My Life in the Southwest: December 2016

Year in Review

So....2016 was kind of a rough year. It was not great health-wise. We lost a couple of family members (VERY recently). It was just a difficult year. Which I was kind of expecting. 2015 was so fantastic that I was kind of expecting 2016 to be a little bumpy, just because that's how things usually work.

But instead of focusing on the negative, I'm going to focus on the positive things that happened in 2016 (and there were a lot!)

*I visited my family in Nebraska
*Hubby was appointed an elder
*Hubby had a Circuit Assembly part
*We traveled to Four Corners (NM, AZ, UT, CO)
*We had a great 6 year anniversary weekend in Santa Fe
*My sister came to visit
*We had a lovely guest stay with us during Pioneer School
*Husband got a new, much less stressful job
*Got lots of house projects done
*Walked a 5K and did pretty good
*The Cubs won the World Series
*My sister-in-law and nephew came to visit
*Had another successful Black Friday shopping outing
*Gilmore Girls was revived on Netflix
*We got our Emergency Preparedness bags completed

So actually, it wasn't that bad of a year after all! :) We'll see what 2017 brings!

A Surprise Visit

In November, my husband and sister-in-law pulled off a major surprise. I was expecting some overnight guests from Ohio, and instead, in walked my sister-in-law and one of my nephews from Nebraska! It was the most surprised I've ever been in my life.

We had SUCH a great time. We went to the observatory, the aquarium, relaxed at home, and ended our visit with a drive up to the top of the mountains.

It was the best gift ever. My husband is amazing! He always knows just what I need. :)

Duke City 5K

Earlier this year, I signed myself and my husband up for the Duke City 5K run. I'm not sure what inspired me as I hate running. But I thought it might be fun. A couple days before the run though I was at Urgent Care with an awful sinus infection. So race day came on Saturday and we ended up switching to the 5K walk instead of the run. It took a lot of pressure off, plus saved my lungs.

It was fun. AND we ended up both finishing first in our age class. Not too shabby!!!

Kitchen Cabinets

Wow, it's been a while! I was going to do just one giant post about everything that's going on since I posted last, but I decided to break it up a little. I basically just went through the photos on my phone to see what we've been up to.

In the beginning of October, we repainted our kitchen cabinets. This was a pretty big project. We've been wanting to do it for years, but have put it off because, well, time.

Here's the before:

It was a mess. We tapped off the kitchen from the rest of the house, covered everything up, and used our garage as the painting area. Then we sanded, primed, and painted.

And here are the beautiful afters: