Good morning and happy Monday Thursday! I’m back to work after a lovely two-week holiday break. I had to leave my laptop at the office over the break for maintenance and updates… and was forbidden from using email so I turned sync off of my phone. It was lovely and freeing, however now I get to dig out of all of the correspondence since before Christmas.

While I’m working on that, here’s a bit about my last year…

When everyone was posting the “Goodbye to an amazing year” statuses on Facebook with all of their big milestones, Brad and I were chatting about what our friends/family had posted.  I guess 2013 was a big year for a lot of people: graduations, engagements, jobs, weddings, pregnancies/babies, buying homes, etc. That was not the case for us. After two whirlwind years, we finally got a break. 2011 was full for us: college graduation, getting married, starting careers, moving to Cleveland as well as being diagnosed with diabetes and losing my dad. 2012 was a winning year for us too, we bought our house, adopted Holmes and Watson and Brad made a huge career jump moving to his current company. Doing all of those things in two short years can be exhausting so 2013 was mercifully stable.

Stability is something that I haven’t had much of in my life until adulthood. I describe this year as stable because we didn’t experience a lot of changes, it was however not a boring year! I suspect that if you are a regular reader you already know that though.

In 2013:

• We celebrated graduations (for Brad’s brother and our friend Tyler).
  

  Brian just finished his 1st semester of college too!

• We celebrated engagements (my mom and many of our friends).
• We  celebrated weddings (my best friend and several other friends).
• We help friends move into their first home.
• We congratulated expanding families.
• We celebrated birthdays, both “milestone” (1st, 2nd, 50th) and “unremarkable.”
• We  traveled. Seattle in May, the Caribbean in September, various work trips for both of us (Chicago for me, Atlanta and NYC for Brad) as well as a lot of trips around the state.
  

  Mt. Rainier

• We worked hard. (Brad earned a promotion!)
• We improved our home. Immediate needs such as a water heater, drain pipes and garbage disposal presented themselves, and wants such as fresh paint and appliances were added.
• We snuggled.
  

  Blogging while snuggling

• We mentored personally, academically and professionally.
• We said goodbye to my grandmother.
• We grew.
• We loved.
• We lived.

I’m immensely thankful for life having slowed down a bit last year and being about as stable as 365 days strung together can be. Just a day and a half into this year, I know that we’ll experience many of the same events and I hope for another stable year.

When Brad and I were reflecting on the busy years v. the stable year, he said, “I’d like to think that we ‘win’ most years, just in different ways.”

Did you have a stable 2013?