HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Happy New Year!  Bring on 2011.  2010 was a crazy year, but overall it was a great year.  A LOT happened.  Here's a small summary:

1.  We brought the girls home from the NICU on January 5th after a one-month stay.  We were thrown into the sleeplessness, feeding, and existed in a zombie-like state for several months, dealing with reflux, gas issues, and all the things any parent of a newborn deals with times two.

2.  Josh left two weeks later for FSI in Kansas and spent three weeks away from us, while my mom, dad and Brynn visited and helped me get through those weeks with the girls.

3.  I sort of lost my mind and got it back again (turns out newborn twins really ARE hard!).

4.  In the spring, we had more family visits from my mom, dad and aunt Jessica.  We finally settled into a routine and the girls started sleeping more.  Jasmine started with us and I began to get out of the house a little bit and ran my first post-pregnancy race.

5.  I went back to work part-time with a great flexible arrangement with Connect.

6.  We had a fun beach vacation in the Outer Banks with the Rapers.  We were able to have some fun even with two small babies and a whole lot of gear.

7.  Josh left for a 3 1/2 month deployment to Qatar and flew all over the middle east, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, and then Spain, Italy and Greece on the way there/back.

8.  The girls started became more mobile, crawled, jabbered, and discovered each other.

9.  The girls and I went to Utah and their took their first trip on an airplane (with help from my mom there and my dad back).  They met all the relatives there who haven't had a chance to see them yet and were little traveling troopers and showered with love.

10.  I ran a post-partum half-marathon PR at the Neuse River Bridge run, then a big 5K PR at the Turkey Trot.  Running kept me sane throughout the year and helped me deal with the stress.

11.  Our sweet Jacksonboy was diagnosed with a form of malignant cancer and had a horribly invasive surgery, which was very hard on him (and hard on us as we face the reality of losing him).

12.  Josh came home and our family was complete again and I remembered what it was like to have help!

13.  Josh's nana passed away and we went straight up to Richmond after he returned home for the funeral and he was able to see many of his family members.

14.  Josie and Piper turned 1!  Piper spent part of her first birthday in the hospital with pneumonia, but then made a quick rebound in time to celebrate at their birthday party with lots of fun friends.

14.  We celebrated the holidays here in New Bern, thanksgiving on our own and Christmas with the Koupals.  Josh had two weeks off work and we loved all our time together.