Goodbye 2010!

2010 has been quite a ride! In it's final hours, I find myself left with a mixed bag of inexpressible joy and new and deep worry over our family's financial future.

This past year I learned:

• what am amazingly wild, wonderful, awful, selfish, and selfless ride motherhood is going to be and that I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world.
• how to keep smiling when you're not sure how you're going to feed your family in two months.
• that while I miss being surrounded by old buildings, historical research, and other crazies who love it like I do as my job, I really enjoy the job I have now.
• our families are too far away but we love where we live and they love where they live so we'll just have to make it work.
• my little family makes me more happy than I EVER would have expected - even when it's just the three of us heading out to wander through IKEA on a Saturday afternoon.
• that in just over one year I can make at least one friend in a new place who feels like I've always known them and who makes my life so much more fun.
• Craig and I can get through anything - even some really crappy, scary, emotionally taxing job things coming up in the next month.
• praying does make me feel infinitely better - even when it's God that I'm mad at.

It's been quite the year of life lessons and I'm sure 2011 will be the same. The last few weeks have been incredibly rough because Craig's learned some scary financial things about his work and we're not sure how things are going to pan out. It's been disheartening to watch everyone at the church let this happen and/or not even know about it. I've been trying very hard to enter the new year on a positive note and I've made it. I feel blessed with my family, positive about my job experience, and determined to make the most of the coming year. Ella's developing in leaps and bounds and we have the whole year ahead of us for family time, local trips, and building friendships. 2010 was a rollercoaster trip - thrilling and terrifying -- always a bit out of control. 2011 is our time to focus on us, pay off some debt, get job things figured out and just keep moving along.

Best wishes from our family to yours this New Year's Eve!

Catch ya next year! :)