2016 in Review

I always dread the actual writing of these posts because they take so long but I love going back through and seeing our year! I feel like there's so many things we forget that we did which is why I'm so thankful I have this blog to remind me of the past year.

January
The first weekend of January, we celebrated Christmas at Stephen's parents. It was a quick weekend trip which worked out perfectly so we were able to see our new niece, Siena for Christmas.

A few weeks later, we were all back together celebrating Siena's baptism. It was a very sweet service and she did so well. That was also the same weekend we found my dream china cabinet at Restoration Hardware Outlet.

Stephen and I built our new shelf for above our TV and we are still so happy with it!

At the end of January, I squeezed in a quick business trip to Pittsburgh and saw some snow which was very exciting for me :)

February
Stephen had another successful launch at the beginning of the month! We also hosted my parents during the first weekend for Super Bowl Sunday.

The following weekend, we finally got our back porch screened in and we're still so happy we did it, especially before the summer. We also celebrated Valentine's Day with donuts in the morning and homemade sushi for dinner.

After a few weeks of trying to find the perfect chairs for our living room, Stephen found some that fit perfectly! I'm still debating if we need a small table for in between them.

At the end of the month, my sister came to visit. We had a great time cooking out and visiting Disney Springs. That was also the first time we had supper club!

March
We spent the first weekend of March celebrating my SIL's 27th Birthday at the new Sugar Factory in Orlando.

I passed my PMP and obtained my Project Management Professional Certificate. After 3 weeks of intense studying, I will not be doing anything school related anytime soon ;)

At the end of March, we celebrated Easter with Stephen's family.

April
April was pretty low key. We did some house updates and finally bought a table and chair set for our newly screened in back porch.

Towards the end of April, we spent the day at the zoo next to our house. We had so much fun and really need to go back sometime soon. That Sunday, we headed down to Stephen's parents house for his dad's 25th anniversary at the church.

May

At the beginning of the month, Stephen made me the most perfect centerpiece! 

The following weekend, we hosted Stephen's family for a Mother's Day cookout.

The next weekend was jammed packed! Friday night, we attended the Astronaut Hall of Fame Gala which was a real treat, Saturday we attended my co-workers son's 1st birthday and then Sunday we attended our friend's kid's 2nd and 4th birthday party.

I finally did a "day in the life" post which was a lot of fun!

We discovered how much fun our local minor league baseball game was! We're so glad we got to go but now we're super bummed they moved to another city.

June

We celebrated my BIL's 30th birthday with dinner and a water park day at Wet N Wild before it shuts down at the end of this year.

I went on a business trip to Atlanta and then drove over to my parent's house to spend Father's Day weekend with them.

While Stephen spent a weekend celebrating his brother's birthday with the guys, I took the opportunity to spend the weekend with my SIL and niece.

We also finally got our landscaping re-done which was much needed.

July

The beginning of the month is always so special and exciting for us! July 3rd, we celebrated Stephen's 27th Birthday with a trip to the beach and a lake day with John, Lauren and Siena.

We enjoyed July 4th with our friends at the minor league baseball game

The next day, we celebrated our 3rd Anniversary with a surprise (for Stephen) date at the Escape Zone - which we successfully finished ;)

We celebrated my 25th Birthday with a pool day and afternoon at Disney Springs.

My friend and I threw our co-worker a "Donuts and Diapers" baby shower at work.

August

At the beginning of the month, I took a weekend trip to see my sister while she was interning in Indianapolis and we spent a few nights in Chicago!

We celebrated my best friend and her sweet baby girl, Eloise at her baby shower in Ft Myers.

We finished up the month with our big vacation and bucket list trip - a mountain road trip in Colorado! This was definitely the highlight of the year for us :)

September

September kicked off the rest of a ridiculously busy year. First, we hosted my sister for Labor Day Weekend and spent our time going to our last minor league baseball game, Disney Springs and 

grilling out. 

I officially opened my business, Premium Pineapple Embroidery.

We took a weekend trip to visit our friends in South GA where our friend took our pictures for us.

We celebrated our friend's birthday at the springs

Finally, we traded in my car and bought a 2016 Honda Pilot which I absolutely love!

October

The beginning of October was something else, I had gotten sick from the springs and then I had an allergic reaction to the antibiotics so that was about a 2 week ordeal. After I was just healing from everything, Hurricane Matthew rolled in and we had to hunker down. Thankfully, everything was alright and we survived our first hurricane together.

Just 2 days after the hurricane hit, my parents stopped in for the weekend on their way to a work conference. We had a lot of fun getting out of the house and shopping and they enjoyed the beach while we were at work.

The next weekend, we met up at FSU for our 5th and final FSU annual football weekend.

Then, we spent the following weekend at Stephen's parents house for his 10 year high school reunion which was a blast!

Lastly, we helped shower my SIL's SIL and her new baby girl, Olivia. We also pressure washed the driveway and helped out at our church's 20 year celebration.

