Tuesday, January 3, 2017

2016 in Review

Another year in the books…  2016 has been an interesting year to say the least.

In February 2016 Cody and I went on our first trip to Orlando together.  I absolutely LOVE Orlando!!  Cody… not as much as me… but we still had a fantastic trip together!  I got to go to the newly expanded Wizarding World of Harry Potter which was phenomenal. 

Cody got to go to a Braves Spring training.
Cody and I also discovered Miller’s Ale House and their amazing zingers!  This is going to be our new “go to” place when we travel.  We also discovered that besides Orlando, that they also have locations in Miami and Las Vegas!  Yay!

We witnessed Cleveland winning it’s first Championship in forever!  Hurray for the Cavs!  We watched the game at Ace’s in North Ridgeville and I think that my favorite part of the whole thing was when Kevin Love played great defense on Curry and my dad yelled “Holy shit!  They are actually going to do it.”  And then the whole place erupted when they actually won about a minute later!!

Speaking of Championships in Cleveland… who would have thought that the Indians would have made it to the World Series and that they would almost win??  Dad, Cody, and I went to our first watch parties and we had an absolute blast!  Too bad they blew it in the end, but it was still pretty awesome.

Cody and I also celebrated our first marriage anniversary!!  Yay for being married for a year! 

Dad had his bypass surgery this year and he lost over 75lbs!  So proud of him and I’m so happy that the operation went well.
I went to the Cleveland Aquarium for the first time with Deb.  There wasn't much to the aquarium, but Deb and I had a blast trying to take a selfie with a shark in the background!


We also went on the Nautica Queens together and walked around the Flats for the first time.


North Ridgeville opened its brand new stadium and we were able to go to the stadium opener!

Chance and Amber got married this year!

 

Reggie and Holly also got married this year!

After weeks of deliberation I ended up buying a Nikon DSLR D5500 camera!  This camera takes AMAZING pictures and I’m SO excited that I was able to get it!!

With it I was finally able to get a good picture of both of my boys!


The big news of 2016 was me switching jobs!  To be honest… I never thought that I was actually going to leave Swagelok.  I would either have a bad day at work or miss some event because I was on second shift and I would start applying for new jobs… but honestly I didn’t think that I would find something better than my job there.  But I did.  Switching to 3M has been fantastic.  It is a good company and I really like the job that I got.  When I was in college I always liked my planning classes and I just feel that this position that I got at 3M is really more of a fit for me.  Being a supervisor had it’s good points, but boy did it have it’s rough points.  I’m used to having people like me, and being a supervisor the type of job where you have to enforce a lot of policies and rules that aren’t popular.  I really didn’t like people yelling at me or being difficult/rude/blaming me for holding them accountable for their own actions…  it’s a nice change to have a position that doesn’t involve that.  Another plus is that I’m not driving on 480 anymore and I’m actually always driving the opposite way of traffic.  No matter what time I leave work… my drive is still the same. Whereas coming from Solon somedays it took me an hour/hour and a half to get home.  But the biggest change that has been good is having so much more time with Cody!  It has been a dream getting to go out together during the week, watch tv together, eat dinner and going to bed together…  a lot of little things that we were missing out on that made me feel like I was missing out on our life.  I don’t regret switching positions at all.


We went to Las Vegas with my mom this year!!  It amazes me that every trip to Vegas is so similar but so different.  We went to the Bally’s brunch for the first time and it was SO delicious!  Cody also won his first football parlay and won over $900 in Vegas!  Woo!!  Somehow we still didn’t make it out to the Grand Canyon yet though…

Cody and I voted from Trump in the 2016 presidential election.  Talk about a crazy election and an unexpected outcome.  As I was watching the election coverage, I felt almost the same way as when the Cavs won the championship “Holy shit!  He might ACTUALLY do it….”  I’m just so glad that it’s over and I hope that Trump doesn’t disappoint the people that voted for him.  It’s refreshing to have our country be led by someone that is not a career politician, and I hope that he gets rid of some of the corruption in Washington.


My mom took me to my first strip show to see Thunder Down Under!  And one of the guys (Eddie) danced up on her! 



Unbelievably, Cody also came in first place for a Draft Kings contest and we got an all-expense paid trip to Dallas to watch the Dallas Cowboys in a suite.  Talk about a dream come true for Cody!  This was also both of our first times to Texas, and we really had a great trip!


 


Due to me getting a new job, we had to delay our Christmas cruise until Memorial Day 2017, so we did not get to go on a cruise this year as planned, but I guess that will just make next year even better!  Which I think transitions us into my next blog… which are my 2017 predictions!

Icon of the Seas Trip Review

The night before our cruise we stayed at Dania Point like we have in the past at the Hyatt.  We got there and tried to go swimming but the p...