Happy New Year!!!

I hope everyone has had a great start to 2014!

I have no complaints. We kept it low key and brought in the New Year with the Smiths at our house. 2013 was a great year and it passed by so quickly! I look forward to seeing what 2014 brings our way.

I thought it might be a good idea to post my resolutions. Here we go...

1) Get back to my goal weight - I reached it in 2013 but put it right back on. This time I would like to keep it off!

2) Get organized - I plan to tackle the house one room at a time. We need to do some serious de-cluttering and organizing. I plan to start the first major part this weekend in the craft room. Before and after pictures to come!

3) Meet our financial goals (that we haven't specified just yet).

I would also like to take advantage of the time we have and travel as much as possible. We hope to start trying for a baby in about a year and a half...so we want to see as many places as we can before that happens :-). 

What are your resolutions?

2013 Recap

2013 was a pretty eventful year. Here's what happened...

January

We spent New Years at home with the Smiths. Low key, but a great time!

We paid off the last of our student loans!!! Woohoo!

February

Bailey turned 2. I can't believe how much she has grown!


The Ravens won the Super Bowl and we took off a day of work to go to the parade.

March
Our friends Nikki & Bryan had their beautiful triplets 2.5 months early, the day before our dating anniversary!

We celebrated our 12th dating anniversary! We went to Flying Dog for our first tour then out to dinner with friends. We had a great time!!!

Josh's cousin got married in VA.

Love weddings!

We FINALLY finished our bar.


We got the biggest snow of the "Winter" on March 25th.

April

We got sod put in and our yard looks SO much better!

Before and immediately after. It's still pretty green in January!

We celebrated Easter with my family here.

Natalia stayed a week with us.




We updated our master bathroom by painting, replacing the light fixtures, faucets and mirrors, AND by painting the cabinets and adding new hardware.


Cabinets Before                                                   Cabinets After


We went from this...


To this.

May 
Our niece, Ally was born!

We celebrated the 2nd anniversary of us buying our home!

We went to NC for Sherry & Aaron's wedding!

We went to NC for Natalia's 6th birthday party


We had to replace our HVAC.

I finally reached my goal weight (then put it back on over the next few months).

June
I hosted my sister's baby shower.

We celebrated our 3rd wedding anniversary in Mexico!


...during hurricane season


July
I ran my first 5K/Mud Run!


Baby Zachary was born


August
Our nephew, Jaden was born!


September
We took Bailey for her first hike.


We updated the guest bathroom.

I ran my first 10K.

I finished in 1:08:10. My goal is to finish in less than an hour this year.

October
We went to Busch Garden's for Jen's birthday.


We flooded our kitchen and ruined the ceiling in the State room.


...then we fixed it


We went to Raleigh for the State v. Clemson game.


November
We went camping with Bailey for the first time.


We went to California!


December
We bought our SUV!


We celebrated Christmas at our house.

I got a Vitamix AND we got a new camera. We got a Canon 60D! Now to learn how to use it :-)

Bailey posing for the new camera :-)

We went to NC to spend Christmas with our family and friends.

Then we ended 2013 just the way we started it. Hanging out here with the Smiths. Except this time, baby Zachary was with us!

New Family Member

Nope...no baby for us, but we got a new car! Well, new to us. Josh and I have been considering buying a second car for quite a while. Our work schedules are getting less flexible and it's just getting harder and harder to share a car. We've done lots of research and talked to friends. We have known for quite a while that we wanted to buy an Explorer next, but we were going to test drive the competitors just in case. We needed to go to the Honda dealership to get the Civic serviced one weekend in December. We were going to drive the Pilot while we were there anyway. We actually weren't able to get an appointment, so we decided to just go drive Explorers instead. I was fine with that. I don't care for the way the Pilots look, I just felt like I should give them a chance. 

I've been keeping an eye on Explorers for months. I was hoping to buy a new one and Josh wanted to buy a used one. I didn't mind buying a used one, but I was having a very difficult time finding used ones that had everything we wanted. I checked our company's discount website not really expecting to find anything and I found a 2011 Explorer that had leather seats (a must for both of us) and a tow package (a strong preference for Josh). That was great, but the price was awesome! We decided to go ahead and test drive it. We thought we would go drive it, try to talk them down a little more, then hopefully buy it later in the week if we liked it. We didn't expect them to come down much at all based on our last car buying experience. We drove it and we loved it! I didn't look at all the features when I saw it online, but it turned out it had EVERYTHING on our wishlist, not just the must haves. It was in great shape. We drove it and we loved it! 

I was sold, but Josh was determined to get a them to come down another $1,500 on the price. At first, they just came down $1,000. Josh told them no. The salesman said that was the best they could do on that day and asked if there was anything else they could do to change our minds. I said they could throw in the extended warranty. They came back and said they could come down the $1,500. Woohoo!

We got it at the perfect time too! It's nice having a 4 wheel drive vehicle in the snow!

So, here it is!

We've had it for a month now and we love it!