November

If anything tells you how busy we were in November, I only managed to get 3 blog posts up, The first weekend, we hosted my niece's 1st birthday party which went so well!

A few days later, we were on a plane headed to Nashville for my cousin's wedding.

The following weekend, we drove to Chattanooga to spend a week with my parents for Thanksgiving. I failed to blog about our time up there but it was filled with lots of family and food ;)

December

I kicked off the month of December showcasing our Christmas card. 

The first weekend, Stephen worked the entire weekend but we were able to squeeze in a Christmas party Friday night and Stephen's work party Saturday night. 

We were so thankful that Stephen didn't have to work the next weekend so we went to a birthday party Friday night, bought our Disney passes Saturday and went to my work party on Saturday night.

Stephen had a launch the following weekend so I went to Tampa by myself to meet my family for a childhood friend's wedding. I also saw my friend, Susannah and my friend Camilla and met their newest little bundles of joy :)

Finally, we celebrated our own Christmas and then headed down to Stephen's parents house for Christmas.

2016 was good to us - we had a great year and even busier fall. I am very much looking forward to a slower winter and spring. 2017 is shaping up to be a very exciting year! We have lots of trips, weddings and graduations in our future :)

Christmas 2016

I'm going to give fair warning, this is going to be a long post. Even though it's already 4 days past Christmas, I waited too long to blog about Thanksgiving and never got around to it so I definitely don't want that happening for Christmas.

Every year we alternate families for Thanksgiving and Christmas; this year, it was Stephen's family for Christmas. Since we're with family during actual Christmas, Stephen and I always do our "own" Christmas before leaving town. Wednesday was my last day off work (Stephen had the whole week off) so we made Christmas cookies, I cooked Christmas dinner and watched It's a Wonderful Life before going to bed. Thursday, we deemed as our Christmas - we woke up, opened presents, made breakfast, watched Four Christmases and enjoyed our new gifts.

I got Stephen a MAGA hat and he wore it for pretty much 2 days straight lol!

Friday, we headed over to Okeechobee and met up with Stephen's family. We decided to grab lunch at the local, tiny airport in town which is known for painting planes. It was fun seeing all of the small planes flying in and out and my FIL even got us a tour of the Miami Dolphins owner's wife's plane! It was so cool to see and we even tried to convince our families we were skipping town for a Christmas trip; it didn't work too well ;) Afterwards, we went to see Stephen's grandpa in the nursing home and then we headed out to Christmas Eve rehearsal. (Stephen's dad is a pastor and every year that we're there, we have to help with the Christmas Eve service. This was the last year that I'd be able to be the director)

Saturday, we woke up and after a delicious breakfast, we got to work on our cornholes. Everyone thought it'd be fun to make our own cornhole sets - it was a great project that kept our attention all day and wasn't too hard. We used these instructions which were pretty easy to follow. That evening, it was time to head to the church for the Christmas Eve service. The service went really well and afterwards we exhaustively headed home to watch a Christmas movie and head to bed. 

We gave Siena a Christmas book early - it was so much fun watching her open it and "read" it

Hanging our in the sound booth waiting for the service to start

Sunday morning, we were all up bright and early for presents, except for the most important person, Siena ;) Of all the days she chooses to sleep in... lol! Thankfully, she work up with enough time for us to all open presents before going to church. It was so much fun getting to spend this Christmas with our niece, Siena. We loved seeing her open presents and we know it'll just keep getting better with her age :) After church, we relaxed around the house, took a few walks, played basketball, played badminton and then had dinner. That night, we laughed until we cried playing Utter Nonsense.

I got the girls matching jammies and monogrammed the shirts and Siena's onsie. They turned out so adorable and everyone loved them! I even had a request for matching boys jammies next time ;)

This picture is too dark but it was too funny not to share

Uncle Stephen really wanted a picture of him and Siena in front of the Christmas tree... he's going to be the best dad!

Monday morning, John, Lauren and Siena headed back home while we decided to stay one more night so we could see my BIL, Tim's, girlfriend. After they left, Stephen and I made the hour trek over to the mall area so we could get some after Christmas sale goodies. We were shocked at how much was already picked through! We did get some great items, mainly from Kirklands, so I'm really excited about that :) That evening, Tim's girlfriend arrived in town and we had dinner before heading to bed. 

Tuesday, we headed home after waking up and then I ran some errands while Stephen mowed the lawn. Later that evening, my family came to town on their way down to Ft Lauderdale for the Orange Bowl. We spent Wednesday with them and took them over to the port for lunch. Stephen grilled out a delicious dinner that night and we wrapped things up with ice cream and card games. 

I'm so thankful that we were both able to see so much of our families the past few days but I am grateful for some peace and quiet at home to finally catch up on things like blogging, doing our annual yearbook and watching The Crown (which is fantastic so far!). Tomorrow, we have plans to go to Sea World thanks to my friend from work who had some tickets. I've also been saying I want to leave our Christmas decorations up for another week or so but I have a feeling it'll start coming down this weekend.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and enjoy your last few days of 2016!