2010 Recap

January – off to a great start! Aaron and I was beginning a new chapter in our lives, newly weds in our first home. Busy decorating, using new wedding gifts, having fun buying furniture and planning a honeymoon. Life was good.

On the other hand… good friends of ours found out late December that their baby was diagnosed with PKU. Trying to understand what all that meant for this newborn baby was both heartbreaking and overwhelming to our friends, our hearts were sad as well for what this little baby endured through many doctor visits.

February – One of our best friends Chris was diagnosed with Clear Cell Sarcoma. The news came as a shock. We were trying to understand what was to come for our friend and what we needed to do to support him in his fight.

March – Our first home project was completed!  Painting our bedroom and reconfiguring a closet. Sounds minor but it was a big accomplishment to us.

April – nice enough out to get started on some outdoor projects. This was a huge task at hand for all the changes we wanted to accomplish. Tree removal, trees that needed major trimmings, staining the deck, removing a large bush, seeding the lawn, etc, etc etc!

May -- Honeymooned to San Francisco/Napa Valley! We had a fabulous time and was a much needed get away. I also dealt with chronic shin splints all spring long, those are not only painful but really annoying/frustrating. Aaron was having a somewhat similar sort of pain in his knee too that wouldn’t go away.   Starting to feel like old married people :)

June – Chris gathered friends for a dinner out, which ended up being perfectly timed, because shortly after this he got very sick. That dinner was filled with laughter and happiness and a celebration of Chris’s fight against cancer.

Aaron with the help of others organized a benefit concert to take place in Cedar Falls which turned out to be a huge success in raising funds for Chris’s medical expenses.

July – My Grandpa’s aneurysm burst in the middle of the night. It was a huge scare and a lot of unknowns as to how it would all turn out. Only by a miracle, did my Grandpa survive. Watching him recover from this and grow stronger again really impacted me.  As if we weren’t already on an emotional roller coaster, this thru it into full throttle.

August – we received two letters from the city, one for our tree and one for a broken water service pipe. At this point, it would have been a waste of energy to get really upset over this. Ya, we were far from happy but bit the bullet and had our yard torn up.

September – Our friend Chris Roberts passed away.  With Chris we witnessed him deteriorate for months and he shared his raw emotion with us of what he was feeling and thinking.  Never before have I been an eye witness to that, it was and still is a lot to mentally process.

October – Chris’s funeral, sad and such a surreal day.

In October I paid off my car, which felt good.

My Grandparents moved into an apartment which was a big change for them and my family was very busy helping with this transition. By the end of October, we were wiped out and had barely spent any weekends thus far at home; it had been life at full speed day after day. 

November – Our first wedding anniversary was celebrated. We were enjoying several weekends in a row at home, which felt good.  Began to appreciate the term 'home sweet home'.

Mid November, one of our family members had a miscarriage  :(

Thanksgiving - we spent this day with Aaron's family.  It was a nice visit and luckily we didn't have any issues traveling as an icy storm hit the day before. 

December – we decided to have a slower paced holiday season this year, fewer holiday parties and less travel.  Last year Aaron and I did not spend the holidays together and the joy was taken out of some of the celebrations due to hustle and bustling around so a change of ways felt necessary.

Beginning of December, unexpectedly a coworker of mine passed away. So sad for his family right before the holidays. I worked pretty closely with him on a lot of projects. Again, I was overcome by the fact that life is short and you never know when your time on this earth is over.

Also in December, a lady slide into Aaron’s car, a lot of damage, thankfully no one was hurt.  We are still waiting to get his car back....

At the last minute, we decided to take advantage of an energy credit rebate and had our hot water heater replaced just in time before the credit expired.   That felt like a smart move on our part. 

Christmas was spent with family, relaxing and enjoying each other’s company. Thankful the weather permitted us the opportunity to spend time with our family. Also was glad that both sides of our family were respectful of our desire to only travel to one place for each of the holidays, that really helped us out a lot this year and relived a lot of pressure.


In many ways I feel like we've had more downs than ups this past year.  We try to keep our focus not on what bad happened but what to learn from these situations and to find the good in all that is bad.  Amazingly, I have found there is always a good in every bad – HUGE lesson learned! 


GOOD-BYE 2010!!!