2011 Year in Review - PART ONE!

Well, it is officially 2012! Before we begin posting our adventures of 2012, I wanted to take a quick look back at 2011.

It sure was a busy year. A year of new balancing acts, and all of the joys and struggles that come along with being a working family of 4!

When I started the year, there was no other place I would have rather been! I had 26 days left of staying home with our beautiful new baby! I was lucky enough to take nearly 14 weeks off Camdyn was born so I didn't go back until January 27th. Although going back to work is one of the hardest things you can do, I think the extra time (almost double what I had with Parker) allowed me to be more prepared and just ready to go back to work.



This seems like such a long time ago!

 The highlight of the spring was Parker's 3rd birthday. Wow, three years sure came and went very quickly! To celebrate, we had a fire truck themed party at the Play Station here in Cedar Rapids. He had a great time and I think everyone else did, too!

A couple of weeks later, Brian and I celebrated our 5th wedding anniversary by spending the night away for the first time since Parker was born! (We really needed to do that sooner....in fact, we left them again later in the year). We went to dinner at Rube's in Montour and then rented the same suite we stayed in on our honeymoon. The next day we went to Ames just to hang out and do some shopping and then ended the trip with lunch at my favorite place - Hickory Park! :)

This summer we took a vacation as a family of four. It actually went pretty well! Camdyn was around 8 months at the time which was perfect. She wasn't eating every 2 hours but she wasn't old enough to crawl all over the hotel and get antsy in the car. We went to Omaha and visited the zoo. I thought it was kind of neat that the first time I left the state was to visit the Omaha Zoo and Camdyn can say the same!

Later in the summer, we took a trip to Adventureland!

Well, that covers the first half of the year....I have squealing kids right now so we will get to part 2 soon! :)