Happy New Year!

Welcome to 2012! I spent last night ushering in the new year at PJ's. Michelle and I went out to supper with her parents (Chris was deciding to be non social), and we stayed hoping to win one of 6 trips to Vegas.


Miranda, Nick, and her sister Heather also showed up at PJ's.

And then she convinced Cindy to stop by too.

Got a lot accomplished this past year:

- Complete rehab from my knee surgery

- Roxy (cat) made a complete recovery from her eyelid surgery

- Five (cat) made a complete recovery from a broken leg

- Removed the boiler from the basement (in pieces)

- Got the house on new supports

- Shingled the house

- Removed the carpet from the pool table room, also removed the ceiling & the closet

- Complete demo of the new laundry room

- Finished the duct work to all the upstairs rooms (yay! we have heat!)

- Rewired the whole upstairs

- Painted the entryway

- Touched up the woodwork in the entryway/stairs (had paint all over the edges)

- Patched & painted the guest bedroom

- Filled in the old air conditioner hole, insulated and sheet rocked the whole wall in the living room

- Insulated the attic (can't wait for our heat bill to drop & our upstairs is already more comfortable)

- Rearranged the stuff in the basement so our stuff could also fit down there

- Got my first layout published in a magazine
- Celebrated 5 years of marriage!

- Applied to be on American Pickers, but didn't quite make the final cut

- Chris started playing farmer boy - baling alfalfa and hay

- Got the corvette done

- Hiked Harney Peak (and made it to the top!)

- Stood by and helped 2 amazing people get married (Jen & Jason)

- Started doing Zumba (and stuck with it for almost half the year, and still going strong)

- Had a successful Christmas at our house (although the flu struck both Chris and Gary)

Things to look forward to/to do in 2012:

- Finish the laundry room project

- Remodel the bathroom

- Finish the pool table room project

- Annual snowmobile trip in February

- Finish the upstairs hallway project

- Continue with my Zumba classes twice weekly and hope to stick with the Bar Method as well
- Participate and complete Photo a Day for all of 2012

- Also start doing Project Life (for scrapbooking) for 2012

- I already have 4 layouts out for publication in 2012!

- Africa! with Amy in April

Our First Christmas

in our new house! We hosted Christmas this year as we inherited the big table with the big house. I didn't cook the ham, Grandma did, because truthfully, I don't know how to cook anything that big! Everyone seemed to have brought something, and in the end, we had a wonderful feast. There were 12 of us all together and there was plenty to go around. Lots of goodies too of course and we all were stuffed by the end of it. We may just have to have Christmas at our house every year because everything is simplified if everybody from all sides of the family comes together at our 'neutral' spot :)

On Christmas Eve, we played a present stealing game with the Grunewald side. It was fun, and Sunny helped open many of these gifts, she thinks it's a lot of fun tearing off the paper. I got some great slipper socks and a Yankee snowman tealight sized candle holder. I also received a bunch of stuff/accessories for my Slice! I hope to use it a whole bunch more this year than I did last year... maybe that should be a challenge for the year.