Happy New Year! (a little late)

Happy new year to you all! We are officially back from California. It was a great trip, lots of family, good food, presents, humor, and a ridiculous amount of travel. Lu handled the travel like a champ, although by the end of the trip she seemed pretty tired of all the moving around. The last day we were there my parents let Andy and I go on a date in Pasadena, which was super fun. We dressed up, had a nice long dinner, and got to be all hipster in LA.
And now it’s 2011! Crazy! 2010 was an eventful, stressful, and joy filled year for us. Here’s a quick list of the GIANT life events we have experienced in 2010.
• Luthien was born. We made it through birth, the first few crazy months, and have settled into a pleasant rhythm of parenting as she approaches her first birthday!
• Andy and I finally married, twice actually (I don’t like the term “got married” because I have an English major’s grudge against the word “got”, so we’ll go old fashioned on this one). Our first first anniversary is in a couple of weeks.
• We bought a house in Front Royal. We love having a nice big space, especially after our studio. It’s so neat to see Lu running around in it, getting bigger.
• We revamped our car situation so that Andy has a sweet commuter ride.
• Andy got his current job the day before Lu was born, allowing me to stay home and us to get a house.
• I quit my old job to do child-care, but found a sweet gig writing from home in October.

Andy and I talked quite a bit about our goals for this year, the biggest one being, peace and calm. We are content where we are, and since both of us tend to be ‘make things happen’ people, we are helping each other learn to enjoy the present time. We are very happy about the big changes we made in 2010, and 2011 will be about adjusting to/enjoying those changes. We are hoping this is a less tumultuous year. However there are some small things we would like to work on:

• I know it’s cliché but I want to start working out again. I’ve been a runner my whole life, but I’ve been quite a slacker since the small one was born. It’s time to get back in shape.
• We started doing night prayer together during advent and want to keep going with it in the New Year.

That’s us for now. The new and expanded Horners of 2011.