10 Moments from the Past 10 Months

When I posted the Mumford cover of "Fare Thee Well" back in August, I didn't actually think that I would be saying that to my blog for the next several months.  Unfortunately, though, that's what happened.  School began which meant putting my creativity into lesson plans and leaving little room in the bucket to keep up with personal writing.

It's been quite the busy 10 months since I last wrote.  Here's a quick recap of our top 10 moments from the past 10 months:

1. I began my third year of teaching.  This year definitely had its ups and downs, more so than normal I think, but hopefully it was successful.  I never really feel like I've accomplished much at the end of the year; I don't know if other teachers feel this way, but there's always SO much more that I wish I would've done with my students before the year ended.

2. We celebrated my niece's baptism in September and became Godparents! It was a beautiful day and a really nice service.  She was baptized along with our pastors' sweet daughter.

3. Probably the biggest news of the past 10 months was finding out we're expecting!!  I'll post more about this later, but we are super excited to be pregnant with our first child--a little girl--who is due to arrive in just a few short weeks!

I always think posting pictures of pregnancy tests is a little weird... but this is from the actual day we found out after my doctor asked me to take the test.  We were so surprised!

4. We celebrated our 6th annual Friendsgiving dinner.  This is the second time we've been able to host dinner at our new house and decided to hold it in our garage this year.  We strung up lights across the ceiling, lit a fire in the stove, and moved in enough tables and chairs to hold the approximately 30 guests who came.  In the craziness of it all, I managed to forget to take pictures of the food & decor--something that seems to happen about every year.

These are about the only pictures we captured from the evening :)

5. Little Miss Niecey turned ONE! It's so nuts to think that she's already old enough to have had a birthday, but life has definitely been more interesting with her around! :) My sister threw a really nice Winter Wonderland/Frozen themed birthday party for her.

6. I turned 26. What? I'm on the downhill side to 30... and I'm not really sure when that happened. We celebrated with my in-laws' incredible BBQ chicken, cake, and a trip to the park.

Where did this toddler come from? She was just a baby a minute ago!

A 26-week bump

7. We completed a few home DIY projects including re-landscaping in front of our house, painting our shutters, and getting the nursery ready.

8. We spent a lot of time with our families, celebrating both ups and downs of which there have been plenty.

9. We paid off our car a year early! Derek has been really focused on budgeting for the past several months (maybe the past year or more?), and we're slowly seeing the positive results of it.  I just keep telling myself that it'll all be worth it down the road when we can vacation and travel freely without needing to worry about student loans and other debt.

10. We (when I say "we", I actually mean Derek) planted our garden.  We're experimenting with a few new vegetables this year and will hopefully see some good results! :)


Now that it's summertime, I'm hoping to get back on track to blog regularly.  We'll see how that turns out once the little miss arrives in a few weeks. :)