By I feel like I am constantly saying that I can’t believe how fast time is flying by (and has been all year) but seriously, how is it already hours away from being 2017? Hours away from being January? Hours away from being the birth month of our baby boy?!
We kicked off 2016 in Washington, DC for a friend’s wedding. We took time to explore while we were there and soak up time with all of LW’s college friends.
I turned 30 in January, and we celebrated with friends at a local brewery. We had a trip planned to Curacao (a surprise by the ever-amazing LW) but an ice storm shut down the airport for a few days and we had to change our plans.
It worked out, as we ended up hopping on a plane in February to spend a long, Valentine’s Day weekend in St. Kitts and Nevis.
My work travel significantly slowed down this year (while LW was gone more than he was home). I only had trips in March, April, August, October and November – and for the first year ever, they were only to Boston. In March, I explored Harvard with some of my peers after a few long days of training – and I got a dance lesson from a statue.
In April, my mom and I took a trip to Sanibel Island in Florida and greatly enjoyed the time away, the gorgeous beaches, delicious food and wildlife spotting.
May was a big month! We welcomed a new nephew and the news of our own pregnancy (but we kept our secret close and quiet until July). We had friends visit us from Colorado and we took them on a tour of all of Charlotte’s breweries and to a Dave Matthews Band concert over Memorial Day.
June became busier than we expected as we started prepping our town house for sale and prepping for our big trip to Greece and Italy. It ended up that they coincided with one another and we listed our town house for sale the day before we flew to Greece and it sold on the day we landed!
We headed home from Italy in July and started talking about plans to move to Chapel Hill. It all just felt like talk at the time, but once we landed… things started happening fast and we made an offer that was immediately accepted and then had to start thinking about selling our cute bungalow in Charlotte.
Busy life continued into August as we packed our house + closed on two houses + moved, both traveled for work, took an anniversary trip to Jekyll Island to celebrate three years of wedded bliss, and of course, our most surprising moment of August was our gender reveal party where we found out our little babe is a boy!
September gave us a little chance to relax while we spent a week at Ocean Isle Beach with my in-laws. The long walks on the beach each morning with our pups was pure perfection. I also got my grad school capstone published in September – if you’re looking to be bored with academic reading, here you go.
We did a lot of house stuff in October (and well into November and December) like getting our fence put up, our built-in shelves, and our plantation shutters downstairs. I got to hear President Obama speak – which was easily one of the biggest highlights of my life. What an incredible and inspirational man! We decided to take a trip at the end of the month to Asheville to see the leaves and eat as much food as possible.
In November, we bought a new car – which is quite possibly the worst thing to ever have to do but even worse when you’re almost 8 month pregnant. We also went to a Virginia Tech football game – definitely my last one before baby and our only one this year at Lane stadium.
December has been our month of getting the nursery together and doing as many things with just the two of us as possible before little man makes his debut – including celebrating Christmas in our new house.
While it was easily one of the busiest years of our lives, it was a good one. We’re looking forward to 2017 and our new world with our son.
Chapel Hill Baby 