2012 in a nutshell

It has been almost a year since my last post. Who has two thumbs and is a slacker? This girl!

2012 was an awesome year! I'm going to try to give a run down of our happenings with a few pictures in there.

I think the first big thing we did was go down to Texas in March (?) to go to our nephews' baptism. Ryan's brother has twin boys and they turned 8 and were baptized. It was really special to be there and spend time with family. I also got to spend some special time with my sister while she was preparing her house to be sold. We would get news of a showing and have to clean and leave the house in 15 minutes sometimes. It was crazy but fun! (Sorry, no pictures from this trip).

 Harper took swim lessons again this year. She loved them! She got really good at going under the water by herself and she can swim really well by herself with the help of floaties.

We went to the fair this Summer. One of Harper's favorite treats is cotton candy. We also went to the park A LOT! Rigs would spend hours on a swing. Every time I asked him if he wanted to get down and play he'd say, "No. Keep swinging."

Harper started preschool. She was so excited! This year we did preschool and a little joy school swap with friends. In our area we have full day kindergarten and I wanted her to get used to going somewhere every day of the week.

At the end of September I ran a Ragnar race. Other than carrying and birthing two children, it is probably the biggest physical accomplishment in my short life thus far. It was an incredible experience! I was able to have my dad, three brothers and a sister-in-law on my team as well as some friends. The friends that were on my team became closer friends and I made friends with the people I didn't know before. I am already very anxious to run another one. Who's in?

In October, I was able to go to my big brother's wedding in Salt Lake City. The ceremony was beautiful and it was nice to be with family. All of my siblings were there. None of our spouses or kids were able to come. We really missed all of them, but it was also fun to hang out as siblings. It had been a long time since I had shared a fold-out sofa bed with my sister ;). 

 Halloween was great as always. We dressed up as the Flinstones. Perfect, right? This photo was at our church Halloween party. We were tending our friends' little monkey. We have a tradition of having soup with friends and trick-or-treating around our neighborhood. It was perfect this year because our friends' kids dressed up as dinosaurs. The Finstones and dinosaurs....get it?

For Thanksgiving we went to Texas. After making a lot of trips earlier in the year we decided not to travel to Georgia, which is what we normally do. My sister invited us to their house. We were able to stay with them in their awesome new house. It was a very nice, casual Thanksgiving. It was fun to cook with my sister and just laugh and have fun. We were also able to spend time with Ryan's brothers that live down there too. Unfortunately, no pics. Boo.

 Back in September I opened up my very own dance studio. I taught out of my home. I made a ballet barre out of PVC pipe and everything. It was great! After teaching for a little over a month, I started noticing that my kids weren't getting enough of my attention. My focus was also taken away from Ryan and our home. I prayed about it and received the answer that I shouldn't continue with the studio. I made the decision to finish the term (teach through December). The photo is from our final recital. I had 9 adorable students. Maybe I'll go into more detail about all of this in another post. (The picture reminds me of a Degas painting).

Yay for Santa! I LOVE our mall Santa. He is so so sweet and as the kids walk away he always says, "Santa loves you!"

Christmas this year was epic! My oldest brother and his family moved to Kansas City during Christmas break. So I told them to come to us for Christmas so they didn't have to spend it in a hotel. My parents also came. We had 12 people in our house for a little under a week. We had so much fun! The picture is of all of the presents overflowing onto the piano because we couldn't fit them all under the tree.

This year I'm going to try to just focus on blogging the day to day. Then I won't feel like I'm getting behind and get discouraged.

My apologies for the picture quality. My phone is my camera, yo.