2012 Re-cap

We started out the year by preparing to meet our new baby girl Adri and moving to Tim's mom's house in Sandy. We were quickly given callings in our ward and made several really great friends right off the bat. We love this ward and I'm going to be really sad eventually when we do have to move out.

Tim started his new job at the end of February with ADP Advanced MD, which was another reason we moved in with Tim's mom. His commute is about 10 mins. opposed to an hr and 10 mins from my mom's place, where we were living before that.

Our sweet baby Adri Anne Neumann was born March 29th. She is an angel baby, she has slept through the night since she was 2 months old, totally on her own. She only fusses when she needs to and laughs all the other times. Kayla is such a great big sister, she loves Adri so much and is so good to be soft and play with her. She loves holding her and making her laugh.

We had a great summer this year playing with friends at parks and spending time with family. We got to see the Jones family quite a bit, which was awesome and we also got to go to my dad's quite a bit, which we loved.

We went to the Murray parade for the fourth of July, which was really fun and KK even got to walk in a short parade in downtown Salt Lake with our Stake. She loved collecting all the left over candy that the kids through out to the crowd.

We also went up and spent a few weekends up at Nana and Papa's, which is always a great time. We especially loved going up for Thanksgiving and riding the side by side and four wheeler in the field behind the house...and Mmmm those cinnamon rolls from Straw Market....most delicious and they are only like .75 cents and they are the size of your head...soft, sweet and gooey....makes my mouth water just thinking about them. Thankfully Jess signed us up for a 10k on Thanksgiving morning. Everyone came out to cheer us across the finish line....that was my first 10k ever and Jessica almost had to carry me, it was so hard keeping up with her since she is about 4 inches taller than me and most of that is LEG folks. Then we got to the end and found out it WASN'T a 10K it was only 4.8 miles...not cool.

We both were asked to speak in church within the first 6 months we were in the ward, so I'm glad that's over with :)

Tim qualified for a trip to the Bahama's through his work so we had the opportunity to go stay at Atlantis for a couple of days and enjoyed a layover in New York also which we ate almost the entire time :) It was great!

Kayla turned 3 in December! We had a little birthday party for her that was a "Princess P" themed party (from Super Why - cartoon on PBS), she wore a tutu, wings and had a wand....it was super fun. She is growing up so fast, I can't believe she is getting close to pre-school age, time goes by so fast! At the beginning of this year she started sleeping in a "big girl" bed, mostly because we needed the crib but she handled it pretty well, there was a little bit of screaming, on her part and a little bit of screaming on my part, but in the end we did it and it's great! She's such a funny kid and keeps us entertained. Some of my favorite things she said this year:
She started out this year by saying things like "Tisses" - Kisses and "TA-TU" - Thank You and in the middle of the year it was conversations like this...Me:"KK do you want to help me with the laundry?" Kayla: "Nope, I sure don't!" or Me:"Kayla did you go potty?" Kayla: "I fink so mom, plobably"and by the end of the year it's now things like when Tim leaves for work and she looks at me and says "He's so sweet" as he walks out the door or Me:"Kayla stay out of the fridge" Kayla:"I'm not getting IN mom, I'm just getting something to eat" Or one day she asked me for a drink of milk and said "I don't want boob milk mom, I want my own milk", clearly she's seen me nurse her sister too many times...hopefully I didn't damage her too badly.


Tim was hit by some goofus on the freeway and it totaled our Honda Accord....which we loved. It was such a great car. We then decided it was probably time to get a different car anyway for me so we ended up trading in my Jetta (which I had since I was 19, drove that baby for 10 years!) and buying a Honda Odyssey which I LOVE and we are also currently looking for a Honda like his old one that we can get for Tim. Kayla said that she thinks our next car should be red with sprinkles, I delivered that message to Tim, he said he would consider it.

We rang in the new year by putting the kids to bed, eating bruschetta, Lindsey falling asleep on the couch and Tim watching the ball drop and drinking sparkling cider by himself....however I did feel him come over and give me a kiss on the head at midnight :) What a guy!

What did I learn in 2012?
"Life isn't fair...ever" - Someone said this to me this year and I won't ever forget it. This came from someone that has gone through some really, truly hard things this year and she is right. Everyone has their fair share of trials and the fact is...nobody ever enjoys going through crappy things, but the point isn't to enjoy it, the point is that we endure it well so that we can learn and be blessed. We are meant to become Gods and Goddesses and I don't know about you but I have a LONG way to go and it's absolutely going to take some more "molding" which I know probably won't be pleasant always, but that was part of the agreement. I feel like we went through some pretty crappy things this year with loosing our house and moving twice all while pregnant, and to me those were really hard things to go through. Someone else may scoff and say "That's nothing!" but to me it wasn't nothing.  So, in conclusion the biggest lesson I have learned this year is to try not to compare my life, trials, blessings, failures etc. against anyone else's because I will almost 100% be disappointed with the outcome because for better or for worse, life isn't fair...ever :)

Florida, Bahamas, New York

Here are the pics from our trip that Tim's work took us on, we had a 10 hr layover in Florida before we got to the Bahamas so we rented a car with some friends that were on our same flight and went to the beach and had lunch. We were then at Atlantis in the Bahamas for about 3 days and then we had a 1 day layover in NY. Total we were gone for 5 days, which was a perfect amount of time away. When we got home the girls were in bed, but in the middle of the night Kayla woke up to go potty and came in our room thinking she would find Grandma there and instead found us and said "Oh daddy, you came back?" It was the perfect welcome home!

