12 in 2014

I've finally got a free minute to stop here and post (since the baby is down for the night and the hubs is out with friends) so here I am! Sorry there was such an unexplained break there. What can I say, when I'm not procrastinating work my blogging goes wayyyyy down. Plus, family, friends, Christmas, New Year's, etc. etc.

So, Dwija is hosting a beautiful linkup of 12 photos in 2014 which was incidentally enough one of the first linkups I joined last year about this time, right after I started blogging. So I'm excited to revisit an old friend of mine called iPhoto and document this year pic by pic.

Hold on to your hats, folks.

January

January of '14 was a busy month. I finally started blogging after talking about it for so long, and we spent all of our free time starting in on the nursery renovation...which ended up taking us until after Easter, sometime in late April or early May. Yikes. This picture reminds me of how far we've come, and how many stinkin' hours we spent in that little tiny room to get it ready for baby. We were young and naive at this point, thinking "oh, we'll get it done by March at the latest." hahahHA

February

I spent the majority of  February taking a loooot of bump photos. Man, there are a lot of them on my computer. But in this one I was 24.5 weeks along and I was feeling great (that second trimester was AWESOME), so I felt need to document it. A bazillion times. Anywho. February is such a short month that nothing else exciting really happened, except we finished Kate's baby quilt and I blogged about "style" a whole lot.

March

March saw a lot more bump photos, this one fueled by the arrival of our crib and a fresh paint job in the baby's room. (We still had the windows to replace so this was a brief respite of cleanliness in the project as a whole.) I looked at this photo when David took it and said to myself, I can not get any bigger. HAHA. (Spoiler: I got bigger. a lot bigger.) March meant we still had plenty of people go crazy asking us why we didn't find out the gender and I got my new camera.

April

This month was full of greatness. Getting EVEN bigger, a beautiful baby shower, and this photo - the aftermath of David getting appendicitis and then his appendix removed. I will never forget taking him to the ER and having every single nurse/doctor look at me like, "Are you in labor?" because I was large & in charge at that point. Anywho. Not a lot of blogging happened in April besides this post on our epic failed April Fool's Day prank.

May

May was a blur of swollen feet, sciatic pain, thunderstorms, and a passed due date until the lovely day of May 30th 2014 when Kateri Amelia Gokie was born and changed our lives forever. Wow, just looking at this picture makes me tear up in wonder & awe that we were so blessed - and are still so blessed - to call this girl our own!! She was the best newborn ever after a hell of a labor so yeah, nothing else really mattered (except finished nursery! yay!).

June

A month of beautiful firsts. Kate's baptism, a visit from her godfather Michael, a work conference for David, and lots of sweet newborn snuggles. The rest of the month didn't really matter except I did get a chance to blog her birth story, parts uno and dos.

July

July saw me back at work full-time at home, even though I started working partially at 3 weeks pp because miracle baby. We spent a lot of time getting to know our baby and trying not to die of infernal heat, and also went to a wedding or two and a trip up to tube down a river over 4th of July weekend. I also blogged about how everyone should watch Parenthood, and 5 parenting rules I break on the daily.

August

August was a hot month. Too hot. We traveled to Colorado to get away from the heat and climbed up some awesome sand dunes. My sister, Kate's godmother, got to meet her for the first time too, which was awesome and tear-jerking as well. Husker football started (always an important fact) and we tried to stay cool the rest of the time.

September

September was a relaxing month. I spent a lot of time experimenting with my camera because it was broken - and forced me to learn how to use Manual mode, because that was the only setting that worked. We spent a lot of time enjoying the outdoors - I have lots of feet pictures during runs from this month, but they just aren't as cute as this one of Kate so I picked her.

October

I had a really hard time picking between this adorable photo of Kate's penguin costume and the one of all 3 of us visiting our missionary friends at University of North Dakota for this month, because they were both highlights of October. We may never do that again (16 hours of driving in 3 days with 7 people squeezed into one car) but it was a really fun time. Kate started to be really fun this month too, being able to giggle & engage more than ever before. Super cute.


November

November was Caitlin's wedding! And a whole lot of busy weekends the rest of the month too, I guess. Including replacing our bathroom window with glass block and going to some parties. I blogged about things I'm thankful for, because I don't take stock of them enough, and a relatively in-depth how-to of the window process, if you're curious.

December

As it always does, December flew by in a flash of Advent and parties and Christmas and family engagements and lots and lots of down time. Oh, and cold weather - finally, after Christmas, we got some snow that stuck around. This photo is after Christmas Eve Mass which Kate yelled throughout and made everyone laugh because of it. (Oh, and I blogged about how we do Christmas spirit.)

Looking back at this year makes me so unbelievably grateful for this lovely life I've been given. A big thank you goes to all of you, my readers - because it's nice to know once in awhile that your voice,  your words do matter.

I hope you all had a lovely Christmas and a happy New Year, and I will be back soon with new resolutions, a saga of great proportions (ear infection!) and lots more! promise promise.
HG