Dear Family and Friends We have been married for nine years now! Undoubtedly the biggest event of the year was adding Donovan to the family! It was a great pregnancy, and he is such a sweet and mellow baby, and we are such a lucky family!!! We also know four other lucky families this year. My brother Jason and his wife Tiffany had a baby girl, our niece Braley! Serenity loved going to meet her and could talk about nothing else on the whole five hour drive. Gavin and Jennie’s baby Corwyn arrived in November. My friend Doris had a baby girl, Teagan, in January. Andrew and Marilyn have a baby boy named Evan! Such a great year for family. =) I love it!
We were lucky enough to get to travel a lot this year. The first trip was out to Tahoe for Fantastico! Thanks again to everyone that traveled with us to that, celebrating our anniversary with our friends and family every four years is a tradition we love! We went to New York in September, Cali in December for Eric’s birthday and again in January for Epic Duels. After I couldn’t travel anymore, Eric went to Cali for Eddie’s bachelor party and for the wedding. Serenity went with him to the wedding, which is the longest I’ve been away from her ever. I only went a little crazy. Eric also went to Austin and on a business trip to Chicago. I got to go to a scrapbooking convention with Abbey in Tulsa, and to my Girl’s Weekend in September, which was where I found out I was going to have Donovan. We went to Oklahoma City every other month or so, and Gavin and Jennie came to see us on the alternating months when one of us wasn’t having a baby. My nephew Alex stayed with us for a few nights to play games. Eric has added him to his favorite gaming partner list =) My mom purchased a cabin nearby and we went there a couple of times, including one weekend we spent there with Gavin, Jennie, Corwyn, Abbey, Brent, Brendan and Maggie! We also spent the Fourth of July there. The neighborhood there hosts amazing fireworks and fun games and contests. Eric said we should celebrate the fourth there every year! Jack, Patricia and Henry came to visit us, which was amazing and such fun!
Besides travel, we still enjoy a lot of hobbies. Eric loves playing League of Legends with the CAOK crew, and Magic Online. Together we play a lot of board games. Our favorites include Pandemic, Forbidden Island, Small World, Race for the Galaxy, Magic, and Dominion of course! We didn’t see many movies, but just this week Andrea took both of us to see X-Men, which was amazing (she went twice in one day so Eric could see it too. Yes, it was that good!) We both read the Hunger Games trilogy that Jen gave me, which was great! I read all of the books by Rick Riordan… twice. There was a sequel finally to the Name of the Wind, which we try to get everyone to read. Eric read a series called Old Man’s War that he liked as well. We are members of the Tulsa Zoo and the Aquarium, and Eric and Serenity especially love going to the park in Jenks.
We did a major house remodel thanks to Chrissie’s dad. He built basically by himself a new room over our garage. It got finished just before Donovan was born, and is now even decorated for Donovan! We love the extra room, it turned out beautifully, and all the storage and new zoned air conditioning is awesome as well. Thanks Dad!!! Making room for Donovan required a little reorganizing in the house. We moved Serenity to the purple bedroom since she loves the colors purple and pink so she would have a special room. Oh, and Dad built a new secret room for her in there as well! (We call it the Hideaway to differentiate it from the old secret room) We moved our bedroom downstairs to the blue room. The office moved to the green living room, and the couch moved to the regular living room in front of the television where it should probably have been all along. We are really happy with the new setup, although when Donovan moves from the cradle to the crib we will move up to Serenity’s old bedroom while he’s still nursing at night. But we’ll just sleep on the guest mattress we bought for the floor in the blue playroom. So basically every room changed purpose except the kitchen. We also built some great storage under our shelves thanks to Dad Whew. Lots of redecorating fun for Chrissie!!!
Eric is still working for TradeHelm, and still loves it.
Chrissie worked for Toni’s Flowers a few days a week until after Valentine’s Day, and now she is staying at home full time! She loves taking Serenity to the library, various classes like music class, crafting, and snuggling with both her kids. =) Her other hobbies include playing with Photoshop, reading, and making a new website, http://cleverfaeries.blogspot.com, where she writes about all her crafting, party, and kid adventures. She had fun planning several parties this year, especially Serenity’s Rainbow Party, Barrett’s Jedi Party, baby showers for Corwyn and Braley and our annual Cookie Party. Plus she helped Jen decorate for a party at U-School. I mostly neglected my garden this year, but Serenity and I loved the great strawberry harvest!
We had a great time with holidays this year, especially Easter, Halloween (and our traditional Pumpkin Patch visit with Kelly, Mike, Raegan and Carson), New Years Eve (Buenos Aires Style) and Christmas!
We love you! Thanks for sharing our lives, and we look forward to another great year together!
Love, Chrissie and Eric