Our Top 10 Posts: The Year in Review

From Meghan:

This was a really hard year for me and for us. Although my pregnancy culminated in the wonderful gift of Hannah, it was pretty miserable most of the time. It's easy now to say, "Oh it wasn't so bad" because we have Hannah and it's kind of faded off into the distance, but it was really really bad. One of my favorite things about it besides it ending is that Joshua and Clara are too young to remember how I couldn't do a good job taking care of them for so long. So looking back at the year, it was still hard to pare it down to only ten moments, but it also was hard seeing all the pictures I wasn't in because I was so sick. I am really excited about being able to live 2013 more intentionally and staying out of survival mode. Here are my top ten in chronological order:

1) Finalization (1/27/12): This was special because in adoption, until it's final, you can never really fully relax. Leaving the courthouse and knowing your child is yours forever is a great feeling and we had a fun little roadtrip for this since we returned to Wichita for finalization. It was also the last weekend before I knew I was pregnant and I remember really enjoying my food at dinner, so that was nice to be able to do.

2) Naptime: AKA Party Time (1/31/12): One of the things I really hate is that even with the blog, even with trying to write things down, I will never remember everything about the kids' childhoods. There's just too much that happens and so many amazing things that occur every day. And when you are in a phase it feels like everything will be that way forever, but then one day, it just stops and the thing that you didn't really make a note of because it seemed like it wasn't that special is gone forever. So I am really glad we have pictures like these. This is Joshua in full one-year-old glory and I love it.

3) Lady Gaga loves Joshua (5/26/12): I love seeing the kids play together. I can't wait until Hannah gets a little older and can join them. This is one of the first times they did parallel play (Hannah already tends to smile big at Clara so I can't wait to see it as Hannah grows as well). I also always love any post that talks about words since now Joshua only says "Gaga" sometimes and probably soon won't say it at all.

4) Zoo Day (6/9/12): Because I was so sick for so long, we didn't really get the trips I wanted this summer. I wanted to go camping and to Florida. Those didn't happen. But we did make it to Omaha for a weekend and I was able to participate with the help of medication so this was really special that we were able to go on a trip at all. This was a really fun way to break up an otherwise not-that-fun summer. I am sure we will go again at some point since it's a nice trip and pretty close, but it was really fun being able to take the kids swimming for the first time and to the zoo and the children's museum and I just love roadtripping, so we had a lot of fun.

5) Sunshower (7/7/12): I love these photos because they capture Joshua's personality really well. He loves water and the outdoors and thinks almost everything is amazing. We don't often get sunshowers in Kansas. In the summer when we get rain, it tends to be storms, so this was a good opportunity for him that I am glad we took advantage of.

6) Clara the Climber (8/7/12): I love this picture because it has Clara's facial expression she gets when she thinks she is getting away with something. I also like it because it reminds me of her determination. Her determined personality does make things harder some of the time (or in the toddler years maybe a lot of the time really), but she also hit all her milestones pretty early because once she decides to do something, she really can't think of anything else. She was really proud to be able to climb the stairs and I really think her determination is going to make her successful in life.

7) Hannah's Dramatic Arrival (10/2/12): I think a first baby is always especially nerve-wrecking because you don't know what labor is like and you don't know what to expect. I feel like I was misled by the medical community because everyone is like, "If you are in labor, you will know" and that you don't need to go to the hospital until the pain is bad enough to take your breath away. I am an outlier apparently because by that time, it was too late. I didn't have exactly the birth I planned, but, my friend Tricia told me, "I was initially surprised, but then I thought, 'That's the perfect birth for Meghan'. You're like, 'I know what I am doing. I don't need doctors to screw this up. I'll just do it myself'" Which is a pretty accurate assessment of my personality, so I do think it was the perfect birth for me and, however she came, Hannah is amazing.

8) Night of the Living Farm (10/19/12): This was a fun time because I felt kind of like my old self. I was able to plan coordinating costumes for the kids and we had a nice night of fun and it was one of the first times we got to photograph all three kids together, which I love.

9) The big 0-2 (10/27/12): I really enjoyed planning Joshua's second birthday party and I was really feeling good again by this time, so it was a fun day. The second birthday is hard for me. The first isn't really because a one year old is still mostly a baby in a lot of ways. But I feel like at two, they are kind of like little kids, so it's hard for me to accept and I get that feeling that probably every parent gets that time is just too fast and I wish I could slow it down. So it was an emotional day, but also very happy and fun.

10) Gingerbread Fun (12/11/12): Living intentionally is something I try to do all the time, but I only succeed some of the time. I feel it's especially important in parenting because otherwise the time just slips through your fingers and is gone. I am really pleased with how advent went this year and I look forward to doing even more stuff in future years as the kids get older and can understand and do more. I can't choose just one favorite moment, but this evening was definitely up there. Jason was there, which was nice since he can't be there for all our activities, but this one was easy to do at night. Plus all the kids could be there and Clara could participate at her own level, making it a fun evening for everyone.


From Jason:

The first year we did this blog we did a Top Five list.  Last year, Meghan couldn't narrow it down beyond seven, so she did a Top Seven list, and I followed suit.  This year she told me she couldn't choose fewer than ten.  I sort of scoffed, but then when I made my list, I too found it really difficult to only choose ten.  So here are my top ten favorite posts, in chronological order:

1) Finalization (1/27/12): This was a significant event, because it meant we were officially a family of four.  At the time, we thought we might be a family of four at least for awhile and possibly forever, since we didn't yet know Meghan was pregnant.  It was a really happy day to finally have it all done and know that we'd have our family of a little boy and a little girl.  A bonus of this day, which wasn't covered in the post, was getting to find out exactly where Clara was born (a nearby rural fire station) and getting to drive by it and take pictures on the way home.

2) Inadvertent Yard Helper (5/19/12): I love Joshua's little natural attitude of wanting to be a helper for everything. I'm also very excited about being able to do things together in the future as father and son.  Working in the yard isn't the most glamorous father/son activity, but it'll still be fun in a way if it's the two of us.  Even though he wasn't trying to help me here, it was still heart-warming to have the two of us working together on the same project, doing two different tasks working toward the same goal. 

3) The Bull and the Memorial (5/31/12): Although I get to travel for my job, most of my trips are to the same midwest-ish cities (Chicago, Detroit, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Milwaukee, etc.).  But when one of my Chicago accounts happened to have an office in New York City, I had the opportunity to go out there.  I had never been there prior to this year, and I got to go five different times.  I made sure to find time to see a lot of different sites, monuments, memorials, and landmarks that are famous and that I'd otherwise still not have seen.  I no longer have that account, so I probably won't be going back there again.  All but one of my visits were during the summer, so I have these really pleasant memories of these fun summer trips to New York that allowed me to see some great things.  I wish Meghan had been able to see them with me, but I know that's not how business travel normally works, but still I'm very thankful I had the opportunity to have those experiences, and this post represents that. 

4) Omaha or Bust, Zoo Day, and One More Day of Fun in Omaha  (6/8/12 - 6/10/12): I'm grouping these three together, as they composed our three-day trip to Omaha and back.  We wanted to have a family vacation this year, even though the kids were still really little.  Omaha is only three hours from us, and it has a lot of things that a family like ours can do.  The vacation went really well, exceeding the expectations that Meghan and I had for it.  We intend to try to do something like that every year, and next year we already have our sights set on a roadtrip to Florida.  

5) Honeymoon in Olathe (8/4/12): This was a great day for our family, as we were able to officially welcome Deb as part of our family.  A lot of times kids aren't happy with step-parents when they come into their lives and their family, but it's hard to see how Julie, Joanna, and I could have done any better than Ron ten years ago with Mom, and now Deb with Dad.  This day was not just the celebration of seeing them as a married couple but also included the surprise of the news that it had happened, making it a really special and important day in our family's history.

6) Clara the Climber (8/7/12): This is another great example of why this blog is awesome.  Without it, I'm not sure I would have tried to take a picture of one of Clara's first attempts to climb stairs.  But because I thought, "Hey, we need a picture for today.  I'll get one of her climbing the stairs." I ended up with this adorable picture with her cute little face and cute little bob haircut (which fortunately happened naturally).

7) Hobo Kids (9/27/12): One of the best things about having kids is the joy I get from watching them do things that make them happy.  I wasn't sure what they would think of the box, but they both had genuine excitement while exploring it and playing in it, and you can see their beaming faces in this picture.  It made them so happy, and watching that made me happy.

8) Hannah's Dramatic Arrival (10/2/12): This one was the easiest pick of all.  This was such a crazy and amazing night that it's likely to end up being the most memorable event of my life.  I went from thinking we were a week or more from the birth to having Hannah in my hands all in one day.  Being able to say and know that I delivered my own daughter is an amazing thing.  Like literally, amazing.  I love that it happened that way, but only of course because everything turned out fine.  I was calm the entire time, and I'm thankful God gave me the personality traits that He did to be able to handle the situation as I did.  And thankfully, as part of that, I had the awareness to also realize we would want some pictures of it all, and I was able to get some great photos to make this post better than it would have been.
 
9) Mama and Baby (10/22/12): This is one of my all-time favorite photos.  It just captures Meghan's beauty so well, and it shows the perfection that is little baby Hannah.
 
10) Happy Thanksgiving (11/22/12): The post is important to me because of the day that it was.  Thanksgiving has never meant more to me than it did this year.  I've had a great life with plenty of things for which to be thankful through the years, but never more than this year.  I have a wonderful and beautiful wife who's perfect for me.  We had what we thought was our complete family for awhile, thinking a third child would be a few years down the road, if at all.  But God had a different plan for us.  He brought us little baby Hannah.  She's so perfect and sweet and beautiful.  We didn't even know we could have a baby, and then God brought us her, and we couldn't be happier with our precious little baby girl.  I'm so thankful for that, and for our family of five.  I'm also extremely thankful that we have such great family and friends who have helped us out so much.  Having three children under two (for a few days) and now having three who are so close in age and so young has had its challenges at times, and our family and friends have been so wonderful in supporting us and helping us.  I feel guilty sometimes because I probably don't thank them enough.  But on that Thanksgiving day, I thought a lot about how much God has blessed us and how we really have so very very much for which to be thankful.


[Editor's Note: (Haha, it cracks me up every time I call myself an editor) Within the next day or so you'll see the final two posts for this year.  One is my awards and stats post, and the other will be our final wrap-up post inviting everyone to follow us again in 2013. Don't worry, you're not missing any posts from 2013.  We have them, they're just not publicly posted yet.]