Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Moving On

Ok, I am officially catching us up. We have been home from Europe for about 2 1/2 months now and I need to get over my avoidance of our blog. We just took so many pictures and were always sharing our experiences that I haven't felt like doing any of that for a little while. Not to mention that now we are home I feel like our regular, every day experiences are not "blog-worthy" - but, oh, they are and I have been selfish not to share them with everyone. Haha, ok, really I just need to do it for myself so I can have a place to vent and a place to look back and remember what we actually did during this time. So read, or don't read, but I submit our lives to the mercy of the blogging world!

First of all, we came home! It was so wonderful to see our family and friends again! Kevin and I were thrilled that we could go to the grocery store on any corner, find somewhere to eat after 8:00 at night and have more than just a suitcase full of clothes! Everything seemed so cheap compared to Europe that it took us a little while to re-adjust to our spending limit too.



As an added bonus, my brother got home from his mission the day after we got back! It made the perfect grand reunion!!







We had a great Christmas and New Years and loved being home for the holidays. As a tradition, we have bought Christmas ornaments from each place we have traveled to over the years. We got some amazing ones this last year and it was so fun to finally be able to put them all out on a tree! We have actually always been moving at Christmas time, so this was the first year we have had a real Christmas tree. Some nights we would just sit and look at it, sharing memories from each of the ornaments.



We've also had a lot of new changes. We stayed with my parents for a few weeks after we got home and then moved into a cute little apartment just north of them. I can't even say how much fun I had re-discovering all of our stuff and closing out our storage shed. I cannot believe the amount of stuff we have accumulated over the last 2 1/2 years, but it was a wonderful sight to see things that was actually ours.

Kevin, being the networker that he is, found a job almost immediately. He works as a Sales Rep for a building supply company called Lansing. He's just finishing up training, but it so great to have a real job! We get full benefits and a company car and a gas card...sigh...I am so excited to go to the dentist. Its a really great company too. He had a sales conference this week and spent all day Monday in meetings and then all day Tuesday snowmobiling! No fair!

I have been working at Singers Unlimited, the performing studio I took all growing up. My brother and sister still take there and my mom and sister work there too, so it is a nice, familiar place to be. I'm still looking for something else to do during the day, though I must say I enjoy the little time off and am keeping busy with thousands of random things!