We are starting New Year's Eve with our annual tradition. Every year on this day, we order Outback to go and go pick it up and enjoy the wonderful meal at home together as a family. We avoid the crowds and save on drinks and a tip and just look forward to doing this every year. After our special meal, we are planning on spending New Years Eve this year with our good friends-the Hills and the Koehlers at the Koehler's house. We have never been together on New Year's Eve before, so this will be a first for us. However, it is only fitting as we spent New Years Day last year with them as well(First time for that too!).
We are so blessed to have close friends that we all enjoy being with. We have been through a lot together this year, as in the years past. But I was thinking this morning about the last year, in particular. We had 2 kids hospitalized this year from the group-one VERY serious. We had one death in the families-Doug- and our friends were there to support us through that. On the good side, we spent a lot of vacation time together this year. It was our first vacation with all 3 families, including kids. I think every family had vacationed with the other families before but never all 3 all together-with kids. We spent Spring Break (also a first for us!) together all week in a cabin in Gatlinburg, Tenn. We went camping over Memorial Day and Labor Day with the Koehlers. The Hills don't do camping. :( We took the girls on a cruise for their birthdays. And all 3 of the older girls really matured and we saw some big changes physically in all of them. The Hills and us went on a cruise together in September without the kids and enjoyed a week on the Freedom. The Koehlers already had a family cruise planned for December so they couldn't join us this year. Steve, Dana, Dale, and I all went to Universal Studios for the first time for each of us. We spent the fourth of July at the Koehler's house as normal. We had many happy days and evenings spent by their pool. We always get together for Christmas and continued that this year.
We spent some glorious days at the lake with the Koehlers this year. Unfortunately, because of Jaclyn's surgery, hospitalizations, and complications with Staph infection, they stayed away from the lake this year. Hopefully, 2010 they will be able to join us on the boat and jetski sometimes. We spent lots of time at White Water together again this year, as usual. We went to the zoo together. The Koehlers and Dale & I went to one of the most expensive restaurants ever together-for FREE! We went to the movies together and enjoyed watching lots of DVDs while we were on vacation together during Spring Break. We survived some challenges in school with one of the children. All of the men held onto their jobs through a difficult period of downsizing and economic change. Tina and Dana are persevering with the home schooling, and I was able to hold onto my real estate career and my part time job with the consulting firm. I even added a new job this year to pay for my hobby with Heritage Makers. The ladies all started out the year meeting a few times a week at the mall to get in our walking exercise. That was lots of fun since we could talk while we walked. We kept that up pretty good for a while. Maybe we should start that again?!?
The kids are all growing physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. They are all great kids!!
We were able to ALL do swim team together for the first time. That was fun to have our good friends with us. We met for meals, sleepovers, ballgames, and at Brusters throughout the year. Both Courtney and Jordan were able to come see Jennifer in her CFT play this year. Courtney and Jennifer went away for Jennifer's first youth trip together. We have many happy memories of all the fun we had together this past year and hope that there are many more to come in 2010. God has truly blessed us with some special friends and special times.
I hope you and your family have a wonderful New Year as well!
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