2017 in Review

Here we are at the end of 2017!


January 2017

Frozen all over Europe!

We celebrated 2017 with lots of fireworks
It snowed for the first time!
Danita and Fern came to visit us!
We traveled to Marburg, Rothenburg, Munich, Dachau Concentration Camp, Neuschwanstein Castle, Innsbruck, Zurich, Strasbourg and Heidelberg, finally showing them Muenster

February 2017

Nyhavn in Copenhagen. 14 February

We'd lived in Germany for six months!
We went to Copenhagen, Denmark during the semester break
We spent Valentine's Day in Copenhagen
Found out that Lindsay was pregnant (February 17)
Made a last minute trip to Cologne for Karneval 

March 2017

Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. 26 March

Lindsay turned 28

We went to Cleveland for Chris and Megan's wedding
We lost our fourth baby

We went to Berlin for the Fulbright Conference

April 2017

Temple of Poseidon in Sounion, Greece. 1 April

Amsterdam, Netherlands. 18 April

We went to Greece with some of our Fulbright family!
We traveled back to Munich for a symposium
Fulbright family came to visit over Easter
We did Amsterdam in an afternoon!

May 2017

Prinzipalmarkt on our 7th anniversary. 22 May

Colosseum in Rome. 27 June

The first half of this month wasn't busy at all! Things got a little crazier starting on the 20th when we headed to Bavaria. Other than that, we hoped for warmer weather in Germany, and spent time there.
Carson went to Groningen in the Netherlands for a conference
Met up with some Fulbright Family in Würzburg where Carson ran a half marathon
We celebrated seven years of marriage
The Kings met us for a long weekend in Rome!

June 2017

Berliner Dom in Berlin, Germany. 11 June 

June seemed to pass by quickly and felt busy, even though it really wasn't so much. We traveled for over a week, which took up some time, but we also stayed in Munster for quite some time.
Lindsay had surgery

My parents came to visit! We traveled to Munich, Neuschwanstein Castle, Berlin, Munster and Amsterdam with them.

July 2017

Hohensalzburg Fortress, Salzburg, Austria. 3 July.

Louvre Pyramids, Paris, France. 5 July.

Glencoe, Scottish Highlands. 12 July

Bluffton, South Carolina. 27 July

Family get together. 30 July

This was a busy month that passed so quickly from all the travel and activities
Carson attended a conference in Salzburg
Lindsay went to Paris with Jaime
We visited Edinburgh, Scotland for a conference

We marveled at how quickly a year had passed in Germany and moved back to the States
We spent a little over a week in Beaufort

August 2017

We returned to Tallahassee
We went to Jacksonville for Grayson's second birthday party

Carson went back to Berlin for a conference
School and work started in Tallahassee
We went tubing in the Florida panhandle

Carson's rafting trip

September 2017

We went to the beach
We survived Hurricane Irma
Tuck joined the family

October 2017

The Coluccis came to visit
Halloween
Family trip to Clearwater

November 2017

Epcot Wine and Dine Festival
SBL in Boston
Thanksgiving in Beaufort

December 2017

Carson turned 31
Christmas in Maryland

2016 In Review

Well, this has been quite the year!

I wouldn't say that this year was a roller coaster so much as a speeding train. It felt very full and very busy. We grew, we became more settled in our church and life in Tallahassee, just in time to pack up and move away from it for a year. It will be interesting to see what happens in the next year as we return and readjust. Will we pronounce all our "W's" as "V"? Time will tell!

I feel a little guilty for how our life probably looks on this blog. Oh of course you know we aren't perfect and that we don't just have fun, but I can totally see how it might look like that. We did a LOT of travelling this year. We did it as inexpensively as we could, and thankfully earlier in the year we had air miles to help us out and Carson got some conferences funded so I was able to tag along, but wow, what a year on the go. With the exception of June, I think we went somewhere every single month this year. 

We got to see some neat places in the US and got to spend quality time with some pretty fantastic people. It's good that we got those times in, because we moved to Germany in August and we no longer had the freedom to drive to see family over the weekend. Once there though, we did have the freedom to see new places. We visited a total of five countries (Germany, Austria, United Kingdom, Bulgaria and Spain) and quite a few cities in Germany (Frankfurt, Marburg, Heidelberg, Göttingen, Kassel, Rüdesheim, Wiesbaden, Mainz, Cologne, Dortmund, Hamburg, Düsseldorf).

