2022 Assessment

January

-January was pretty typical, we celebrated our New Years, like normal. I hit the 6 month milestone in my pregnancy. and I had my birthday celebration (a really bad movie balanced with a good one, a couple shopping trips, and some yummy dinner). It was slow, but good.

February

-February was only filled with Valentine's Day and Larry's Spouse Appreciation Day. Valentine's Day was kind of more "Super Bowl Party" day with lots of yummy food made for the game. I was hoping to do a Trifle for Valentine's Day, but our food turned out SO good and I got some fun recipes to try for dinners or sides or anything else. And Larry's Spouse Day went okay, not as well as I had planned, but still a nice, relaxing day for him. I feel slower than usual as well, but still a good one.

March

-March was spent enjoying as much family time before adding another little one to the mix. I knew it was going to rock things a bit so I wanted to do as much as possible. We went to a reptile "petting zoo" type place and had dinner as a family. I can say I was "going out to dinner"'d out by this point (kids are so messy and loud and I'd rather just have that at home and feel less guilty haha). I also had fun with some gender predictions before finding out what we were having. That was fun to do.

April

-April was our biggest month, adding a baby AND finding out we had a boy! We also got to see my brother get married, which was so big for me. I was so excited to be able to celebrate with him and Pierce (and the other kids) did so well with all the chaos of someone else's day and someone else being center of attention haha.

May

-May was celebrating our first month with Pierce and celebrating Cara's fifth birthday!! We got the built-ins I've always wanted put in (finally!). Sadly, we ended the month saying goodbye to our Baby Girl. Our first loss of a pet and it was very hard!

June

-June was celebrating Pierce's second month AND Lucy's 2nd birthday (which didn't go as I had expected, but was done well enough). I went back to work at the end of the month, which means dad took night shifts AND I got to get back into working out. 

July

-Unfortunately, July was probably our least exciting month. Larry had his birthday, but it was probably the most boring birthday for him, we didn't really celebrate the 4th, and really had not a whole lot to report. I did write down some notes about being a completed family as well.

August

-August was a fun one. Pierce turned 4 months, we struggled keeping Lucy dressed at night (such a fun challenge!), and Cara started kindergarten! 

September

-September is when I feel we really started to get into the swing of family life again. We took the last couple weekend of August and first little bit of September to go swimming with the older girls as much as possible, and we took a family outing to the Gateway Children's Discovery Museum. It felt good to get out again.

October

-October is always a favorite time for me. This year we went on a fun train ride and to a train play ground. We also started our holiday season off with Halloween preparations. SO MUCH FUN!

November

-November was another fun one! I started a new sleep pattern to see if I could give myself more free time (an update on how that's going will come next year), we took a week off of work (where I got some shopping done, we crossed off dr appointments, and I visited Stace), I also saw the last Thriller performance (sad!). We celebrated Gwen's 4th birthday, and had a great Thanksgiving!

December 

-December was mostly filled with Christmas prep fun. We did celebrate Pierce turning 8 months, but also we made cookies, got our Santa picture done, went to our neighborhood party. I got to volunteer in Cara's class to help make ornaments, I got to see her Christmas concert as well. Now that we are done having kids I was able to order our final Christmas stockings (which I'm in love with!!). We made Christmas cookies as a family, visited with family, and then had an amazing (and way full) Christmas. We even got a date night to see Bill Burr. Since I got my shopping done early it was such a nice celebratory month (including squeezing in my birthday earlier than normal)!