A Year of Firsts

The year is almost over. December snuck up on me and I'm left wondering how so much time passed without me noticing. It seems like just yesterday Spencer was starting medical school and we were hunkering down in Wisconsin for the second snowiest winter there in recorded history. Now, we've yet to see a flake (which is good) and we're living in hot and sunny California. The weather is messing with my sense of the seasons since I'm not used to it. Everything is turning green and rainy--it's the complete opposite of what I'm used to. Instead of getting blisteringly cold in the winter and hot and green in the summer, we get blisteringly hot in the summer and warm and green in the winter. Weird.

This past year has held a lot of firsts for us. First mean change and change is hard. There's a saying that goes something like "nobody like change except wet babies." I think that's pretty accurate, but it's hard to grow without change. The last year or so has resulted in a lot of growth because of all the changes we made. Though it's been hard a times, I think we are in a better place now than we ever were before.Some of the major firsts/changes we experienced over the past year are the first time neither one of us has been in school, the first time we bought a house, the first time I've been in a non-musical calling at church, and the first time Spencer will have to work on Christmas day.We adopted our first dog. It's our first time living within driving distance of the beach, the mountains, and the desert, and it's the first time I've lived in a community with a pool. The list could go on and on, but you get the point. We experienced a lot in 2011 and you probably did, too.

May we always remember the firsts brought on by 2011, and here's hoping for many more firsts in 2012!

Christmas 2011

 This year for Christmas was didn't do too much. Spencer was scheduled to work for most of the month (including Christmas Day and Christmas Eve) so we couldn't travel to visit family, so we decided to have people over instead. Miraculously, his scheduled ended up switching around so that he got both days off and we were able to spend the holiday together. On Christmas Eve we went with a couple of Spencer's work friends to see Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol. Seeing movies on Christmas is a tradition that my family had growing up starting when Beauty and the Beast came out. It's about the only time each year that we would go to a movie. On Christmas day I spent most of the day cooking a traditional Thanksgiving-type meal complete with turkey, mashed potatoes, apple pie, stuffing, cranberry sauce, and my Granny's spiced carrot recipe. We had some of Spencer's friends from work over that didn't have family in the area and couldn't go home because of their schedules. We rounded the night out with the Packers and a quick game of Apples to Apples. Everyone seemed to enjoy the food and most hadn't ever had homemade before! All in all I think it was a great success.

The New Pup

2 weeks ago we welcomed Percy, a miniature poodle, into our home. We are really loving having him and watching him explore his new home. He is a pure bred dog despite the multicolored coat. So far his favorite pastimes are destroying cardboard, destroying paper products of any kind, and just being generally cute. We got him from a breeder down in San Diego. He was one of two black puppies (both male) out of a litter of 6. The other 4 were an apricot/cream color. 5 were boys and 1 was a girl. Below are some of the pictures I took with the new camera my mom gave me for Christmas. Hopefully now that I have a camera I like, I will start getting better about taking pictures and posting them to the blog. Pardon the quality of some of the shots--it's very hard to photograph an active puppy. :)