2007: Quiet before the storm

I briefly thought about naming this post: “2007: the Year of Carrie’s Pregnancy,” but decided that seemed too self-absorbed though it probably fits better.

In the same vein as last year, here’s a summary of our year.

January:
Carrie goes to Oregon to surprise her cousin Julia for her 21st birthday. We celebrate with delicious food, awesome crafting, fun movies, dips in the hot tub, and lots of family time.

February:
Carrie turns 27 years old. We celebrate with Kenny and Yuni at the UC Berkley Botanical Gardens. David rocks his first annual review. We also attend a Kenyon College alumni event up here in wine country. We even visit the beach since it’s 75 degrees out.

March:
Laura visits us on her spring break. We tour wineries, hit the San Francisco sights (including the modern museum), visit the beach, and eat a ton of great food. Also this month, Carrie begins volunteering at the Luther Burbank Home and Gardens.

April:
David visits Tokyo, Japan for work and has a fantastic time eating lots of sushi and touring the city! Also this month, we think about buying a townhouse, but decide the housing market is about to crash. (Thank goodness we waited. Oh boy have prices dropped here in California.)

May:
David transitions over to a new position at work that they created especially for him. We head to Ohio for Laura’s graduation! We see many dear friends and family and finally get to meet Laura’s college friends. Carrie takes a Japanese ceramics class.

June:
We learn that we’re pregnant! (Evidently David just needs to look at Carrie to knock her up!) Carrie spends a day with Kenyon friends Amanda, Abby, and mentor Siobhan, tagging along on a wetlands tour of Napa County.

July/August:
David turns 27 and we celebrate our 2nd wedding anniversary. We have a string of visitors: Carrie’s aunt Deborah-Miriam and cousin Julia, David’s brother Lee and his girlfriend Geneva, Carrie’s mom, and friends Josh and Adam. We make it to the second trimester and finally share the news with friends and family.

September:
We take a fantastic natural building workshop and camp out on site for the week. We learn a ton, feel so inspired, meet wonderful people, and have one awesome family vacation. Also that week David begins a graduate level computer science course online at Columbia.

October:
Carrie begins attending two prenatal yoga classes and meets some awesome people. We move from our one-bedroom apartment to a two bedroom-house rental. We start having regular dinners (and knitting nights) with the West County crowd once every other week.

November:
We celebrate our important anniversary. Carrie’s mom visits and we spend the week getting ready for the baby’s arrival. David heads to Colorado for work and spends some quality time in Fort Collins with his brother (with a quick stop in our beloved Boulder). Kate-Robin flies up from San Diego to celebrate Thanksgiving with us. Carrie also moves this blog into WordPress and it’s so. much. better.

December:
Baby presents start to arrive! Natalia comes to visit. Carrie joins a mama-baby group, makes more new friends, and then is put on bedrest. We also hear lots of good news, including that David rocks both his grad class this semester and his end-of-year review, which earns him a promotion. We see Selena for the first time in almost a decade and meet her boyfriend Taka. And spend much of the month getting ready for the baby… We’re finally in the home stretch!

Overall, we’ve had a fantastic year. We both feel that right now we are the happiest we’ve ever been in our lives. We’ve met wonderful friends (one of our big goals for the year) and been much more social this year, we’ve each maintained a regular yoga practice, we’ve traveled and seen many friends and family (as described above), and we’re on the cusp of becoming parents.

As awesome as this year was, we are so excited for the year to come. Happy New Year!