One of the most time and money consuming efforts for us in 2013 was building our house. Towards the end of 2012 and the first 4 months of 2013, all of Cody and my time was spent on building our home. We went to check on our house at least 2 to 3 times a week... every week! I'm very proud of how diligent I was with my blogs throughout that whole process.
We signed the papers and got the keys to our house on March 28th. We were both so thrilled and excited. Everything was a first for us... from opening the door for the first time, to putting on a roll of toilet paper... everything was awesome. The most stressful part about building our house was actually picking out the paint colors for the walls. We agreed on almost everything else, but the paint colors took us a lot of time to figure out. We also painted ourselves which was a long weekend!
We moved into our house on April 7th with the help of my family members! It was a quick and easy process. Everyone pitched in and it seemed like it didn't take us much time at all. I'm pretty sure by 2pm everyone was gone. Cody and I worked throughout the rest of the night though and we actually had everything put away and organized after that first night.
This was also the year of Hannah and Kyle's wedding. We actually had Hannah's wedding shower at our new house. This was probably the biggest and only true fight Cody and I have ever gotten into. He was really concerned that something was going to happen to our brand new house and he was upset that I agreed to host a party in it about a week after we had moved in without consulting him first. We ended up making up and Hannah's wedding shower turned out gorgeous and nothing ended up happening to the house.
Hannah's bachelorette party was in Put In Bay. This was the first time that I had ever been there. Minus our mean hotel people who wouldn't let us all stay in the same room and didn't have any more rooms (Hannah and two other girls ended up having to stay at a different hotel), and our limo breaking down on the way there.... we had a blast on Put in Bay!! There were a ton of bars to hop around to and we all had a lot of fun.
Hannah and Kyle got married on June 8th 2013. Hannah and I had been through so much together and I was so happy for her on her big day.
Cody and I celebrated our 2 year dating anniversary at Carrie Cerinos, where we would end up getting married two years later.
Krista, Deb, and the kids came up to hang out with us for Memorial weekend and we had a blast!! We went to the zoo, played at the mall, went to the Berea rib cookoff, and just overall had a fun time together. We loved having them over and it was so much fun to get to go around to places with them.
This is probably my favorite picture I've ever taken (yes even two years later) of Kelsie! I just love this picture from the rib cook off. She went into a giant ball and ran around in it. As she was getting out I snapped this picture of her, and I've always thought it was super adorable!
We had a big Mother's Day celebration in the new house with my grammy, mom, and aunt Karen. This is probably one of the best recent pictures that we have of the four of us.
We went to Hancock over the 4th of July for Kelsie's birthday. We took a TON of pictures with all of the family that day too!!
We went back to Hancock again in the fall for Bridget's wedding.
Hannah, Kyle, and Sam came over to help us pass out candy for the first Halloween in our new house.
We hosted our first family holiday and started the tradition of having Thanksgiving at our house. Our families blended together and shared the holidays together. We stayed and played cards all night which has also turned into a tradition.
We went back for a short trip to Vegas, and we stayed in a wrap around balcony suite at the Cosmopolitan. It was the most amazing view ever!! I think that this was the most impressive hotel room that I've ever stayed in my life!
The BIGGEST event of 2013!!! Cody proposed to me on 12/23/13 at Prime restaurant in the Bellagio! His proposal was so sweet and so well thought out.
After Vegas we went to California for a couple day trip. We went on our first ever trip to Disneyland. I really enjoyed the day, but boy were we tired afterwards! We went super hard all day and rarely took breaks. I like to think I've learned my lesson from the pace we took that day, and I hope our future trips to Disney are less tiring.
We spent a couple days in LA. Had fun, but the traffic and parking was crazy!!
We went on a tour of Warner Brothers Studios. I think this was the most fun that we had during our trip and it made our trip to California for us. We'd love to go back on another tour of Warner Brothers because I think the tours could be different every time you go on it.
We also went to Universal Studios Hollywood for a day. We mostly wanted to go on the back lot tour. I think we went on a few other attractions, but that was the main one we wanted to go on. It seems like for such a big park there really wasn't a whole lot to do at Universal, but hopefully they'll keep expanding the park and adding things to it.
Overall, 2013 was a huge year for us. We finished building our home, had tons of great memories with our friends and family, and we got engaged to each other! You can't really ask for a better year than that!
