Christmas Letter

So Josh decided to write the Christmas letter this year. I thought that would be a wonderful idea, except that now I want to share my stories too. So here is my unofficial, not quite as cool as Josh's, Christmas Letter!!!!


This year started out great. Way back in January we had high hopes and dreams for this past year. Josh just finished up a masters in computer science. He was still working at DornerWorks in Grand Rapids and I was at MasterCuts. We were living in our little one bedroom apartment, and still growing out of it. There, now you're caught up with our last few years we didn't send out a chrismas letter.

Now for the good part...

We bought a house. YAY!!!! We found a place in Zeeland, right by the highway  so we could commute easily to GR. Who could have asked for more? But you should have seen the wall paper. If we would have sent the house pictures into a show like "modernize my house please" this place would have been first on the list. Wow. But after steaming, and scraping and a whole lot of, "oops" "that's not good" "did I do that?", and some other choice words, we were ready to move in. The late nights of our working on the house lasted about 3 weeks. We would work all day, sometimes get done with work around 8pm and run over to Zeeland (yes, from GR) to get a few hours of work in. That meant we were sleep deprived but very driven.

I don't believe at this time out neighbors ever thought they would meet us. The only glimpses they got of us were when it's after dark and we were running around outside. One day Josh and I needed to dig a hole in our yard. It was dark out so we attached a bright light to the top of our ladder as we dug our hole. People would drive in the neighborhood, and drive right back out. We were not helping estate sales in this neck of the woods. After more instances like this, a few neighbors dared to meet us. And we bonded quite well with many of them. (I don't know what this is saying about them though...).

Now from my previous posts, you got to find out that Josh and I did indeed get pregnant. What I didn't include was how quickly our neighbors found out. We are so close to our neighbors, they found out I was pregnant before any of our friends or relatives. Yikes!!!! We were all hanging out in someones driveway (yes, this is what we do) and everyone was drinking. Everyone but me. Awkward... And of course they all wanted to know where my boos was. After being asked if I was pregnant over 20 times, I confessed (since I never could lie to save my life). So, yup, we're tight with our neighbors. Now when I go out to shovel the driveway, I get yelled at from across the block to stop. And the next thing I know one of the neighbor guys comes over to plow for me. It's a nice gesture, but what am I supposed to do do while he plows? Stand and watch? So that's what I did. I stood there and watched but I also tried to look busy doing nothing. Then I tried to be nice back and get him a beer from the fridge. What was I thinking!!! Do I stand there and make him drink the beer in front of me, or tell him to take it home? I don't know how to be a good neighbor. So I made him drink it in front of me while i talked about who-knows-what. I'm good at that. I have to make 15 min conversations about who-knows-what all day at work.


Speaking of work, I am down to working 1 day a week. I put in my 2 weeks in and was asked to stay at least one day a week. So Thursdays are the only days I'm working. This is not a normal thing that MasterCuts does, so we'll see how long this lasts and if it works out. But this means I will have more time to plan for Baby H and get this house put together.

Ok I'm feeling better about sharing my stories too. There will be more, but for now this is all there is.