This year has been very good to us! Let's review, shall we?
January: Kiersten Lyla Harvey - the beautiful addition to our family - was born!!
February: Keith turned 5 years old, Mitchell turned 2 years old, we bought our van (still excited that we were able to pay cash, it'll be a while before we save up enough to do that again though)
March: My brother added a sweet baby girl to his cute little family! Also, that's when we started trying to eat a better, more fruit and veggie filled diet.
April: Our prophet addressed the world in the semi-annual General Conference, Easter was celebrated with LOTS of wonderful family and again with wonderful friends, and we were able to attend a very dear friend's wedding reception! Congrats again, Erin! Ryan is one lucky guy!
May: My sweet little Keith ended his time in preschool, and I got to attend a Green Smoothie Girl seminar!
June: Um, not sure if we had anything exciting, but sometimes a lazy month is happy downtime!
July: We did fireworks with our neighbors! Also, we made our trip to Missouri to see my baby cousin get married!!! We survived long days on the road (thanks in part to DVD players in the van), we survived one heck of a tire blow-out while driving, we visited Adam-Ondi-Ahmen, we met my nieces (Elizabeth and Lilly), we were able to introduce both Mitchell and Kiersten to my brother's family, we actually had the WHOLE family together for the first time since Christmas 2008 when Keith was still the only grandchild, and we got to spend a little time with some of Ben's family in Wyoming on our trip back home. Also, this month was our 7th wedding anniversary!
August: Ben was offered a position with RBS, Keith started Kindergarten
September: Ben went to Connecticut for training for his new job.
October: Ben turned 32 just after coming home from CT, my mom came to visit for a week. Also, we were again addressed by our prophet in the Semi-Annual General Conference!
November: We attended the baby blessing of our littlest new niece, Pyper, followed by attending Ben's baby cousin's wedding, and then a wonderful Thanksgiving with lots of wonderful family! We also found out that we are expecting baby #4 in late July! We also officially announced
www.MITEBUDGET.com to be up and running! This is mostly Ben's but we call it OURS. Please go check it out if you haven't yet. It's a free online envelope budgeting system that we use ourselves! We're so happy to see it taking off and getting more and more users that we don't know from across the country! I very much hope that YOU are one of our users, whether we know you or not! Please check it out!
December: I turned 30 (I don't necessarily count this as part of the good things of the year, but I mentioned everyone else's birthdays and I suppose it is a blessing that I'm here and alive and well...despite that disgusting number/age now) - I got to spend a few hours with the missionary that baptized me 8 1/2 years ago and haven't seen since my wedding 7 1/2 years ago. We interviewed midwives and decided on someone that I think will be wonderful, I had my first appointment and a quick low-intensity ultrasound to be sure that we were only expecting one baby (but that's the first time I have ever had such an early view of such a darling little blessing!!), and we spent Christmas with an amazing family in St. George!
I am so very excited to celebrate Kiersten's first birthday in just two days! I'm excited for Mitchell to start preschool in the fall, and for Keith to start full-day school as he progresses to first grade. I am excited for my sweet baby #4 to arrive in late July. I am excited to see MiteBudget continue to progress and grow and develop. I'm hoping that we'll be able to get our sprinklers fixed this summer, have a more productive garden, and possibly even be able to build a little in our basement. I am excited to get into running again in the warmer months (I enjoyed it this summer until Ben left and I couldn't go by myself anymore, even got to where I was running a full 1.25 miles before I had to stop to walk... no where near a half-marathon like a good friend of mine accomplished this year though!).
I am excited to see what my Heavenly Father has in store for my growing family!! He is so good to us and I am so very thankful for each of these blessings, and so many others that I've not mentioned (like COLOR!, how beautiful is COLOR?!, can you imagine a world with only shades of grey?, doesn't make for a pretty sunrise/set anymore, huh?). I love my family. I love my Savior and am thankful for His understanding and guidance. I love my Heavenly Father and am thankful for His forgiveness, His blessings, and His love for me and my family. I love my ward/neighborhood and how great they are to us. I am a very blessed person.
Well, here's to having accomplished 2011 successfully, and to a prosperous and adventurous 2012! CHEERS!
