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| Our place, Xmas'd up. |
I started the year by heading out to Hawaii for the first time in my life with my Wife and 3 friends, enjoyed a lot of sunshine and sandy beaches while it snowed back home. It was a fantastic start to the year. I was down to my goal weight (for the time being) - and very healthy, and things were going amazingly well.
Not too long after we got back from that, we got the unexpected notice that our then-landlords had failed to pay their mortgage for the past several months, and it was quite likely they would foreclose. It put pressure on us to make a quick decision about where to move - rent, buy? We'd been living in the same townhouse for a very long time and were quite settled in.
In brief - we went with buy, and our real estate agent, a family friend, helped us patiently find a great house we've been in since May. The combination of people who came together to help us make that transition between family and friends has been extremely touching, most definitely the highlight of the year for us. I feel extremely lucky to know so many awesome people. Extremely lucky.
Unfortunately, not very long after making our big move, we went through a quick-fire series of unhappy events. We lost both of our cats for varying medical reasons. My brother had to go to the hospital. Several friends either let us know they were moving away, or went through troubling problems of their own which separated us for a while. Our year which started in turmoil just developed more and more.
Things have thankfully calmed down in recent months, and we enjoyed a pretty awesome Christmas at our new house, with friends and family, as is our tradition. We even attended a neighborhood cookie exchange and got to meet some of the neighbors, it's a good little community we've managed to settle into here.
The confessional part of this blog post is - I've put a few pounds on this year. Not too many, as I've been pretty good about my diet and I do get out walking on a regular basis still - including numbers trail runs this year and a hike or two. And oh yeah - a half marathing in the middle of the year! But, I have gotten back to eating some things I shouldn't, and returned to a few bad habits I ought not have with food as well.
As cliche as it seems, my new year's resolution will of course be a return to good eating and exercising, and hopefully to updating this site on a more regular basis as well. There are a lot of great opportunities in our new area for walking and I plan to explore more of them.
Thanks to anyone who actually reads this stuff, I mostly do this to help keep myself honest and on track. I hope everyone has a happy new year and that 2013 is a little more stable! The world didn't end in 2012 but it sure got shaken up a bit for us.
