Review of 2014: Part 4

Just as suddenly as I have come to terms that it is 2014, here I am, wrapping up a review of the entire year. Every year, I hope to take things slower, more simply, but time just continues to race along, regardless of my feelings.


After a stressful spring and a busy summer, I was hoping things would settle down in the fall/winter. They didn't. Both due to outside events and my own doing, things stayed busy.

October

We visited the Field of Dreams - it only took over 5 years of living a hour away for us to do this.





My brother was in a very serious accident. It resulted in a long ICU stay and many many worrisome moments. He is in the process of making a full recovery.

The stress of being far away from family continued to be a strain.

I ran my first 10K.

We celebrated Hubster's birthday.

I started a chess club at Monkey's elementary school. I've loved every moment of it.

We tried to take advantage of everything autumn has to offer in the Midwest. Autumn here never fails to amaze me.  We did hikes, corn mazes, leaf piles, and pumpkin picking.














We celebrated Halloween.





November

I continued my job search. I spent (and continue to spend) a significant time freaking out about it.

It snowed. I worried that this would mean another terrible winter. However, that has been the only snow we received so far.

I had a mother-son date night with Bug and Monkey. We ate out and they just killed me with their cuteness as they ordered their own food without any input from me. We finished the evening at Cirque Du Soleil. I spent a couple days afterwards wondering if Monkey was going to run off with the circus.

Hubster's brother's daughter was born with a severe congenital heart defect and underwent several surgeries. She's home now and doing quite well.

Duck turned 2.

We celebrated Thanksgiving, doing our first one completely on our own without any friends or extended family.

December

I scheduled another job interview (to be done in January) There may be more details depending on how it goes. Hubster started his post-dental school job search. We decided that living in the same state is a high priority for us.

Monkey had a lot of Boy Scout activities - fire safety, and swimming, and bell ringing. 

We continued to have a lot of chess - both at the school club and a few tournaments that Monkey did.

We had our traditional fondue night for winter solstice.

We tried to focus on Christmas. Hubster's school schedule lightened a little, making that easier.

We picked our tree.

We baked a ridiculous amount of cookies.

We had more pajama days than I care to admit.

It didn't snow. 

We had a lovely Christmas.

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I wish I could say that 2014 was a good year. There were plenty of good, even amazingly wonderful parts of it. But overall, it has been a difficult year for us. We've had one family crisis after another. Hubster and I are almost to the point of decided that if our phones ring after 10 pm, we aren't going to answer, because we can't take any more bad news.

I'm continuing to try to focus on the beauty and not be weighed down by the stressful, but it's often very difficult.



As for 2015, I have no idea what it holds. There will most likely be a move, but I don't yet know where. There will most likely be a job change, but I don't know to what. There will be more birthdays, more miles logged, more holidays celebrated. I hope there will be fewer late night phone calls and less hospital visits. But even if that hope doesn't hold up, there will still be us, attempting to take things a day at a time and find enjoyment and quiet where we can.

Review of 2014: Part 3

Already it's time to review July through September, which means that this review is moving almost as fast as all of 2014 seems to go.

 

The summer gave us some time to try to recover from the difficult previous months. We don't get a lot of time off that we get to spend all together, so we did our best to make the most of it.

 

 

July

 

We celebrated the Fourth with Popsicles, sparklers, and glow sticks.

 

 

 

 

We left on what I started calling our epic family road trip, traveling to the Great Smokey Mountains, Disney World, the Gulf Coast, Atlanta, Nashville, and other locations.

 

 

 

 

We took awesome family pictures like this...

 

 

I fell in love with road tripping and have spent all the time since trying to convince Hubster that we should buy an Airstream.

 

August

 

We spent a weekend in Chicago.

 

 

We sent the two oldest boys on their first solo trip to visit their grandparents. We all survived.

 

 

We tried to make the most of each hot day. We ate our weight in Popsicles.

 

 

 

Monkey turned 8.

 

 

 

Bug started middle school. Monkey started 3rd grade.

 

 

 

We all survived.

 

 

September

 

I started seriously looking for my next job. Hubster and I flew to the West Coast to interview. I didn't get the job and for very complicated reasons, I was ok with it.

 

 

 

 

We redid our deck.

 

 

We went apple picking.

 

 

Overall, we did our best to take it slower. And enjoy every moment that we could. After how stressful the first part of the year was, it was just what we needed.

 

Review of 2014: Part 1

When I saw several bloggers teaming up to sponsor a review of the last year, encouraging bloggers to go back and review their year, several months at a time, I knew I had to participate. 2014 has been such a stressful, crazy, hectic, roller coaster of a year. I found myself with very little time to write. There are many things I wanted to share, but never got the opportunity to. So I'm taking that chance, and joining in the 2014 Review Extravaganza

January

January found us in the middle of one of the coldest winter on record. We had days on end of below zero temperatures, multiple school cancellations for the frigid cold, and became all too familiar with protocols to prevent frozen pipes.

We did our best to cope with the cold. We did indoor ice skating, we had game nights, plenty of evenings around our fireplace.

The cold weather made it possible to walk across the lake, freeze bubbles on the porch, and make ice lantern. Like I said, we dug deep to find the silver lining.

With the intolerable temperatures outdoors, I decided to fully commit to the whole running thing and bought a treadmill.

February

Bug and Monkey continue to compete in chess tournaments, so I spent many Saturdays in junior high cafeterias, cheering them on (but only very quietly, as to not disrupt the games.)

We went skiing several times.

Yes, you can ski in Iowa.

 I got the flu.

I thought winter would never end.

The one time I managed to blog this month, I wrote about one of the biggest struggles I face with parenting.

March

Things really started to pick up in March.  I started studying very seriously for my oral boards and that started to consume my entire life.

Despite the massive amount of book time I was putting in, we still managed to do plenty of fun activities.

We went to Wisconsin Dells for Spring Break. We packed in several days of water slides, laser tag, bowling, and just over all great fun and relaxation.

We tapped our maple tree, which I always look forward to with a ridiculous amount of enthusiasm. We didn't end up getting any maple syrup though, because I forgot about the sap boiling while doing board study and ended up burning all the gallons of beautiful sap we had collected.

I turned 32.

I maintained what little sanity I had left by completing one of my life goals and hiring a cleaning service.

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I may be a little guilty of using this review as an excuse to share many photos that I wouldn't get to post otherwise. But I really enjoyed the chance to sit down, look back, and remember how the first part of the year went. Which is how the entire year went: in a flash.