2008 Recap

Well since I've been blogging pretty well for this past year, why not do a recap to tie it all up?

January was the biggest change of the year (duh) when Frik and I had our baby, Squirt. She was so tiny and adorable!



I got to stay home with her and recover for the next couple of months, then went back to work part time at verio. After a month or two of that, Frik decided that my income wasn't worth having to keep a poor little hungry baby from crying (always refused a bottle, that one...) so I quit and became a full time stay at home mom.

We took Squirt on her first roadtrip for my cousin's baptism in March or April... I forget which. We then proceeded to take her on roadtrips to colorado, Oregon, and repeated trips to St. George to visit her cousins who she loves. She is a well traveled baby. She took her first flight in April when I went to CO for one of my best friends from high school's wedding, then took another in October for the other best friend's wedding.

I tried out selling Pampered Chef for a couple months. It never quite took off enough to be worth the time that I put into it, so I've slowly let that dwindle away. In November, I found a part time contracting position with a hair bow company through a family friend. That has been a bit more reliable as far as income goes, and still lets me stay home and take care of squirt so it's been great.

Frik finished a couple more semesters in school, although we're still working to find the happy medium between too much class and not enough, somewhere that we'll be able to have 1 college degree in the family before too long, but not burn him out at the same time. It's been hard. He got promoted at work and moved to the salary club, which has been nice since it makes the income so constant and predictable, although overtime hours and holiday pay have been missed. He is loving his new position, though, so that is great.

We traded in our Forenza when it started flipping out in weird little ways... the brake lights not working, the seat belt not locking if it got too hot, the battery dying because the brake lights wouldn't turn off at all... someone trying to break in to the car by jamming a screw driver into the driver side lock and messing the entire door up so it wouldn't open at all... stupid things, and since it was out of warranty, we decided that fixing all the tiny things was not worth it, so we traded it in for a Mazda 3, a more reliable and more fun car overall.

Of course, there was the election which was a big deal at our house since Frik is the king of boring TV. We had the TV on CNN constantly for at least 8 months leading up to the election and then again for about a month afterwards.... Boooooring, but at the same time, it's nice to have a source of knowledge in the house (frik, not the tv...)

At the end of November, my Grandma died... just over a year after my Grandpa on the other side of the family died. Her death was violent right at the end so that is still hard for me to accept, but overall I know she is happier and in less pain now, so that helps.

Soon I'll have a 1 year old baby girl. She is getting so big and is playing so cute these days. She has decided that this roll of packing tape that got left on the floor makes the greatest bracelet. It's adorable to see her walking/crawling around the house with it pushed all the way up to her shoulder.  We tried to make a somewhat big deal out of all her first holidays, while still keeping them within the range of normal holiday celebration. Life has taken on a whole new meaning since she arrived and I find that almost everything I do now is for her in one way or another. I didn't expect that I would be a mom yet, but I wouldn't trade it, even for the couple thousand dollars a month that we're missing out on because of it :D

In the upcoming year, I would like to start saving some money just so that we have a bit of a cushion "just in case". Other resolutions or goals for the coming year... Kiss Squirt every day (should be easy), and snap out of lazy streaks where I let the house go to pot and never cook or do anything other than sit on my butt watching TV within a day or two (compared to the week or so that is typical now :D ) That's it. I don't like the typical make millions of resolutions at the beginning of the year  because it's so overwhelming and I know that I won't follow through with them all, so I'll just work on those 2... which is really just 1...

Good bye old man 2008! I'll miss you!