We hope that 2017 is a great year also. I'm looking forward to seeing what's in store. I think we'll see some new cities and countries, and I think it will be another busy year. We've got our hopes up about what it will hold... can't wait to see!

For now though, here's a recap of what we did in 2016 with lots of links to specific posts!

January

We go to Taco Bell every New Year's Day as part of a weird pact we made in 2011

We rang in 2016 on our couch

We went to Maryland for MLK weekend and had a great (albeit freezing) time!

Took on some refinishing projects and rearranged our living room

Carson was sick a lot and Lindsay worried about him getting pneumonia but he was stubborn about going to the doctor.

February

Tampa's Lowery Park zoo

Valentine's Day

Leap Day - I feel like since we get an extra day once every four years, it should really just go ahead and be a day that's free from work. Who's with me?

The Deer Cousins Birthday Weekend: We went to the zoo and IKEA in Tampa with Morgan, Caleb, Grayson and Sydney.

March

Governer's Palace in Williamsburg

Lindsay turned 27, which seems a lot closer to 30 than previously thought.

We went to Colonial Williamsburg for a conference

Easter

FSU High Flying Circus

Even though Florida winters are mild, this month stated pretty chilly. Last March we went to the beach, but we had far fewer warm days.
We found out that Carson was awarded a Fulbright scholarship and we were moving to Germany!

April

Carabelle Beach

We went to the beach! Since we found out about Germany, we realized we needed to make the most of our Florida beaches!

I went to St. Petersburg/Clearwater to see Christina and Caleb
We went to a local art festival

We also spent a lot of time with Josh and Christina this month. We got together on Wednesdays as a community group, but the group sort of split up and it was just the Bays and the Kings, so we had an unofficial weekly standing date from mid-April until we were jerks and left for Germany.

May

Top of the Rock in New York City

We took an anniversary trip to New York City!

We celebrated six years of marriage. This apparently sounds like a very big number because it gets a "wow, SIX?" response from a lot of people.

Carson went to a conference in Austin and another in Chicago

Morgan, Grayson and Mom all visited

Carson aced his first comprehensive exam!
I refinished our dresser by myself and got Carson to update our coffee table

June

Lafayette Heritage Park 

We did our best to get more steps in this month! We took lots of walks and a few hikes

We celebrated Christina's 30th!

We did some packing and prep for our move

Carson passed his second comprehensive exam! 

July

Anastasia Beach in St. Augustine

Granddaddy and Grandmama's dock in Beaufort

July was a fun month! 

Went camping in St Augustine for the weekend of the 4th

Lindsay was part of the second annual "Writing Class Girls" reunion, in St Pete this year

Did our very best to do as much as we could with people while also packing and working

We packed up in Tallahassee and spent the last few days of the month in Beaufort

August

Far too many bags, but ready for adventure

Philosopher's Walk in Heidelberg

At the castle in Salzburg

Spent the first few days of the month in Beaufort and then in Atlanta with family!
We moved to Germany!
We spent most of August in Marburg, Germany for language classes but on the weekends, we definitely got to explore!

We traveled to Heidelberg for a day

We took a long weekend in Salzburg and in Werfen, Austria

We went to Frankfurt for Museumsuferfest
Carson took his final comprehensive exam and set a department record for speed! He is now officially a PhD Candidate and I'm so proud!

September

Rudesheim

Wiesbaden

We went to Gottingen for a day

We went to the Kassel wasserspiele for a day
We took a boat ride on the Rhine and explored Rudesheim with the Fulbright
We explored Mainz und Wiesbaden

We moved to Münster, Germany for Carson's research under his Fulbright grant
Basically the second we moved to Munster the weather decided to stay cold for good. This was expected but I was still a little sad about that.

October

On the bank of the Rhine in Cologne

Tower of London

Hurricane Matthew hit the East Coast and knocked up Grandmama and Granddaddy's dock pretty badly. More than that, many lives were lost in Haiti and homes were destroyed in the Southeast.
We visited Ben in Cologne

Jordyn, Ben and Annelyse all came to stay with us in Munster for various reasons and it was fun seeing them!
We went to London, England as a short trip
We carved a white pumpkin for Halloween 

November

Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Sofia

Seven Rila Lakes in the Rila Mountains

Ben and Julianne came to explore Munster for the day

We traveled to Bulgaria for Thanksgiving weekend (Sofia, Plovdiv, Rila Mountains)

December

Park Guell in Barcelona

We explored Munster's Christmas Markets

Lindsay went to Hamburg (Day 1, Day 2)
We had four days in Spain (Barcelona, Montserrat, La Sagrada Familia, Park Guell)
Carson turned 30 in Spain and then we explored Dusseldorf!

