our year

Last January, I wrote this post highlighting some of my goals and hopes for 2012. And now, as 2012 is so quickly coming to a close I can’t help but think that wow – this has been our year.

I started off the year 14 weeks pregnant with Gwendolyn. Just the beginning, really.

In February, we started our house hunt, I had my first overnight away from Evalyn, and we survived the winter.

March was when the year really started to get crazy. Evan and I had food poisoning, landing me in the hospital overnight, Evalyn cut her eye teeth which made for two weeks from you-know-where, she turned 18 months, and we bought a house. All in the same week.

In April, I finished work and started maternity leave and we also started packing the apartment.

In May, we hit the zoo, did more packing and then on the last day of the month, we took possession of our house and things turned chaotic. This was also the month that the 2012 summer baby boom began, with the birth of Connor.

June was a long month. A long, hard month. Evan spent his days at work and his evenings at the new house, working hard to do renovations before we moved in. I was 100 months pregnant, living out of boxes and wrangling a toddler in the heat of the summer. There were times when four or five days passed without Evalyn seeing her Daddy and many nights when he got home long after I was tucked into bed for the night. Evalyn turned 21 months – an age that was significant to me because it was the age she would be when she became a big sister. My due date came. And my due date passed.

July rolled around and things changed in an instant. My water broke late at night on July 1, Canada day, and my sweet second born girl was placed in my arms early the next morning. July was spent with my mom here for a week after Gwen’s birth and Evan’s mom here for the better part of two weeks following that. And it’s a good thing, indeed, because the renovations were still going strong. Although the pressure eased up a bit after our decision to push our moving date back two weeks, there was still a ton of work to get done and so Evan was still spending most evenings and weekends at the house. Two more babies were added to our gang in the weeks following Gwen’s birth, when Briar and my sister had their littles.

When August hit, we knew the end was in sight as the moving date got closer and closer. The middle of the month rolled around and we said goodbye to our first home, the place our babies were born, to start a new chapter in our lives. August 12, 2012, on our sixth anniversary, we moved into our very first, owned by us, house. Just a week or so later, our next niece, sweet Jolie, arrived.

In September, the baby boom ended when Lochlan was born on labor day, exactly 9 weeks after Gwen – book ending the summer by being born on the last holiday Monday. Evan went away on a moose hunt for ten days so the girls and I did some visiting with family and friends, we celebrated Evalyn’s second birthday and she started preschool for the first time. All the while, we continued, slowly but surely to make this thing we call a house into the place we call a home.

In October, we hit up the pumpkin patch, celebrated Thanksgiving, painted and pumpkin and went trick or treating. It was a month of making traditions and enjoying our favourite season of the year.

On the first day of November, Evalyn decided it was time to start potty training so we ran down that road – and have been running down it ever since. We spent a lot of time at home that month, because of the training but managed to get in some fun, too, like going to meet Santa. Again, the renovations, work around the house, and settling in continued. Most importantly, in November, we finally got a dishwasher after four months without.

Now December is here and it’s been, perhaps, the quickest month yet. We had Gwen’s dedication, decorated for Christmas, did a lot of shopping and put a lot of time and work into some little projects around the house that helped us feel more settled.

The year has been crazy. It has included some of the longest days of my life. Yet, it has zoomed past at an unimaginable speed. We’ve been blessed beyond compare. We’ve added another beautiful child to our family. We have the perfect starter home – a fixer upper out in the sticks. We’ve learned, more than ever, just how strong our support system is. We’ve been humbled and astonished at the amount of hours our friends and family put in to help us pack, roof, paint, babysit, install flooring, unpack and so on…

In all, we give glory to our Father for our countless blessings, knowing that without him, none of this would be possible.

2012 was our year. Thanks be to God.