I know that the past year was sort of a bust. I don’t know how many more times I should say “I worked like crazy for the first six months and then I was so exhausted and starved for family time, that we coasted through last six months”. Maybe that will be the last time. What I do know is that in November I committed to a new blog schedule and in December I used my Life Planner to create a calendar for the month and I actually stuck with it and now on the day before January I almost have the entire next month ready to go. The last few months have left me feeling overwhelmed and out of control and I’m excited to start fresh with the next year. But before we can do that, we need to recap all the good that happened in 2014! I started sharing these “Year in Pictures” posts way back in 2009 and I never got tired of them. Just like scrolling through that Instagram feed, I am a sucker for the blog archives.
In JANUARY I recapped Christmas, and then geared up for the new year. We dubbed 2014 “The Year of Lazy” and actually followed through! I started sharing all about our love story and how Josh and I first met. We endured a crazy snowstorm and I got another great box from Stitch Fix!
We kept up with our clean-er eating in FEBRUARY. Valentine’s Day was on the horizon, so we shared some pretty fun ideas for gifting treats with your friends! Of course it was race month, so I told you all about my favorite race-day gear and later recapped my second annual half-marathon.
In MARCH, the blog moved and we finally became Taz + Belly. We followed daddy around from baseball field to baseball field, but mostly I admired his pants. Ella shared about her first dance competition of the season and we had a fun art show at their school. We rounded out the month with a super fun camping trip here and here.
APRIL is birthday month for somebody special and boy did we party hard! We didn’t do much that wasn’t centered on birthday parties or Easter celebrations, but I did unload a bit of honesty for you.
MAY is when my schedule started getting tricky and I was spending more time at work than at home. We did head to the zoo for the day, talked about four year old kindergarten and lost our sweet baby kittens to tragedy. I also shared my favorite post ever, just one more time, to celebrate Mother’s Day.
I’ll admit it, JUNE was rough. It was probably the hardest month of the year for me. I managed to make a quick appearance at the girls’ dance recital, but beyond that I barely saw my family at all and the girls spent two weeks at the beach without us. Thankfully, Josh didn’t murder me for leaving him home all alone and we managed to sneak a few fun days in there somewhere.
The month of JULY was like one giant reprieve. My trial was over and I was finally working a normal schedule with weekends and lunch breaks again. I took a week off for Staycation at home with the girls and we celebrated the second best Independence Day ever. A tree fell on our house, we broke out the slip ‘n slide and enjoyed this un-recipe way too many times.
Oh, AUGUST. You were so good to us. The girls headed back to school and we were officially a no-daycare family! Josh might have traveled a lot, but I got to join him in San Francisco for a week to celebrate our 12th wedding anniversary. You know couples weekend is our favorite of the entire year! I interviewed Ella and Sophie on their first day of school and we added Tutu Monigraff to our everyday language.
We celebrated another birthday in SEPTEMBER when Ella turned the big EIGHT! I started my first round of Whole30, we bought a trampoline and even made it to Atlanta for the opening day of college football!
In OCTOBER, I took Ella shopping and she spent all of her birthday money in one afternoon. We watched plenty of high-school football games and tailgated with some of our favorite people. We had our first bonfire of the season, talked a bit about church and celebrated Halloween with friends.
I didn’t blog very much in NOVEMBER, but that was just because I was having too much fun! I spent a much needed weekend away with some of my very best friends and I still laugh out loud when I scroll through the pictures. After a near miss at work, I managed to sneak away with my family for an entire week to celebrate Thanksgiving in the woods. I read 8 books, drank way too much coffee and cheered the Tide to victory one more time.
I’m not even sure where DECEMBER went?! It seems like I blinked and it’s all over. We made our annual trek to the tree tent and had pancakes for dinner. We had an afternoon of ice skating and finally managed to replace the front door! We squeezed in a visit to the big guy just in time for Christmas and shared our holiday cards and how we’re celebrating everything this year.
