2013: A year in review
Friends! John and I are back from an extended week of Christmas celebration — a few days in Minneapolis with my family (and the new niece!), a few days at home, and a few days in Connecticut with John’s family, the highlight of which was celebrating 41 years of marriage for my in-laws. Even though the new year officially starts on Wednesday, I’m looking forward to a few quiet days before things really pick up on January 6th — time to reflect, organize, clean, prepare, plan, and dream. My first order of business is to take a look back at 2013, because it was a truly marvelous year. We kicked off the year with some unseasonably warm weather which allowed us to get out and explore (and eat some delicious food along the way!). I also made my first loaf of homemade bread, and published the first four posts in my Marvelous Money series, something I’d wanted to do for a long time. To be continued in 2014! I also posted our first house search update. In February on the blog, all of my posts except one were devoted to telling the story of our wedding (you can find them all here). Thank you again for giving me the space to do that! We celebrated Valentine’s Day with dinner at home and a first viewing of our full-length wedding film. In between, we enjoyed lots of golf course strolls (sometimes even in the snow!) and scheduled inspections on our contracted house (number two, for those counting). March brought house guests from the North and the first magnolia blooms! We celebrated Easter with chocolate peanut butter cheesecake and dyed eggs; I gave you a second house search update. We did a few other things in April (started our garden in pots,