2012

Being home sick today (some awful stomach bug attacked me the past couple days, ugh!) I've had some time to reflect on 2011 and of course what 2012 will bring.

In 2011, I blogged more than any other year. It's amazing how the blog-o-world and social media has become such a huge part of everyone's lives.

So to recap:

A new camera lens!



A commitment to be more crafty and productive on weekends (so glad I chose to do this!)



An amazing trip to NYC with my sister! It was seriously cold, but we managed to see a ridiculous amount of the city. Can't wait to plan another trip (this time with Dan).


A new car




A new garden - never thought I would get so much enjoyment from growing vegetables. But this was one of the best things about the whole year. I happily watched my garden grow most of the year. Now, I'm completely obsessed now with planning my 2012 garden.

Still to this day we are enjoying our fresh (or frozen!) garden produce!


We enjoyed a relaxing summer full of:

braces (okay, so this part wasn't relaxing...)



Dan did a lot of painting while I was at a 2 week Project Lead the Way training in Klamath Falls


Sara Bareilles


Trip to San Francisco


A beach trip


A vacation, visiting Mt St Helens and camping at Orcas Island in the San Juans. Hmmm...just realized I never posted pics of that trip! Oops!


.....and far too much time on !!!

And of course the fall and the end of the year brought about what we are most looking forward to in 2012....

tiny tiny baby bump!

Overall, 2011 was one of our best years together!

And we are happily awaiting all that will arrive in 2012.

a tiny profile

To list our goals or "resolutions" would be a little overwhelming at this point, as we have A LOT planned for this next year...

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2009

On New Year's Eve Dan and I had some time to think about how our past year went. Overall, 2009 was one of our best years we've shared together. Mostly, we were so thankful for the blessings of being near family and continuing (and finishing for me!) our education.

The past few years Dan and I have posted our highs and lows of the year. Some of my blogging friends chose to do this with pictures, so I am going to attempt the same. Enjoy our year!

January -


If anything, the start of 2009 made us so grateful to be back in Oregon with our family and friends. We had spent winter break with family, enjoyed celebrating the new year with our friends (even if it cost us an arm and a leg in p-town), played in the snow and I enjoyed going to Halfway to hangout with my bestest friend Natalie (she was home from the peace corp in guatemala). I think at this time, we were really getting into hanging out with the Stuart's/Sperry's and then my MAT friends and their sig. others. January was all about friends and loved ones!

February -
This is the month I started student teaching - boy was that nerve-racking at first! I can't believe I now teach everyday! Dan spent most of his days at home, cultivating a love for Vampires (Bella and Edward), Dragons (Eragon books) and Sookie Stackhouse. I was completely jealous of him the whole month! We also got terribly sick and I tragically lost the 10 lbs I had so happily gained while in Florida! :( I also found out my good co-worker from Target in Florida died of lung cancer. That was pretty sad, but expected.

March-
Most of March consisted of long days waiting for Spring Break to come, a nice relaxing Spring Break and then a few days of wishing it was still Spring Break. By this time, I was getting completely used to teaching at South Salem HS. I was also super involved with coaching track (which I grew to love!). Dan still kept up his reading and working on his artwork. For Spring break we went hiking at Multnomah falls with Dan's family and then splurged a little on a trip to Seattle. We walked around the city, ate good food, went to the Aquarium, the space needle, shopping. It was great! Of course, we still kept up with our Sunday dinners and our FHE Mondays! Such great Salem friends...

April -

April was the best month as it was completely loaded with track meets, somewhat sunny(ier) days playing outside (but also such freezing cold ones at the beginning of the month!) AND I found out I was the first one in my MAT program to find a REAL LIFE TEACHING JOB! The only downer of the month was that my last work sample was due. At this point we also found out that Dan was accepted to PNCA and we were just giddy with our new life plans! Dan had been waiting to go back to school for over a year and the time had finally come, much thanks to his service in the Coast Guard and the GI Bill.

May -
May was a busy month! But it was finally officially warm weather season and we played out doors A LOT! We watched Eddie and Leila a few times in April/May as Dan's brother had to leave for his 3rd tour of duty in Iraq. Dan finally decided that it was time to go to Europe again before art school started and so thanks to a VERY GENEROUS gift from his parents we had tickets to Europe and a vacation to plan for! Unfortunately, vacation planning didn't really happen because I was busying finishing up and GRADUATING from Grad school at Willamette! How thankful I am for my MAT degree....phew! It was a long intensive 10 months, but so worth it!

June -

If May was busy, June was even busier. I had to wrap-up my time at South...I was sad to leave, but glad for warm weather and summertime! Dan and I frantically searched the area for apartments and somehow managed to coordinate us moving and getting ready to go on vacation seamlessly. Thanks to help from great friends, we moved up to Wilsonville and speed-read our Let's Go Europe travel guides. We also desperately tried to hang out with our Salem friends before we had to move away. With the beautiful weather I also got some good practice in with our Sony Alpha. By the end of the month we had painted our new apartment and were ready and packed for Europe!

