2018 Year in Review

...and what a year it's been. Sure, we say it every year, but the kid-birth years are always super fun for me, all two times they've happened. This year we finished our house addition, got new jobs, made a kid, got a puppy - I'm exhausted. Here were some of the highlights!

• January - after some casual fighting and legal threatening with our contractors, started the bulk of the work on our house addition. Tried nearly daily to not kill them, wondered what we'd done. Jay did Whole30, and I decidedly did not, but we started the year with these grain bowls, which I'm thinking should be a yearly tradition. A new bowl every January! ....I definitely do not have that in the works for next week, though, so don't get your hopes up.
• February - Made chocolate mousse for Valentine's Day, which I definitely tested a few times before posting.
• March - found out I was pregnant with Will, started obsessively researching double strollers and when toddlers should transition out of a crib to make room for babies, all before a heartbeat was detectable. Also bought matching Clemson shirts for Jay, which finally got used this weekend!
• April - went to NYC still (mostly) secretly pregnant, and found out we were having a boy outside of Sephora on 34th, as one does. I'll never forget that moment, and how strange that the sex of your baby now comes via email on a Saturday.
• May - Posted Mark Bittman's Everyday Pancakes, and believe me when I tell you I have made them once or even twice per week all year long. The recipe works perfectly every time, and on vacation this summer I measured the dry ingredients before we left so essentially took my own pancake mix, which was so handy and delicious for vacation breakfasts! We also bought a new car big enough for two kids, two parents, two big dogs, and all associated gear. Spoiler alert: the mom-mobile is routinely packed to the gills and it turns out there is not a vehicle big enough for us.
• June - The house addition was officially finished, our money officially gone, first trimester illness gone THANK GOODNESS. PS If you want to see pictures of our house you can here!
• July - We welcomed George Carlin Hastings The Black Lab Puppy into our lives, said goodbye to so.many.shoes.and.other.things., and got re-acquainted with waking up in the middle of the night for puppy pee purposes. Luckily homeboy was housetrained quickly, which makes up for the fact that he is still actively eating things all the time, no matter how well we think we have cleaned up. Hit 25 weeks pregnant, high five viable fetus!
• August - Celebrated five years of marriage together with exactly zero celebration. Or we went to dinner? I honestly can't remember. ACTUALLY YES I CAN. We went to a fancy dinner and Beck spent the night with my parents so we could paint a room the next day. Sexy. Jay also found out his work was going to change a ton, so in preparation for THAT he traveled a bunch and I watched a lot of TV while eating extra carbs. Beck also started school and my heart broke a little bit.
• September - Cooked an entire Thanksgiving before Labor Day for the magazine I write for, and took a solo trip to NYC for work, which was probably the best trip of my entire life, since I knew it would be my last alone one for awhile.
• October - Spent a lot of time with a sick family member, and wound down pregnancy with extra cooking (and have made this foccacia about once per week since I first posted it) so I'd appear extra beefy in our maternity pictures.
• November - Will was born, and even as I'm writing this and he's snoozing in Jay's arms still so teeny and new I hardly remember life without him.
• December - I baked SO much this month, we had a gazillion Christmas activities, and have been trying to soak up some quieter days at home just the four of us. We've also talked about 2019 and are trying to find a balance between PLAN DO GO PUSH and settling in to this new life, our jobs, and a new year.

I hope you're enjoying the last few days of 2018! Whether it was great or awful or in-between it's ALMOST DONE, so I'm all about looking back for just a minute before plowing forward.

xxoo, L