Happy New Year

Here are some highlight photos of 2013.

I think it's safe to say 2013 was the year of "new" and "change" for our family. Chris is still the manager of rehab services for Wheaton Franciscan Healthcare. He's coaching his 9th  season of wrestling at Tremper High School. Ava loves going to practices and meets with "those stinky boys." I am still teaching kindergarten at Union Grove Elementary. I also started working for Thirty One gifts and have been having fun doing parties and meeting new people while I earn a bit of extra money. 

Here's our year in review! February found us buying a new vehicle. Things were starting to go out on my Jeep. With the expected arrival of a new baby and the fact that I am typically the one driving the kids and was largely pregnant, we decided we couldn't take any chances on me getting stranded. After my dad and I spent an entire day at the car dealership, my "looking" turned into buying. They had to sell one more Jeep by that day to meet a certain goal, so I was able to get a good trade in and price on a new Jeep (and new car payment!) March brought a couple of in and out hospital visits for me with the baby. One day before Easter they had to stop my labor and the nurse (we are friends with her and she delivered Ava) told me to quit contracting every 5 minutes or we'd have a baby that night (I wasn't due until May 9th!) Thankfully labor was stopped and I was sent home. I made a couple more appearances after a couple silly falls just to be observed since I was yelled at by my dr. We put our house back on the market in March as well. We welcomed Gianna Marie into the world on April 30th at 11:08 PM. She was 7lb, 10 oz, and 20.5 in. She was suppose to arrive via a scheduled c-section on May 2nd. She really wanted to be a diamond baby and sent me in early. Ava absolutely adores her little sister. She was a bit disappointed we didn't name the baby "Russel" (from the Up movie.) She quickly got over it! Shortly after we brought Gianna home, we had a showing on the house that turned into an offer two days later. We had 22 days to get ourselves packed and moved out! We closed on the house on June 21st and moved into my parents' house. Unfortunately, we didn't begin building right away as the price of our home went up a ridiculous amount of money in one year. After back and forths with the builder, developer of the subdivision and mortgage company, we broke ground on the new house on November 4th. We are moving along with the house although weather is not in our favor at this point. We've lost a couple of weeks already because of cold and snow. We are hopeful to be in mid to end of March.We were told it would be 4 months from the start of construction. We are thrilled to have a home with plenty of room inside and out for the girls and our family and friends. We will miss the daily interactions with Nonna and Papa though. Ava celebrated her 4th birthday with her first "friends" party at Scamps Gymnastics. She had fun celebrating with her friends and family! We spent 10 days in the hospital with my dad beginning right before Thanksgiving and ending the first part of December. We still do not know the cause of his illness but we are thankful he is home with us. He continues to have tests and dr. appointments and they are looking more at his heart at this point. Hopefully, new meds will have him back to normal very quickly! We had a lot of life changing events in 2013 and are excited to see what 2014 brings! Happy new year from our family to yours!