July -
There is no small way of explaing how a trip abroad impacts your life...so I refer you to our posts in July. Europe was a blast...again. We are now ready to move on to other regions of the world and hopefully with some family or friends next time!

The rest of the month involved more playing outside, catching up with friends over yummy dinners and long hikes. We love summer time!

August -

August was truly the lazy days of summer month! We continued to play outdoors, despite the heat waves. We went to weddings, did crafts/art projects, made our apartment our 'home,' read books, hung with Eddie, Leila and Anita and enjoyed life before school started and life got crazy! At the end of month school started for the both of us....we were so excited!!


September, October, November -




These two pictures are our second homes. To be honest, these 3 months kinda blended all together. Sure there were highlights (having our Sunday dinner get-togethers, our birthday month, Thanksgiving) but we mostly struggled to keep up with our new lives. We spent most evenings at home, watching TV and cooking yummy food together (that is, when weren't stressing about school). If you've been keeping up with our blog or talk with us on a regular basis - you know how busy we've been.

December -
Well, we don't really need to go over that again do we? :P We're not that exciting.... (also the new The Bachelor season starts tonight, so I'm kind of obligated to quit blogging and go watch because I'm completely obsessed with the dumb show!)

In summary, it really was an amazing year, full of exciting changes and lots of time enjoying being married together.

Bring on 2010!

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Longest post ever

Happy New Year!

You would not believe how many pictures I have to post from the past few weeks! Thanks to the snow storm we had in salem and portland, I had an ENTIRE week off of school!! It was a great way to start off winter break!  

So here's a list of the great things Dan and I's winter break included:

• I finally cut my hair! It was so long...too long! I probably cut off about 7 inches...I didn't want to measure and be sad about it, so I just did it! I loved it for awhile, but it was slowly starting to drive me insane. So here's one of the last pictures taken with my long hair:

• Visiting with my favorite friend from the Dirty South, ASHLEY! We basically played scrabble, blink (to be mentioned later), listened to Dan's 'rymes' music and watched The Hills (don't even say anything...) the entire time. Good Stuff! Now she's back in Mississippi being an awesome Teach for America teacher. 
  

• Hanging out with our adorable niece and nephew. They are the cutest kids ever. I have a trillion pictures of them (Attn: Anita!!). Eddie is talking and saying all sorts of crazy funny things now too.

Leila

Eddie

• Finally we got to spend Christmas with our family!! It was great to spend time with our family after being so far away in Florida for over a year. We visited with both of our families, saw grandparents, hung out with the kids, watched movies, played games, etc. We ate ridiculous amounts of food, baklava (courtesy of Dan!), and Dan's mom made us breakfast (with bacon!) every morning! We definitely enjoyed ourselves. 

I got to go skiing at Mt. Ashland with my dad and brother, Sam. It was pretty cool. Sam and I hung out and cruised down the slopes. Hopefully, we'll get a chance to go again in the spring. 

Here is Chester, the new addition to my dad's family. He's pretty cute, I'd say the cutest of the 6 dogs (yes, 6! it's ridiculous)

• I also got to spend some time with my sister, which I'm going to post those pictures on another post, because there are a fair amount of pictures!

• For New Years we went out in downtown Portland. I'm pretty sure Dan and I hold the record for having the most boring new year's eve's (always falling asleep at home) and one absolutely amazing new year's eve (2006 in London!). So this year we tried to even it out some! 

We went to the Cheesecake Factory with Ashley for dinner and ordered WAY TOO MUCH food!

Here we are playing Blink (the fastest game in the world!) waiting to be seated. Basically it was a fair game between Ash and I, but Dan...well he put in good effort.  :)

Miranda joined us downtown and we ended up walking all around downtown Portland looking for a decent place to go. After $60, a couple of hours of dancing, a new years countdown, getting lost a few times and 5 huge blisters later we headed home exhausted! 

Here I am trying to seduce Dan onto the Dan floor....haha! It worked, he's a good dancer!

• New Years Day I had to pull myself outta bed at 630am (after being out until 3am!) to head to Eastern Oregon to visit my best friend Natalie! I'm also going to post more pictures of that on another post, because I had too much of an amazing time to not talk about it more. :)

So that was basically our winter break in a nutshell! Now, I am enjoying a couple more days of partial freedom (I'm working at my student teaching site a little bit, getting ready for next semester) until the MAT program starts back up on Monday. Dan is getting back to painting. He also is getting into working out and made a little isometric workout station in our house (it's pretty nifty!). We're waiting to hear about getting into Art school still. 

Thanks for those that updated us on how their holiday's went! 

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