2012 Greetings

At the stroke of midnight last night, we bid farewell to 2011. It was nothing fancy or exciting. We had a nice night in with some wine, appetizers, and champagne. My mom came over for a while but left well before midnight. We were in bed by 12:15 (although, thanks to some of neighbors, we weren't SLEEPING because they decided to set off huge fireworks).

2011 was an eventful year. It was exactly a year ago that Michael and I decided to start our search for a house. We put our condo on the market at the beginning of February, and things just... didn't go as planned. We put an offer on a house in March but didn't get it. In early June, we finally found another one worth putting an offer on--a noncontingent offer that was accepted--and so began the months of real, live stress.

Obviously, things worked out. For the time being. We rented out the condo right after we moved out of it, and although that stress was relieved, we jumped right into home improvement projects at the new house which were just exhausting. We had lofty ambitions about how quickly we would be able to do things, and well, I'm here to tell you that we ridiculously overestimated how much we'd be able to get done in a short time.

Our kitchen? It's still ugly. We have wallpaper ripped down, we removed the light fixture above the sink, but then... we haven't done anything else to it. Oops.

We don't have a single room that is "complete." There are things in every room that stick out like a sore thumb to me, things that need to be done.

But we are living here at least. We are doing what we can but we are not letting the projects rule our lives like they did in the first month or so that we lived here.

Going into 2012, we don't exactly know what the year will hold for us. The lease we have with our condo tenants expires on April 30. We don't yet know whether they plan to stay or not. We might be putting it back on the market for another attempt at selling it. We may be renting to someone new. We may have to replace the furnace/air conditioner. We may have to repaint the entire place. We just don't know.

Amidst all of the stress and changes we experienced in our lives in 2011, we had the most remarkable little girl to remind us of how blessed we truly are. We watched her grow from this smiling, squishy baby in January to this energetic, joyful, busy toddler at the end of December. I look back at photos from the year and I just cannot believe how much she has changed before my very eyes.

We were lucky to be able to travel a lot in 2011. Charleston, Las Vegas, Utah, Arizona, Mexico, Poconos, Virginia. We don't yet have any trips planned for 2012, and because of the lofty goals we have for things we want to do with the house, we're not sure what our 2012 travel will look like. Our priorities are with our home right now, but we do want to make sure to go somewhere this year, so it's just a matter of figuring things out.

The people in our lives went through their ups and downs, too. We prayed for and supported them all, just as they supported us. I think we're all entering into 2012 better for what we have been through (big and small), and I think the year holds a lot of promise for all of us.

Just as I hope it does for all of you.

Happy New Year.