Sunday, December 30, 2012

2012


Well, friends, 2012 is almost over. We've been blessed greatly this year and I have had the grand opportunity of getting to know my in-laws a lot better. It's definitely had downsides to living with the in-laws but I can say that I feel like I know them a lot better. And working the farmer's market with Amanda turned out to be a great bonding experience with her also. (I sure am ready to move though ;))

2012 In a Nut Shell
January-Settled in. Oliver got his job back at Appleton Steel. I worked at Little Angel Child Care for my 7 week internship. Callings in the YM and YW.
February-Still working hard. Enjoying Wisconsin! Finished internship and therefore all homework ;) Quit Walgreens :D
March
April-I officially graduated from BYU-Idaho with a Bachelor's in Child Development
June-Trip to Wisconsin Dells with my family for the annual Dells Run. Three year anniversary. Day trip to Six Flags! Rode the new X-flight coaster and every other roller coaster a few times. It was a great day to go.
July-I got an ipad for my birthday! So worth it. Noah's Ark in the Dells with the Clares. That was a great day (on the Fourth of July).
August-
September-Paid off Oliver's student loans!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I think Brittany and Ethan got engaged sometime around here. Also started a new job at Play and Grow Learning Center as a three-year-old teacher.
October-Carved the sweetest pumpkin ever.
November-Being thankful. Picked up Oscar.
December-Excellent Christmas. Started looking at houses!!!

So our year was not all that exciting. Honestly we've been working our butts off to pay off our student loans and save for a house. This has meant restricting our budget a bit (although we got a break for Christmas because Oliver worked on a house with his Dad and that paid for Christmas). We finally got to start looking at houses! We're working with a great mortgage lady and the relator seemed pretty nice when we looked this past Friday. I have already found the perfect house in the perfect location and Oliver likes it too but since we've only seen three houses we're going to check out some other ones in the area first before moving forward with that one. I would be okay with not looking but it's probably the better idea. If we find a house, etc, then we should be moving in March and more than half of my student loans will be paid off. So living with the in-laws has been bitter sweet. We have been able to save so much by living here and it has been a great experience getting to know everyone even better but I am so looking forward to moving on and being able to have my own house in just 3 months! I'm really looking forward to using all of my stuff again and two Christmases worth of presents that I haven't been able to really open because I can't use them yet. It's going to be a big year!


Christmas

Christmas was excellent this year. Oliver got some awesome legos from me that he was not expecting. He built me some beautiful furniture that I now have to sand and stain. He made matching bedside tables and shelves for our movies. 










Thankfully, next year we will have our own house and will be adjusting our Christmas schedule so that we can spend more time at my parent's house etc. I do have a lot of Grandparents that we went to and my parents were there but it was kind of lame Christmas morning when we had to leave their house right away after presents to get back to the Clares. It would have been nice to linger. Next year we'll probably just stick to going to my parents and Oliver's parents and visiting everyone else some other time. We'll see what happens. :D

Halloween

As always, we carved a great pumpkin this year (by we I mean Oliver did).





Yes, we took it from Pinterest. But it still looked fantastic!

Oscar

The week before Thanksgiving Oliver was going hunting at his friend Randall's parents land. Since they had to be up early they spent the night over there and Sarah (Randall's wife) and I went over for dinner. So Randall's parents own a big piece of land with woods and a barn full of cows...and a lot of cats...and therefore kittens. And then I took one home with me....

photo.JPG 

 Alex really enjoys Oscar. He likes being able to carry one of the cats around.



His name is Oscar. And I will seriously not be getting another animal until one of our three kicks the bucket. Anyway, he is super fun and full of energy. He and Mikey had become the best of friends for a little while and then Mikey got some eye infection (which is better now) and now hates the world and specifically playful Osacr. Oscar is a little trouble maker and usually gets kicked out of our room at night because he will not sleep. He really likes to play with my hair an dandy ones feet (is hazardous while walking).
Luckily, his claws and manhood will be gone this coming Friday! We're all very excited.

Little Brother








I had a great summer spending time with my brother outside, etc. he loves to come to my house and asks me a lot if he can come over. And he does come over a lot. He turned four in November and is very into Legos. Very specifically dinosaur Legos. He did get all the big "dinosaur city" Lego sets for Christmas that he wanted. But don't ask if you can take the Legos apart to build them again. Every
time I do it's a definite no. I also started working at a different child care center in September. At this new place I work four days a week for 10 hours a day. Therefore every Friday I spend the whole day with Alex. This does mean that he usually gets stuck running errands with me but we do have lots of fun together!

Farmer's Market

Every Saturday over the summer was spent at the Neenah Farmer's Market. It took a ton of work and the second half of the season was not really worth it but we were able to promote Oliver's photo business a bit more and sold a decent amount of alphabet letters that we worked really hard on finding.


Oliver's sister, Amanda, shares the booth with us. She sold jewelry that she makes (and is upper gorgeous and has really good prices).


This was our booth and examples of the photo letters. Some of Oliver's photos were also available for purchase (we only sold two the whole season but got a lot of compliments). Also note that we had a banner made and polo shirts embroidered with his logo. We're pretty legit. He did get some photo jobs scheduled throughout the season but a lot of them cancelled for various reasons.


That's a better picture of the letters and one way I came up with to actually use them (besides framing your last name, which is how the whole alphabet thing got started because I wanted our last name done).

Over all it was a pretty good experience. We had some really yummy egg rolls from another vendor and made friends with our neighbor who crotchets hats. If we ever do it again we have already decided to only do the half season because 18 Saturdays is way too many.




Finally!

I have not posted any blogs since July because I got an ipad for my birthday and have not been able to figure out a way to upload photos to my blog with my ipad. Well I have finally figured it out and will now post a bunch to catch up!