2013 Recap

One of my favorite New Year's things to do is go back and read some of last year's posts.  That's one of the reasons I love having a blog.  I love be able to recall not just what happened, but the emotions, joys and challenges that went with big events or the mundane days.

But first of all, HAPPY NEW YEAR!  We hope 2014 brings as many joys and fun family time as 2013 did!  We had a great year, filled with lots of highs, and of course a few lows.  Our New Years Eve celebration was a little dull, as I was recovering from the stomach bug (thankfully it was a 1 hour bug, the recovery took all day though).  So instead of the party with my family that we were planning on, we had a simple pj party and went to bed early :-).

The kids made hats to celebrate!  And they started singing "Happy New Years and you know it, clap your hands!"

They drank my family's NYE traditional drink, cherry 7up.  The kids called it "spicy soda".

We also played a family Wii game, and Candy Land for the first time with the big girls.  They loved it!

Overall, it was a fun night and the kids enjoyed our celebration.  All kids were asleep by 8 and I was out around 9.


And now for the recap:

January:  
I wrote this post about Life and how blessed we are that our children's birthparents chose life.  I still mean every single word and with the March for Life approaching in a few weeks, it's always on my mind.

February:
We celebrate Anna's 2nd birthday!

March:
March is always busy with lots of birthdays and Anna and Anthony's birthday party.  Jeremy's birthday is in March as well.  We also enjoyed the process of electing our new Pope and Anna still loves to talk about Pope Francis!

April:
We celebrated Anthony's 1st birthday!  I also wrote a few posts about Infertility as April is Infertility Awareness Month.  This one on Isolation in particular.

May:
Jeremy had a big job change in May.  It has been an amazing career switch and a true blessing for our family.  I'm grateful that he had this opportunity.  It has given us better financial security, more time with the family, less stress about job security, and a much more "family" atmosphere.   We also started PT for Anthony to get him up and moving! 

June:
I wrote a post about answered prayers and rereading it, I can only smile as God did it again.  He answered our adoption prayers with a big fat "yes" after asking us to wait a short time. 

July:
We celebrated our 5th Anniversary this month!  Apparently I had lots of time on my hands because I wrote a few posts that month about things going on.  I wrote about motherhood and hair, a topic I'll have to revisit soon, as my life with three girls and their hair is a little crazy!

August:
August brought some trials as my sister miscarried her second baby.  We know JP's looking out for all of us!  I didn't blog about it, but it definitely was a challenging time for our family.  We still miss him and know he would've been a great nephew and cousin to our kids.  I can't wait for the day I can see him in heaven! 

It was also the month of my niece's first birthday!  Cecelia's such a sweet little girl and I'm so blessed to be her aunt!  She's an awesome cousin to the kids and they just love her.  In fact, this morning Anna said, "I have 1 brobro, 2 sisters, and 1 Cici!"

I also posted about our adoption wait and how that was affecting me at the time.  If I'd have only known how soon our precious girls would be joining us!

September:
My birthday month!

October:
This was a huge month for our family.  In just a few short days, we found out about, met and brought home our two newest daughters!  They have adjusted so well in such a short amount of time and we feel so blessed to be their parents.  We can hardly believe that we're the parents of FOUR children!

November:
November flew by as we tried to adjust as a family of four.  We also had Mya and Agnes baptized.  We celebrated National Adoption month with our four adopted children and went to our agency's Adoption Potluck.  I don't think I blogged about it, maybe I was jut too shaken up, but that day there was an F4 tornado that went through a town about 40 minutes from us.  That same storm passed right across the interestate where we were driving.  Thankfully we were about 10 minutes ahead of it.  On our way home, we passed lots of destruction.  We were thankful that we were safe, but we said lots of prayers for the many families whose homes were completely destroyed by the tornado.

December:
We continued to adjust (it takes some time, that's for sure!).  We also enjoyed preparing for Christmas with the kids, as they're finally getting old enough to understand a lot more!  We celebrated Christmas as a family of 6 and we're still trying to get our house back in order after the influx of toys, clothes, and treats!