i was in a pretty dark place when i disappeared from here back in 2011. i won’t dwell on that. a brand new, sparkly year has come around and it is going to be a great one! afterall, it’s ’13… my lucky number! 2012 ended up being a pretty good year in its own right.

• after spending the month of december 2011 and january 2012 in the hospitals with hubby’s mom (stroke) and my dad (broken hip), everyone was healthy and happy for the holidays this year. MIL is still working hard on her road to recovery and dad has a new health concern that has left him doing monthly treatments all year but they are still in our lives and they are back to enjoying their own lives (dad is especially enjoying his retirement that he finally earned in 2012!).
• i signed up for my 3rd half marathon and sold my registration after a month of training.  i wasn’t feeling it and i have no regrets about it.  it was a great decision.
• i dropped 40 pounds in seven months by making healthy choices.  i exercised more regularly (aquajogging rawks!), watched my portions better, and became more conscientious of where my calories were coming from (no, i do not need that giant glass of milk every night with dinner, no matter how much i love it!).  i now fit into clothes i haven’t been able to wear in about eight years.  sadly, i had just given away the majority of my skinny clothes a couple months before i started this life change so it was a heavy shopping year. 
• i gained back five of those pounds over vacation and the holidays but i’m so not worried about that.
• vacation was epic!  it’ll take me forever to get the travel log finished since there are over 3k photos for me to sort through and narrow down but it was a month of living history.  hubby and i both hit our #1 bucket list destinations (israel and egypt, respectively) and so much more.  i still can’t believe we saw all that we saw. 
• my brudder gave me a new niece and she is perfection.



• we moved into a new home, which is almost the same as our previous home except that we no longer have noise above us.  the moving stress was nearly too much for me but we are doing all the upgrades we always wanted to do and it is turning into a gorgeous, if slightly smaller, home.

the most important thing about 2012 is that we got back to focusing on fun and happiness and i quit letting so much gloom in.  the fact that everyone keeps complementing me on my svelteness has also helped my self-esteem.