Year in Review

2012 was a busy and great year!

We did a lot of visiting... more than I realized until I tallied it all up.
1 visit from friends
1 visit to Minnesota
2 visits to Houston
2 visits to Georgia
3 visits to Utah
6 visits from family

We ended the apartment-living phase of our life and bought our first wonderful home. We have slowly furnished and decorated bits and pieces and enjoy the time we get to spend working on our house.

Before

After

It might not look like much but we're happy with our progress! I especially love the curtains Stephen gave me for Christmas and the photos on the opposite wall. We're working on getting a photo from each of our "homes." So far we have (left to right) a picture of Sweden, fireworks over the Capitol in Washington DC, and Mount Olympus in Utah. We still need some cute pillows, a second chair, and TV stand but wow, it gets expensive quickly!

Before

After

After 5 years of wedding drought, THREE of our siblings got engaged :)

Stephen's cousin and her family surprised us and moved to San Antonio so we actually have family here! For the past few months I have enjoyed watching their daughter during most weekdays (lack of blog updates = chasing 2 toddlers around). I am back to just having Seth to watch, but it was a good experience for Seth to have a playmate around so much.

We lived another year as a one car family. Thankfully Seth and I had the library and park one block away to enjoy. We celebrated the new year with a new(-to-us) car, a 2011 Nissan Sentra!

We started to get to know and love Texas with multiple visits to the Alamo, La Villita, and the Riverwalk, eating lots of Tex Mex and B-B-Q, camping and paintballing in the Texas desert for Stephen, a day trip to Austin, visits to the San Antonio zoo and Sea World, and surviving our first HOT summer.

Stephen managed several school moves in the blistering heat, helped in the opening of a new elementary school, impressed his supervisors on some difficult projects, and was blessed with a raise. Later, he was given the opportunity to move from the charter schools' central office to the high school. He is very busy with longer hours but enjoys getting to know and help the students and faculty more directly and still loves his job. Despite his busy schedule he still makes time for family and we love when he is home.

We have no pictures of the man at work, but in this picture he's wearing his cool cardigan with the high school's logo and name printed on it.

We celebrated our first Thanksgiving at home and really enjoyed making a delicious turkey meal together and spending the day as a family.

Seth learned to walk, talk, and sing and continued to be our pride and joy (separate blog post needed). He turned 2!

Stephen graciously gave up Sunday nights together as a family for 2 months so I could sing in a community production of Handel's Messiah put on by our church.

I'm sure we did other things in 2012, but it's about time I just make this post!