Yae 2013!

Here we are in a new year, and I think it’s going to be a great one! This year I am going to try to keep up with the blogging. Probably not daily, but hopefully I can keep up with it regularly. This last year was pretty eventful (which I will give you a rundown in a minute), and I look forward to a lot more changes this year.

This past year has been an eventful one. On this day last year we were exhausted from moving into our new house. That was a busy time. I didn’t realize that we had so much junk! Since then, we have purged quite a bit and acquired even more. This house no longer feels so empty. It is starting to feel like a home instead of a place to store our furniture. As part of my new resolution I will be trying to get more articles written in my other blog at https://evolution-of-a-home.blogspot.com, but that’s for another time.

Sophie turned 4 last January. She’s getting to be such a big girl now. I can hardly believe it. For her birthday we went to see Beauty and the Beast in 3D at the theater; just me and her. I think that we’re going to make that a yearly thing. This year we are going to play hookie and have a beauty day. We’ll go to the mall and get our hair and nails did, and since she is turning 5 this year, it’s the year that she can get her ears pierced. She also wants to have a birthday party, and Chris suggested going to the aquarium in Atlanta, but I’m not sure that that is going to work out. We’ll see. We might just end up having a small party here instead.

We had a family friend live with us for 4 months while she was trying to get on her feet. It was definitely an adjustment for us, but I think that it has brought us closer as a family, at least for me. I came to realize that the reason that Chris and I have been able to work through so much together. The more frustrated that I became with our house guest, the more I realized that I love being around my family over anyone else. No matter how irritated I get with them, they are part of me and I want nothing more than to spend the rest of my life with them.

My dad came out to visit over Easter. We had a good time, but it was a short visit. We did get to die and hunt for Easter eggs, and do the whole basket thing. Dad even got them a police car to drive around in because he felt bad for not getting them gifts throughout the rest of the year. They love the car though. We even took it out today, but the battery died, so our drive was cut short. It’s on the charger right now and hopefully we can take the car back out tomorrow if the weather holds.

Sophie started preschool this past August. That’s still taking some getting used to, I have to admit. I can’t believe that I have a child in school! She loves it though. She took her beginning of the year assessment the first week of school and got 97 out of 113! According to her teachers, most of the kids only score between 40 and 50 on that test. By the end of the year they are shooting for 87 out of 113… So we are shooting for 113! Woohoo! My little girl is awesome!

 We did have an issue with their field trip though… Liam and I tagged along so I could help out as a chaperone on their field trip to Steed’s Dairy in October. The trip went great; no incidents, but on the ride home there was one little, minor thing… No big deal really… She just decided to open the emergency window! Yeah, I know… Why did it have to be my kid? Because that’s my luck.

Anyway…

Liam turned 3 in August. He had a small birthday party in the backyard. Dad wasn’t here, so Kaleb and Steve helped me barbecue in the rain and the kiddos all played upstairs while us big kids visited downstairs. He got some great gifts, but he was a bit bummed that Dad was gone. What can you do? Since then, he has just exploded into being a big kid. I notice that any time we are with older kids, that no one has any idea that he is only 3 years old. He is just as advanced, if not more so, as any of the rest of them. We’ve been to a few things at Sophie’s school and once I pick him out of the crowd of 4 and 5 year olds, I always get asked why he’s not in school. I love it. It makes me so proud of my babies.

We got a new car for Christmas. It’s freaking awesome! It’s a 2008 charcoal metallic GMC Acadia SLT. It has about 77K miles, but it has most of the bells and whistles that we were looking for, the miles are actually lower than about 90% of the cars that are the same year and model, and it was within our price range. So excited!

So…

We’ll see how this year goes. Hopefully it will be full of wonder and happiness. Happy New Year!