2012 in Review

Another great year in the books for the Holm family! Chris and I were just re-capping last night and I decided to do a bit of blogging as well as we say see-ya to 2012 and welcome in 2013. Here's something odd though... Chris and I usually make quite a list of things we'd like to accomplish in the next year, not necessarily resolutions (though those are in there) but really more of a plan for what we'd like to get done. Funny thing... we either didn't do this at the start of 2012 or can't find the list! Tells you how much we revisited them....

Anywho... here are some highlights of 2012

Peyton started 2012 as a baby who was working on rolling over, drinking excusively milk, wearing tiny baby clothes and just making cooing noises. Peyton is leaving 2012 as a full-blown walker, eating just about anything she can get her little mitts on, and building a vocabulary that includes every member of our house, many toys, some clothes, and a few food items (if not fully by name, at least by recognition).

Chris and I both got new jobs in 2012, though both with the same company that we worked for previously. I moved on from Sarah J and 5th grade, up to the big show of middle school. I love my job at iTech and it has been such a wonderful experience to open a new school. It's a ton of work, sometimes stressful, and definitely a huge learning curve, but I can honestly say I still enjoy going to work each day, I laugh with and at middle schoolers on a daily basis, and I have expanded my friend group! Chris wins the rockstar award of having worked 7 days a week for just shy of two years. Finally in December he started a new job with the Columbian. Instead of doing home delivery, he now drives a box truck that takes the papers out to drop sites for the home delivery guys (and gals). This new job is still overnight, but it is 5 days per week, he'll get benefits and time off after 90 days, woohoo!! I am most excited about the time off thing. It will be nice to be able to leave town sometime.... Chris is most excited that his nights off line up well with his pool league (although we'll see if he keeps that up in 2013, more to come on that)

Extracurriculars.... Well we are defiintely in a little family groove right now. We appreciate our time together watching Peyton play, teaching her new skills, and going on little adventures. We didn't do anything too impressive in 2012 that was just for fun, we were too busy working :)
I did get to go to California twice for my new job at iTech, that was nice, although I missed my family. We did venture over to Yakima in August to buy a new (to us) car. The Camry wasn't doing too well, so we gave her the heave-ho and welcomed a 2010 Dodge Avenger RT into our family. Definitely the fanciest car I have ever owned! Leather interior, heated seats, spoiler on the back, oh yeah it's nice! We got it for a great price given the goodies included. Yes we did take out a loan on it, but well... what can you do?

We still have our dinner club group with friends and man I appreciate having such a wonderful group of people to call friends. We have been a bit more sporadic with our once weekly dinner regimen. I suppose that's to be expected when we've all got babies these days (or are expecting them). It's nice to have kids at similar ages though and we run the span! The kids are starting to play together and be a bit less dependent on parental entertainment. That's always nice. I enjoy that we all have things to contribute to conversation and actually having the DC less frequently allows us a greater variety of things to talk about. It's still hard for Chris and Peyton as they're both used to going to bed pretty early. I so enjoy watching these friendships evolve as we move though life together.

Other news of 2012...
We are currently toying with the idea of speeding up my Admin program at WSU-V. If I continue on my current trajectory, I will be done in May of 2015. If I speed it up, May of 2014... It will mean a lot more work in 2013, which equals less time with the fam, but I get to be done a whole year sooner.. is it worth it? I'll have to keep you posted.

Baby watch 2013... not in the plans my friends... just to put inquiring minds to rest. According to our DC rotation, people are jumping into round two and I'm up next in the rotation... count me out folks, this gal isn't planning on a baby anytime soon. Maybe we'll join you for round three?... :)

And that's a wrap!