2008 in Review

I know I'm a little late with this, but at least I'm getting around to it eventually! I don't do an annual Christmas letter, and in the past I've never done anything to summarize the year, but this year I felt compelled to do so. I have to admit, that I was most inspired by my friends Paige and Heather to do this as they are both wonderfully organized, and reading the recap of there years really made me look back and think about everything that happened in our own household. So here we go!

January: Daniel and I started looking in to moving our house to a new neighborhood. We made appointments, talked, looked and finally started making decisions. We picked a new lot, exactly seven miles away from the lot where our house originally sat. We put the deposit down, signed all the necessary papers and started packing. Our concrete piers for the foundation of our house were poured three days later, but we were expecting it would be months before the house was moved since it takes time to arrange all those things.

February: Daniel, my dad an my uncle all had a Birthday on the 12th. Daniel turned 25! The same day we celebrated the fact that it had been two years since we first discovered that I had a severe blood clot and the miracle that I had survived the whole ordeal. The 21st turned out to be one of the craziest days of my life. There was a really bad accident on the highway in the morning, so my normal 25 minute commute to work was taking about 2 hours instead. While I was sitting in traffic I got a call from my mom telling me that my paternal grandfather had passed away, he'd been sick for a while, and we knew it was coming, but it was still devastating. That morning while I was sitting at work looking for flights to Florida I got a call from the company that would eventually be moving our house...SURPRISE! Everything had fallen in to place much faster than we'd originally planned on, and if we could be moved out, they would be there to start taking our house apart the following Monday and they'd move it Tuesday or Wednesday. We had been packing, but not much was ready, there was a LOT of work to do and I was going to be out of town, it seemed impossible, but I didn't want to say no because they we would have been stuck in our old neighborhood until after the frost laws were lifted in April. While I was in Florida for my grandpa's funeral Daniel and a lot of our family and friends literally packed up EVERYTHING in our house. There was a glitch with the old park, so the move didn't end up happening that week, but they had literally packed and moved everything we owned in 3 days time.

March: On the third the house was finally moved. It was an amazing site to watch as they pulled our house down the road. We stayed with Daniel's sister for a few weeks while they worked on putting the house back together. We were out of our house for exactly 3 weeks, we would have been back in sooner, but the day they moved the house was quite warm and the ground was to soft to support the weight of the house until it was set on the piers, so it sat on the street in two sections for a few days until the ground froze again. March 17th we finalized the move and were given the clearance from the township to resume occupancy. Daniel and I both took a weeks vacation to move things back in to the house and unpack our belongings.

April: The unpacking continued. We finally had a yard big enough to support toys or Katie, so bought her a turtle shaped sand box. In the middle of the month they came and poured our concrete. After 3.5 years of home ownership we finally had our very own driveway. Once the concrete was poured ans set our new shed was delivered and our new brick facade skirting was installed. The new shed is like a castle compared to our old one and the new skirting finally made our house look like a home instead of a trailer. I should add that our new lot is approximately 2.5 or 3 times larger that our old one, it's a lot more to maintain, but it's 100% worth it!

May: Probably our most uneventful month. We played a lot and worked a lot. The best part of the month was that Katie was now 100% potty trained, she was even sleeping through the night completely dry! We were done with diapers!!!! At the end of the month my mom retired and her and my dad made the permanent move to Florida. While we were happy to see them starting the next phase of there lives we were also sad that they would no longer be living just a few minutes from us and we wouldn't see them as often. Daniel achieved his one year service anniversary with AT&T.

June: My mom and dad came to visit and we all attended a wonderful retirement party thrown in my moms honor. On a sadder note I was declared surplus at AT&T and my position was eliminated after only 11 months of employment as the company downsized.

July: We took our first family camping trip. We went for a week to a campground about an hour away from home. We took Katie's cousin Aurora with us, they are only 13 days apart and love spending time with each other. While we were gone Daniel and I celebrated our second wedding anniversary. We took the girls for a day trip to Cabelas and to the Toledo zoo. The rest of the time was spent swimming, playing on the playground and hanging out around the campfire. At the end of the month Daniel and I celebrated our 4th anniversary as a couple. During the month I also started a job with a contract firm, doing exactly the same job I had done for AT&T for two years before I was brought on as an employee late in 2007, all in all I was unemployed for 8 days.

August: The new job was going good, then the news came. AT&T was changing the way they were doing things and because of that there wouldn't be much work for contractors for a while. Yep, you got it, laid off again! I was the lucky one, I was able to continue working a few days a week, but many of my coworkers were out of a job with little hope there would ever be a position for them again. I took work whenever it was available. Towards the end of the month we had a small house warming party.

September: We took another camping trip over labor day weekend. This time we didn't take Aurora, but we did take Daniels mom and sister. We went to the same campground, and again we had a great time. After we got home Katie started her first day of preschool. For most of the month my work was steady and I worked full time a good portion of the month.

October: This was a REALLY busy month for us. To start the month we found out that AT&T was again changing the way they were doing things and the almost completely eliminated contractor work, so I was once again without a job. The timing couldn't have been better or worse, but we took it as well as possible. Two days after my last day of work we packed our bags and left for our week long trip to Florida to visit my parents. While we were there we spent a day at Disney World and Katie celebrated her 3rd birthday. We came home on Friday and on Saturday we had Katie's Mickey Mouse themed birthday party. For the rest of the month Katelin continued going to preschool. Halloween was a blast, our friends came over and brought there son to go trick-or-treating with Katie. The kids had a blast and got more candy than they could have ever hoped to eat. This month we also decided that we were ready to start trying for baby #2!! We also decided to adopt our second dog. We adopted a beautiful 4 month old chocolate lab named Cocoa. She has been a handful, but is a lot of fun and we wouldn't trade her for the world. Additionally our cat George celebrated her first anniversary of joining our family (we aren't exactly sure what her birthday is, but we know she's 1, so it's easier to celebrate the anniversary instead!!)

November: I started a nine month program at Ross Medical Education Center to become a Medical Assistant. I celebrated my 25th birthday. We had Thanksgiving at our house as we do every year. The day after Thanksgiving we went to the local holiday parade, but for the first time didn't do any black Friday shopping because Daniel had to work. We also pulled Katie out of preschool as it was no longer feasible with me not working. Our older dog Yoshi celebrated his fourth birthday, he is a wonderful dog and has brought so much to our lives.

December: Daniel was working a TON. He had been all year, but with the holidays fast approaching it seemed like he was working more than ever. My mom flew in to town for a long weekend, we took Katie to get her Christmas pictures done and had our annual day of baking cookies. My mom flew home for a week and then her and my dad drove back up to spend the holidays. They spent the first half of there visit staying at my brothers house just a few miles down the road, and the last half of there visit here at our house with us. We hosted Christmas day at our house this year, there were about 25 people here for dinner. We also hosted New Years eve at our house. My child hood friend Stefanie, her husband Scott, there son Hunter and Stef's sister Stacey came over for the evening. We made cheese and chocolate fondue and spent the evening talking and watching the kids play.

We've loved having you all as a part of our lives in 2008 and hope you all have a great 2009!