays, holidays, etc.  But what took up the rest of the 350 some days??  Then I start to look through pictures and remember...oh yeah.   Things happened.

We spent a week on the beach in Florida.  Luke, at 4½, was at such a fun age for the trip, loving playing on the boogie board, in the sand, and at the pool.  We don't have another purely beach vacation in the 5 year plan but we've certainly enjoyed the two we've taken with him.

My baby sister got married this summer which means our parents have successfully married off all 6 of us girls, which they celebrated by booking a cruise for next summer.  Hahaha.  Sister weddings have been my favorites, besides our own, and I'm a little sad they are all done!  But we had a lovely weekend celebrating my sister and my husband's only younger BIL (even with his one younger sister and my four younger sisters).  Luke LOVED the cousin time and the donuts at the reception and it was just a super fun weekend.  And I had another 4 cousins, all on the same side, get married this year too.  A lot of time with that side of the family between weddings and showers!

I ran my half-marathon in the fall!  I am still pretty dang proud of that.  I had first signed up for one 4 years earlier, to celebrate turning 30.  Then I had more foot issues and it took me years, another surgery and an RA diagnosis before I finally got to run my 13.1 miles.  But I did it.  The days of not being able to walk (crutches) and painfully walking (before and after surgery), and all the tears over my foot pain doesn't seem that long ago.  And yet, I ran 460 miles this year.  That felt really really good.  I wish I could go back and tell my 2011, unable to walk normally because of foot pain self, that someday I'd be running again.  It would just take a long time.

Other than those big milestones, we spent a lot of time at the lake in the summer:

We make some really lovely family memories there, both our family of 3 and the larger family.  We might plan our summer around lake trips (and weddings, when they happen).

We also spent a lot of time on house projects this year.  A LOT.  I look back at our house a year ago and about half of it has majorly changed.  We redid the floors in 75% of our downstairs (here).  We replaced our couch (here).  We redid the linen closet in Matt's office (here).  We redid my craft area (more coming in January).  We added shelves to our front room (coming in January).  We added a swingset to the backyard.  (I'm being very generous with the WE on all these...they were largely Matt.  Although I did order the couch, so pretty equal work distribution there.)

I (and I do get most of the credit on this one) repainted our bedroom, finally getting Matt to agree to covering the wood toned trim with white, something I had only been pushing for...6 years, give or take.  Of course I took on that while the floors downstairs were also torn up, it was a rough few weeks to be living in our house (or at least living with me living in our house because I do not deal with messes well.)

I sewed a little (to date for the year: 16 burb cloths and 6 pillow covers, that's the majority of it) and read A LOT (on track to finish 200 books by the end of the year).   (I have a spreadsheet to track both, naturally.)

We put in a lot of adoption time, finding more agencies to list with, getting (more) training, filling out (more) paperwork, make two (more) profile books, having (more) visits, and writing (more) checks.  I feel a lot more optimistic on that front than I did a year ago but also still holding strong on the "one child" family situation with Luke's kindergarten entrance looming ever closer.  I've been asked many times what I plan to do once he's in school (full-time, at all) and obviously the answer is we hope to have a baby but that's also been the hope for the last 3 years so who knows.  I might have a lot of free time come August.  But still, optimistic.

I documented a day in our lives in January and October, those will be much different soon! (I'll have to leave the house 5 days most weeks!  You may not understand how much I am dreading that!)

But overall, it was a good year.  A really good year, house project stress (and expense) aside.  (And a car transmission failing which required buying a new (used) car...it was an expensive year.)  I am grateful for so many things in our lives, even when things (babies) are not going according to my plan.  But God keeps surprising us with His grace and goodness.  Life is not how we would have pictured it but it's still pretty wonderful.  We have a lot to be thankful for and seeing that has taken me a long time.

Wishing you much happiness and peace in 2018! And thanks for following along for another year of my ramblings.  I am glad I have this record of our life, as imperfect and random as it may seem. 


2016
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2013
2012