Somehow we've reached the end of yet another year, which seems just unreal! Granted, with all we've packed into this year, I'm not really sure how it has only been a year.
I hope you get to spend time doing whatever you love most with those you love most this past holiday weekend (and the one to come!)
Considering I've got such a short window of opportunity these days to actually sit down and write out these recaps these days, I'll get right to it!
This year has flown by. Cashel turned 3 in January and we had a big Jake and the Neverland Pirates party for him. (I posted a full recap on Cashel's Crib here.)
Work proved to be insanely busy for Amy in January and February, so we were more than ready for our week long family vacation to Key Largo, Florida in February when the time came. We had a truly great time overall, although we certainly made a note that when vacationing with finicky toddler eaters, it's probably best to eat ALL meals as either take out, or in the condo. (Full recap here)
At the end of the month, we joined the new gym in town and got ourselves an annual membership, which changed things up as far as our evenings go. It feels good to be active again!
We didn't do much as far as big events after that for quite some time, although we enjoyed a handful of trips to Humboldt to visit our family down there throughout the year. We spent Easter weekend at the beginning of April down there for the big Ropte Family GTG, which was a great time to visit family and catch up :)
We also spent a good many weekends down in Worthington visiting Mark's Dad and Pam and family, and were so thankful for some nice date nights as well (thanks, guys!)
At the end of April, we enjoyed celebrating Mark's Grandma Vi attending her 90th birthday party down in Worthington as well, and so enjoyed catching up what little we could with family. (Party time during naptime meant some owly little dudes.) I had put together a pretty cool scrapbook for her with somewhere in the neighborhood of 90 pages, which was really neat, but a LOT of work as well!
In May, we spent a week in Indiana visiting our beloved Indiana Ropte family, which was so nice. It was great to be able to spend a little more downtime with these guys, as it's usually a whirlwind when we get together at the farm, what with 14 little ones and 12 adults crammed into one place.
The trip backed right up to a special weekend celebrating with one of my best friends from college, Steff, as she married her sweetheart down near Sioux City, Iowa. It was fun to have a weekend off from parenting to celebrate (And sleep. Lots of sleep. )
June led us into one heck of a summer! We picked lots of strawberries with the boys, enjoyed a fun party with friends at the Graber's house and celebrated a very special Daddy on Father's Day. Cashel also began working on his bike riding skills. Mark also began his weekly trips to Worthington on Wednesday nights for church softball. We were glad to be able to make it a couple of those nights.
Although we didn't announce it officially until MUCH later in the year, we found out at the beginning of July that we were expecting another baby come mid-March! Here is the fun announcement video we posted in November if you haven't seen it yet.
I felt pretty miserable most of the rest of the summer, but tried to keep up with the boys and throw some fun activities in where I could handle it. Daddy spent a LOT of time watching the boys on those evenings when I just couldn't function.
We enjoyed 4th of July festivities, including the Beach Bash in Worthington and our church's annual 4th of July picnic, and Mark and I also squeezed in a trip to Mankato to pick out new tile flooring for our kitchen (which we ended up returning a month later in lieu of engineered hardwood not only for our kitchen, but also living room.
We spent a lot of time at the end of the month at the Windom pool as the boys had swimming lessons this year. They are still at the age where we have to be in the pool with them, so we all got the chance to swim, which was fun!
Mark's brother and his family came for a week long visit at the end of the month, during which we had a fun time celebrating Mark's 36th birthday at Viking's Training Camp in Mankato, as well as with cake and ice cream at home.
As they headed home, at the beginning of August, we began our pre-scheduled week of vacation (our daycare was closed, so we had this week planned off in advance), which we filled with a full schedule of taking the boys to their first movie ("Minions" at the Windom State Theatre), a short overnight trip down to Humboldt, and a weekend in Omaha visiting Mark's sister and her family and visiting the Henry Doorly Zoo.
We ended the month with a fun evening at the Cottonwood County Fair as well as celebrating Kendrick's 2nd birthday with a family weekend trip to Minneapolis. We went to the Como Zoo and then met up with some of our cousins who live up near there for supper, and also were able to enjoy breakfast and a pontoon ride with Mark's Aunt and Uncle before heading home for a little party.
In September, we began a minor renovation to our kitchen, including a new sliding glass door, switching the blinds for curtains, and then finishing up with new hardwood floors that we installed Thanksgiving weekend.
