2012 in Review

• After 6 years and 9 months of being a one-car family, we finally purchased a second vehicle. And we are grateful for each day the second vehicle will run so we can keep the convenience of a 2-car family!
• This has been the year that we finally did the cosmetic improvements on our home--new flooring throughout, updated the bathroom, changed all interior doors to 6-panel white doors, and new appliances in the kitchen to name a few. It's all for selling it soon, we hope--but it's been nice to see the improvements that we've made. (It was a lot more rewarding to see the progress than when we were doing things like adding insulation a few years ago.)
• David potty-trained!
• 2012 was the year of the bathroom drain--A list of things that went down a drain or were submerged in water is: mom's scale, David's mp3 player (think modern fisher price tape recorder), a whole roll of TP, a sleeve of Ritz crackers (thankfully the paper floated back up), the contents of 7 Costco sized bottles of shampoo, and a spoon (thank you Mr. Plumber for getting on David's eye level and convincing him that he didn't want to come back any time soon to get things out of our pipes again.)
• David learned that when you pick up a bee, it hurts.
• The first five freckles appeared on David's nose.
• David's love for music has exploded, and he can play 3 songs on the piano all by himself. When he's not playing anything particular on the piano--just moving his fingers around--he makes up chords, and it actually sounds musical (not incessant banging on the keys)! He also asks to watch you tube videos of solo performances on the tuba, trombone, french horn and trumpet. (We need to get this boy connected with his star trumpet player Uncle Matt!)
• Dad is learning how to juggle lots of schedules, and  even more demands.
• Mom is learning how to apply the importance of relationship as the backbone of parenting. (Because as someone said, the difference between crying and laughing at a situation is only a matter of time--so why waste that time crying!?!)