We spent Christmas in Germany

2015 in Review

I began compiling this post on January 15th. Nearly nothing had happened yet in 2015 and all sorts of possibilities were to be imagined. I filled in things that would probably happen each month, like our anniversary, birthdays and major holidays. There's no way to know at the beginning of the year what the following months will hold. They may be good, or they may be terrible. They may be terrible but we see them in a good light, or good, but we have different expectations and see them as bad. I love writing these recaps and putting things in over the course of a year because in just twelve months, lots happens. There's plenty that is blogged about, and also lots of things that aren't. I didn't write about the icky things that happened last March or the great conversation we had after church last Sunday, but as I compile, those things come to mind and make me thankful for the gift of remembrance.

This blog's purpose is to remember each year and to compile a snapshot of our life together that isn't complete, but can remind us of where we've come, what we looked like, what was going on. Just like whatever will happen (has happened) this year, it's imperfect and not whole, but we can be thankful for the little things, the big things, and the in between things that blogs just can't capture. So thanks for reading in 2015, for following along with us this year, and for understanding that this little blog is really just a way to capture some of the things we've done.

January 

We rang 2015 in in our apartment

Lindsay met baby Clayton in Virginia

Carson taught his first class

We made over a dresser and lived to tell about it

We went to Ocala

February

We felt very confident in our ability to make-over furniture so we stained the rocking chair, effectively ending our plans of becoming furniture refinishers.

Superbowl

We had a quiet Valentine's Day

Went to Savannah for a weekend with friends

March

Over Spring Break, we had quite the adventure:

We went to Birmingham, Nashville and Atlanta, and Lindsay went to Louisville

Lindsay had a birthday!

Morgan visited us in Tallahassee/we went to the beach for the first time!

April

We celebrated Easter in Beaufort

Zack and Erica visited Tallahassee for 24 hours

Deanna visited for a weekend

We also went to the beach on a weekday during the school year, which is impressive

May

Claire came to visit

We went to Disney World (Magic Kingdom and Epcot) with Carson's brother and family

Met my parents in Jacksonville for the weekend

We celebrated 5 years of marriage (and went to Disney World again)

Brooke and little Clayton came to visit

June

I went to Ocala for Morgan's first baby shower

and to Beaufort for Morgan's shower, which turned into an adventure

Carson drove up to Beaufort to meet me and we went to Hilton Head (part of the aforementioned adventure)

July

Jillian, Graceanna and Wren came to visit us (here)!
We went up to Thomasville for the first time!

We visited the Northwest for the first time in almost three years (recap is here)!

August

Grayson arrived

Lindsay went to South Carolina

Fall semester began 

September

Went to the first football game of the season and beat Texas State! 

Lindsay went to Birmingham for a girls' weekend

October

We went camping!

Chloe and Ricky got married in Beaufort
Carson went to Harvard to present a paper (and I don't have pictures of him so here's what I did)

We celebrated Halloween in Ocala with our first-ever group costume

November

Lindsay started a new job!

Carson went to Washington for his grandpa's funeral 

Carson went to Atlanta for a conference

We traveled to Beaufort for Thanksgiving

December

Carson's parents visited from Washington!

Carson turned 29

We celebrated Christmas in Tallahassee

Places we traveled and explored:

Virginia (January)

Savannah (February)

Nashville (March)

Louisville (March)

Atlanta (March)

Charleston (April, August)

Birmingham (March, September)
Hilton Head (June)
Washington and Oregon (July)
Panama City (September)
Cambridge/Boston (October)

A theme of this year was:
I asked Carson for help on this, and he came up with this:
Unsettled, settling, settled
For a long time we didn't feel like we had a place in Tallahasee and while it's a fine place to live, it's a little hard to be in a place with no friends and not really have a church family, so we felt unsettled. We've visited lots of churches (easily over 10) and have tried to settle at four of them. We finally feel settled in this fourth church, which we began attending in September. Because of the holidays and such we won't become members until after the new year, but we finally have a community group that we feel a part of and we are starting to feel like this is our home. The church is what made Cleveland so dear to us in such a short period of time and I'm so thankful to have finally found that here. It's nice to have friends that aren't just "nearby but still three hours (or more) away" but people who are right here who we can do life with.