I’ll admit, I can be a sap when it comes to looking back on a year well-lived. Our 2017 featured some BIG milestones and things to celebrate, as well as some moments of stress and sadness. Here are the highlights…

We finalized Mila’s adoption

Mila was ours the moment we held her, but the State of Texas required a six-month wait before she was legally ours. At the end of May, both sides of our family traveled to a courthouse a few hours away to celebrate as a judge made it official. Mila legally has our last name. No more social workers. No more adoption agency. No more having our doctor write a note documenting every visit for me to add to our giant adoption file. It was honestly one of the happiest days of my entire life.

I ran a half marathon

It was slow, and cold, and long… but I did it. I finished a half marathon with my dear friend and neighbor Emily. I had run a half 9 years ago, but I honestly wasn’t sure I’d ever do it again. It meant more, as a working mom of two, to be able to cross that finish line. It was hard. And we did it. We also ran the Cowtown 10K. I’m proud of us.

Mr. Right got his masters degree

I met Mr. Right his first semester as a full-time seminary student. He worked so hard for about 4 years to knock out almost 90 hours of graduate school. And then he took a hiatus when that sweet baby Wrenn was born. Four years later, he went back and FINISHED that degree. Watching him walk across that stage to get his diploma was one of my proudest moments as his wife. He worked HARD for that piece of paper. It represents so many hours of sacrifice.

I painted the whole house

Well, I painted most of the whole house. I painted the dining room, entryway, office, living room, kitchen, breakfast nook, and all of our hallways. Including ceilings, baseboards, and doors, it was about 80 percent of our home. I knocked it out, one Saturday at a time, during the fall. And it looks SO GOOD. In 2018 I hope to paint our bedroom, master bath, and the kitchen cabinets.

Mr. Right broke all the bones

In August, Mr. Right had a run-in with a rock on a mountain bike trail. The rock won. He broke his collarbone, several ribs, punctured a lung, and they thought they found cancer while they did all of the scans at the ER. It was not the most fun visit. Thankfully, he’s fully recovered, doesn’t have cancer, and four months later is back on his bike.

Wrenn learned to ride a bike

After two years of regular training, Wrenn learned to ride a bike without training wheels. That’s pretty exciting for a girl who had just turned four. She can now ride two miles around the neighborhood. Her daddy gets all the credit – he worked patiently with her, and when she finally took off on her own, I’m pretty sure he cried all the happy tears. Our little girl is fearless.

Mr. Right became a broker

I’m proud of my man, who achieved another big goal of this year – he became a real estate broker. He also became certified to teach real estate classes in the state of Texas and took on some new leadership roles at work. He’s a hard worker.

We hosted a lot of people

In 2016, we set a goal of hosting 200 people in our home and ended up welcoming 258. This year we didn’t keep track, but I estimate we hosted at least 150. Not bad for not really trying. Hosting people has become part of our family DNA. It’s just what we do. And it was a joy to have folks from all over come hang out. In 2018, I want to do a better job of keeping track of our guests, just for fun. (Our biggest party was our Halloween Party, which had probably 50-60 guests.)

We led a pretty simple life

We took a few small weekend trips, but nothing fancy. We went to bed early most of the time. We didn’t take up any crazy new hobbies or buy anything big (except for a dishwasher and dryer, out of necessity). We had some tough seasons and some happy ones as a family. We played with the kids on the floor, made big messes in the name of art, hung out on the driveway, laid in a hammock in our garage, drank a ton of Topo Chico. We cheered as each kid conquered a new milestone. We became a formula-free and bottle-free household. We waterparked… a lot. I didn’t write or quilt much, but I did a lot of baby cuddling and diaper changing and playroom cleaning and magazine reading. We did a lot of restaurant exploring and road tripping and family adventuring and museum visiting and dance partying in the living room. Mr. Right taught us how to “dab.” Wrenn learned her favorite number, 525,600 (and can sing every word to the song at the top of her lungs, thanks to her daddy’s training). Mila tried all the food and loved every bit of it. And I watched 8,000 episodes of Gilmore Girls and listened to 9,000 true crime podcast episodes and spent a ton of my time digging in our backyard garden.

Our goal for 2018 is to continue our goal of living a simple life. In a nutshell, it means fiercely guarding our schedule to ensure we have margin. It means minimizing the physical and mental clutter and making the most of the space we have. Personally, I’m planning to write more and read more books (I read about 15 this year… would love to double that in 2018), finish up some more painting projects, and figure out how to make our grass in the front yard grow.

2017 was was a year of BIG THINGS separated by a lot of quiet, normal days. It had just enough excitement to keep it interesting. I’m hoping for more good than bad in 2018.

What are your goals for 2018? I’d love to hear them in the comments!