Time for My Annual Post

Wow... you write a woe is me post, blink twice, and nearly a year has gone by.  I don't think I was meant to document my life.  

Despite my whining of nearly a year ago, we had a pretty crazy good year.  Yes, we are still way too dang busy, and signed up for way too many activities, and don't enjoy nearly enough time of just 'being' as a family.  But, I offer up the serenity prayer and accept the things I cannot change.    OK... that's a lie.  There ARE things I could change, but I am outnumbered by the other three fine folks I co-habitate with.  So, I will give thanks for happy, healthy, active, smart, beautiful kids.  It's my blog, I can brag if I want to.

Jerod spent last winter playing house league basketball (his first year playing organized hoops).  Spring and summer were all about baseball, and fall consisted of more baseball and house league soccer.  The kid eats, sleeps, and breathes sports.  In addition to all this participation, he is an avid fan; and a student of all sports (particularly football, even though he doesn't play--Thank you sweet Jesus!).  In the fall he tried out for 'travel basketball' and made the B team.  He is love, love, loving it; and I have to say he's pretty good (again, it's my blog, I can brag).  

Elise enjoys gymnastics, soccer, and is currently enjoying the ski racing team she is part of.  As has been the case for her entire life, she continues to be an INTENSE and SPIRITED personality.  She keeps us on our toes and we love her gusto (even if we are unable to keep up).  

Both kids continue, against their will, taking piano lessons.  They hate it, and, truth be told, so do I.  It's a continual time consuming power struggle, but it's the one activity we require.  I do feel it's done their exceptional little brains a lot of good.  I often question how long we can keep it up, but for now, we trudge forward.  

One of my favorite moments of the year came in September, when my super fabulous, yet somewhat bullheaded husband came to the conclusion that we needed a second set of wheels (YA THINK HONEY???).    We are the proud lessees of a super sassy little Mazda 3 hatchback, complete with, wait for it... SEAT WARMERS.  I waited 36 years for such a luxury, and it's all I thought it would be!  The end of constant logistics wrangling about how to get two kids to 17 different places with one car has been every bit as fabulous as I anticipated.  

One of my least favorite moments came about three weeks after we brought the shiny new car home, when I proceeded to catch the front passenger bumper on the side of the house while backing out of the garage.  It was a bad, bad day.  I will spare you most of the details.  It is all fixed now.  The world can continue to turn.  

And... the really big news of 2012... Chris' brainchild website PatentCore.com has really taken off.  It's been tough and time consuming; but ultimately pretty stinking cool.  He still practices patent law, but has significantly scaled back his practice and spends most of his time running the company.  I could provide many, many details; but ultimately all you need to know is this:  He really, really loves the work he's doing, and is actually making a living doing it.  

That is pretty much the run down of our year.  The only things I left out are hip surgery for Chris and a couple of marathons for me.  Of course, I'm leaving out much more than those items I'm sure, but you get the idea.  There have, of course, been challenges before us.  Ultimately, though, we are blessed.  We have family, friends, faith and love.  Not too shabby.  Happy Holidays to my 3.2 readers!!