Christmas Card

 So, this year I made homemade Christmas cards (see above!). Annnd, since they were homemade we decided we'd just send them to family. But I wanted to send some Christmas love to my friends, too! So here is your digital Christmas love :)

Okay, so for a year recap...here it goes! (WARNING: LOOOONG.)

2011: This has been a really BIG year for the Pepper family! We started the year off living in Texas. I had some great friends there and we were relatively happy, but Drew wasn't quite satisfied with his current position in his job. He applied for a Marketing position within his company and a couple months later he was offered the job, which meant we were moving to North Carolina!

I was also pregnant. Very, very pregnant. We were a little unsure of how it was all going to work out with a newborn, but we felt we were supposed to move on to NC, so we walked blindly towards not only having our baby, but also the move.  Grace Kathryn was born March 7th and we are so blessed and excited to welcome a sweet baby girl to the family.

Sooo...about 2 weeks later we were in the car driving to the east coast! I don't know how we did it, but we did. I am so excited and proud of Drew for getting his promotion. He really is an amazing man.

Also before we left, Luke turned 2! That should have been a super fun time for him, but on his birthday he had strep and pneumonia at the same time, so it was a really awful time. At least he got presents (that he made me open).

Where we live is only 2 hours away from Drew's uncle & aunt and 4 hours away from his grandparents. So we've spent a lot of time with both since we've been here. We've been very fortunate to have his grandparents close because they're willing to drive here and watch the kids almost any time we need it. Which is a huge blessing. In August we went to Myrtle Beach with said grandparents and Drew's parents and brother and lots of that side of the family. It's an annual shindig and I love it because I'm a beach girl! Later that month Luke, Gracie, and I went to Utah to welcome Baby Ethan (my nephew) to the world! It was a lot of fun.

However...while we were in Utah I had a big migraine episode. I continued to have them once I came back to NC and they were so bad that I decided to go to a neurologist. After a LOT of tests, it was determined that I just had some crazy migraines. I'm not having them anymore, which is nice, but it was scary while it lasted.

Drew also had another surgery. The year before he had surgery to fix a torn ACL but it never felt quite right to him. He went to have it checked and he had a bunch of cartilage that needed to be taken out before it could really heal. I was able to go with him to his surgery thanks to my amazing friends Becca and Christal. He's healing well but still isn't playing basketball, which used to be his favorite hobby ever.

Anyway, that's about it! I celebrated my birthday in Utah with my family (without Drew, which was sad) but it was fun and I turned 25! Phew, that's old. But that's nothing compared to Drew who turned 28 this year! That's much closer to 30! Drew is loving working in an office instead of out of a car and he is looking into grad schools...again. It just hasn't been the right timing before, so we'll see what happens. I ran a 5k this year and I have BIG plans for next year as far as running goes.

Our free time... Luke: playing with Cars and talking ALL.THE.TIME. Grace: Eating. Pooping. Sleeping. Playing with toys. Drew: Watching ESPN. Playing with Legos. Kathryn: CRAFTS. and more crafts. And reading. And running.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!