Cashel started going to Busy Bee Preschool 2 days a week in the mornings as well - our little guy is so grown up!
November was pretty laid-back to start, but we stayed busy outside with the unseasonably warm weather we were blessed with. Mark finished harvest by the first weekend of the month and the boys and I spent the second weekend in Humboldt with my Mom while Mark was hunting with his Dad and buddy Jamie (skunked again this year!).
We hosted a group of our friends for "Friendsgiving" this year, which was a lot of fun!
Thanksgiving was a completely different animal this year, as we had a quiet meal with Mark's Mom, and then the boys went to Grandpa and Grandma's in Worthington for the rest of the weekend while we installed our new flooring.
The end of the month brought what I sadly must deem "too much Christmas" for our family, but we enjoyed each of the family gatherings we attended for sure! The boys will take a while to get truly back to our "normal", of course, but it was fun to catch up with everyone and the boys sure loved playing with their cousins! Mark's sister and her family came to visit for a few days from the 23rd-26th, during which we celebrated the night of the 23rd with Mark's Mom, as well as Christmas Eve. Then on Christmas Day, we made our way up to Plymouth, MN for Christmas with Mark's Mom's side of the family. (recap 1 here) The day after Christmas, we made our way on down to Worthington to celebrate with Mark's Dad and Pam, followed by a little Christmas of our own that evening. (recap 2 here)That Sunday (the 27th), we made our way down to our last Christmas celebration with my family down in Humboldt. (recap 3 here) We were more than ready to be finished with Christmas by the end of the busy weekend, and are looking forward to a nice long holiday weekend to begin the new year!
We wish you all the best in the coming year, and hope that it is even more wonderful than this past year has been! I know so many of my friends and family have had extremely difficult years, including difficult health diagnoses, the loss of ones we love so dearly, and very dark days, and I pray that this coming year is a breath of fresh air.
December was jam packed with a lot of fun stuff, and a whole lot of Christmas!
In a nutshell...
We had two large snowfalls: Six inches at the beginning of the month, that cleared up by the middle of the month, and then we ended the month with about a foot and a blizzard.
We took the boys to see Santa twice (and once, Santa was actually Daddy in disguise), and they actually seem to have taken a liking to the jolly old feller ;) The second time was at our annual work Christmas open house.
We had to reschedule our annual Christmas decorating and Chinese night, which we usually do the day after Thanksgiving, but we still fit it in again this year.
We did all sorts of other fun festive stuff as well this year, including Christmas caroling, putting together a gingerbread house, baking Christmas cutout cookies, driving around to look at Christmas lights, and watching our fair share of Christmas cartoons and movies.
The boys did a great job at their first ever Christmas program at our church!
Christmas was a very busy one this year (so busy, in fact, that it deserved three whole recap posts!). We spent every single day of our four day "vacation" either on the road or entertaining in our home (or both), and barely snuck in enough time to open our own presents as a family. We wouldn't have wanted to trade the memories with family, but whew doggies were we tired by the end of it, and MORE than grateful for the holiday weekend afterwards.
New Years' Eve is turning out to be pretty laid back, thankfully! We didn't do much in the morning, then took Mark's Mom to lunch for her 65th birthday at Bergen Bar & Grill, then the boys and I enjoyed a 2-3 hour nap. We all woke up around 5pm and putzed around until we had leftovers for supper, then donned our party hats and had a jumpy house party, just the 4 of us ;) And, for the record, CASHEL was the one requesting a picture lol (Can you tell he's my child?)
I feel tired thinking about December, truthfully.
Looking Ahead...
January brings likely a lot of cold, lazy evenings inside, probably too much comfort food and TV, and we will end celebrating Cashel's 4th birthday (which we're still trying to convince him should be a night away at a hotel with cake and ice cream as opposed to a full-blown party).
February should be wholly uneventful leading up to March, when we welcome baby #3!
We've been slowly adjusting to the whole "we need a mini van" thing and have begun looking (leaning towards a Town and Country at this point), so I'm sure at some point we'll trade in either the car or Tahoe.
No big trips this winter, and no big plans beyond "have a baby". Granted, we're very tentatively discussing a laid-back week in Colorado at some point in late spring, as we've always wanted to go for longer than a night, and it's within driving distance with 3 kiddos. So anyone with some great spots to highlight that would be fun for a family of 5, please do tell! And also, to my dear friends who live there already, we most definitely hope to see you, and we most certainly will be in touch when we start thinking about planning ;)
