2010: Year in Review

Since we weren’t blogging in 2010, here’s a quick run-down of what we were up to last year:

January: Jennifer went on a work trip to Washington, DC, with a side work trip to Annapolis, MD. She can recommend a few good restaurants if you're interested. Ed and his dad went to re-fight WWII at MMP's annual Winter Offensive in Bowie, MD.

February: Jennifer didn’t get the flu (up until this point, she would get the flu just before Valentine’s Day, like clockwork)! We went to the Wisdom for the Heart banquet on Valentine's Day--always a good time.

March:  Ed and his dad again went to a WWII ASL tournament, the Bitter Ender, in Raleigh, NC. Jennifer, her mom, and her grandmother went to Myrtle Beach, SC for a women's retreat and had fun together.

April: We went to Charlotte, NC to see Bill Cosby live. We did a lot of little projects around the house: more canning (pineapple jam), making two rain barrels, starting a garden, and some more baking (bread, pizza, and pretzel rolls).

May: We finished up the BSF year and stepped down as leaders. We went to the Biltmore Estate and finally got to see the flowers in bloom (until then, we’d only been there at Christmas time, which is nice, but we really wanted to see the flowers). 

June: Jennifer finished her first (and, so far, only) year of Chinese lessons at work. We went to colonial Williamsburg for the third time in a year, the first time in hot weather (we had to get our money's worth out of our year-long passes!).

Parade in Williamsburg, VA in June



July: Jennifer went on a work trip to the Dominican Republic. She'll talk a little more about this in the future. Stay tuned. Oh, and we canned some fresh cherries in a light syrup and saw Erwin Lutzer guest-preach at Colonial Baptist Church.

August: Ed got a new job (yay!) at Aqua-Aerobic Systems, Inc. in Illinois. Before starting his job at the end of the month, he went to Florida to help with some work at his grandmother’s house. We and Alexis also went to a Tears for Fears (TFF) concert (which was super fun) in Charlotte.

September: The movers packed us up (which feels really weird but is nice when you’re moving that far away) and Jennifer prepped the house to go on the market. Lots of painting and cleaning. Jennifer and Alexis went to another TFF concert over Labor Day weekend in Richmond, VA and got to be in the front-ish row (the “rows” were sort of fluid—standing room only). The next weekend, the girls (Jennifer, her mom, Ed’s mom, and Alexis) went to a theatrical performance of Mary Poppins in Charlotte. The performance was good and we had a good time together. Later in the month, Jennifer flew to visit Ed and unpacked a lot of our stuff (we didn’t know Jennifer would be moving in October back when we bought the non-refundable plane tickets).

October: Jennifer moved to IL to be with Ed and work her NC job remotely. We went to Ed's cousin's wedding in MI. Jennifer went on another work trip to Miami, FL and met a child star. Ed joined a community band because they had a bassoon he could use.

November: We got a water softener for our apartment (due to a chunky brewed tea incident...yeah). We canned some kiwi preserves because kiwi were 8/$1; it's really good, by the way. For Thanksgiving, we went to Minneapolis-St. Paul to visit with some friends from our church in NC who had relocated there. We also discovered that Jennifer apparently can handle the drum part on Rock Band.

December: We went to FL to visit with Ed’s grandmother and her side of the family for Christmas. While we were there, we went to The National Navy UDT-SEAL Museum. After that, we spent way too much time watching movies and shows on Netflix, but we needed some down-time as we recovered from colds (again).



At the beach in Ft. Pierce, FL

So, those are last year's highlights for us. We are so thankful that God provided for our needs, especially a job for Ed, and that He still is providing.