 

 

Broadwalk in Hollywood, FL. No that's not a typo....it's called the BROAD walk not BOARD walk.....wierd I know. But still really fun to see.

Broadwalk in FL. It was a gorgeous day, good thing we had 10 hrs to kill here before our flight to Bahamas...which by the way was a 36 minute flight...not kidding. We could have rented a jet ski and drove there ourselves.

Morning faces! This is 8AM the first morning in the Bahamas, getting ready to swim with our dolphin friends.

This was awesome, they feel like really soft leather, but they are hard as rocks, pure muscle.

That's the main hotel behind us, we accidentally got upgraded :) So we actually got to stay in the suites which are behind the photographer in this pic. We told them when we got there that we didn't think that was right, but they said not to worry about it...so we didn't :)

Pucker up! All we had to do was place our hands out and the dolphin pushes it's way up to your face, it's so cool! They are so smart!

The dolphin is behind Tim pushing him by his foot!

I don't look that excited in these pictures, but I was freaking out, it was so cool!

Lazy river at the water park - this was the next day. Their water park is AMAZING! We had such a blast!

This is on our way around to one of the many slides they have. We also ventured onto a couple of slides without tubes, two of which feel like you are free falling down the slide because they are sooooo steep....and one of those you shoot through the shark tank! You are going too fast to actually see the sharks, but there is a slide next to it that we did with a tube that pushes you slowly through the shark tank so that you can get a good look at them, it was super fun!

The view - waiting for the elevator in our hotel.

We got all gussied up one night for a catered dinner they put on for us outside, it was so much fun. We ate all this yummy food and then danced all night long until we were drenched in sweat....ewww gross I know, but I haven't had that much fun in a long time. I later apologized to Tim in case I embarrassed him in front of his co-workers with my dancing :/

This was the view from our hotel room. The hotel on the right is the main hotel. The smaller weird looking building on the left with the yellow balls on the top was part of the water park, one of the really tall drop off slides was inside there. There other one is on the opposite side of the thing that looks like Mayan ruins, you can't see it very well in this pic, but it's the one in all the commercials for Atlantis.

This was in the main hotel, there was this huge aquarium that surrounded the front of the base of the hotel and it had sting rays and 2 huge manta rays and a bunch of other fish, it was really cool. We ate dinner right by it the first night at their cafe.

...No this is not from the aquarium :/ . We took a taxi into town and went to this place called the "Fish Fry" and it was a strip of restaurants that serves local favorites....Tim ordered a whole fried fish....yuck. He loved it though so whatever.

These were the friends we paired up with. Trevor and Krista. Trevor and Tim work together, we had a great time with them! We were so glad we found a couple to hang out with while there, it made it so much more fun!

This was a free Cody Simpson concert. I don't know who he is, but apparently about 200 14 year old girls did, because they were all screaming and freaking out over him....we didn't stay long :)

On the LIRR (Long Island Rail Road) on our way from the Airport into Manhattan, where we caught the subway and got lost for about an hour:/ No thanks to the subway workers who told us the wrong way to go TWICE.

Times Square

Times Square...it was freezing.

Bryant Park....so pretty and way cool little vendors all over.

So....on this walk down to the most delicious pizza place ever, we were walking down 6th ave. It was pretty deserted and as we walked past this one couple Tim and I looked at each other and both said at the same time "That was Colin Farrell!" and it totally was! He was with someone and we didn't want to bother him for a picture....but I totally regret not bothering him now :(

We got a lot of great referrals for restaurants from some friends of friends that live there. This was an AWESOME pizza place, everything was fresh and baked in a hot brick oven. This is a picture of the guys that were making our pizza....watching the Giants play while they made our pizza :) We were starving so we were IMpatiently waiting. 

Then the brought us this huge delicious pizza.

And we ate.....

...and ate and ate some more.......We ate the WHOLE pizza.....PLUS a Cannoli that was to die for. This place was called Grimaldi's and it was a tiny place, hole in the wall...but the most delicious pizza I have ever had!!!

Doughnut Plant

Tres Leches Doughnut....delicious....Coconut Cream doughnut - yum

Peanut Butter and Jelly Doughnut....awesome and we also got a Creme Brule doughnut that was super good too. We ate all 4.

Rockefeller Plaza, they were getting ready for Voting day.

Lego Land near Rockefeller

Made of Lego's

Empire State Building - view from "Top the Rock" On top of Rockefeller

Central Park behind us

On the Subway - NOT lost this time :)

Levain Bakery - famous for their cookies that are the size of a cathead biscuits....if not a little bigger...see below. They are delicious!

This made me cry...a lot. The fountain memorial of the twin towers was closed due to flooding from the hurricane, but they have this memorial/gift shop that was open and it was so sad. I have seen the 9/11 interviews and everything on TV several times, but just being there and seeing the pictures of the people in person really got to me. This statue of liberty was covered with things left at ground zero after the attacks. It also had the badges of some of the people that worked there and some of the first responders.

This is us in front of the Freedom Tower, the plan is to build 4 World Trade Center buildings around the twin towers fountain memorial.

Our last stop on our trip was to Carnegie Deli where they have ginormous sandwiches (This is just 1/2 of mine) as you can see :) We had no idea they were this big....but we both ate all of our sandwiches:)

If it looks like we just ate our way through NY....we did. We saw a lot of cool things along the way but to honestly see all there is to see in NY you have to stay at least 3 or 4 days, so I am looking forward to hopefully going back again in the future.

We rode in style to the airport, we were so short on time and I so tired that we just decided to pay the extra $20 it was to take a car instead of mass transit....it was worth every penny.

This was us in the airport....sad our trip was coming to an end :(