2011 Recap

So, I realize that I haven't written in this blog in months and months. Yes, I admit that I considered abandoning the blog (does anyone still read this?). However, here I am! I figure that it's best to give a recap of 2011, which was a challenging yet wonderful year!

Here are some highlights:

-I finished my first year of teaching as a middle school English teacher and switched jobs to be a middle school Special Ed teacher-which has been equally busy but great! I'm also 3/4 the way done with TFA now (although I plan to stay at the same school next year).
-Mitchell finished his first year of teaching as an engineering teacher and spent the summer training to teach just high school engineering this year.
-We got to take our students on an end of year trip to visit colleges-it was really fun and we are both doing it again this March-this time we're going to Chicago!!
-Jennifer, Emily, and my Mom visited me in March and we got to spend a lot of time together in Dallas! They even got to come sit through one of my classes!
-Spent the summer traveling around quite a bit-California with Mitchell for his training, Rhode Island/Boston, and Vermont with my family.
-We joined a church here in Dallas!
-We got to meet new friends and reconnect with old friends that live in the Dallas area!
-We got four snow days in February, which was a much needed break during a very stressful time!
-We went to a marriage retreat with many other friends in October, which was refreshing and really fun.

Now for the two biggest things that happened this year:

-Mitchell got a new job as an engineer at Holcim, the company he interned for in college. This was a big answer to years of prayer for him to get a job at this company! He's enjoying it so far and although he misses all of his students, is glad to be pursuing his career.
-We signed a contract on a HOUSE!!! We really didn't think we would look into buying a house for years, so this all came up as quite the surprise. We will be building a new construction house in Lewisville (close to where we both grew up and met) and it should be ready in May. We are beyond excited. Here are a few pictures. The first one is similar to what the front of the house will look like (same floorplan but with different colors).





There were definitely many challenges, but it's exciting and humbling to look back on all of the blessings and happy things that happened in 2011. We are definitely excited about 2012, which looks like it's going to be just as exciting of a year.

In Him,

Katherine