My year
in review.  2013 was a good year, which I
am thankful for b/c odd years are historically not my favorites.  However, a lot of positive things transpired
in my life.  We built a gorgeous home and
moved to a lovely albeit country-ish community. 
Both my husband and I have been able to spend more time with friends and
family due to our move. 

I watched my son turn one year old.  As of
today, Dax is 75 weeks old (I like to say that b/c it drives my husband crazy –
to him, he is just one) and is thriving. 
He’s such a funny little big guy. 
He was 33 pounds
at his 15 month well baby visit and still growing like a weed.  I love his intelligence too.  He has a handheld “computer”
that he loves to play with and repeats almost every
letter/number/animal sound it makes.  His
vocabulary is great for his age and he can say his name, mama, dada, Papa, Nana,
GiGi, Pawpaw, uh-oh, bye-bye, eat, shoes, teeth, stinky, mmm… good, bubba (as
in Bubble Guppies), the list goes on.  He can brush his teeth (you know, sort-of) and feed himself with a spoon
(still messy but he gets the job done). 
Reading is one of his favorite activities.  We started reading to him from day 5 – as
soon as we got home from the hospital.  I
highly recommend it.  He loves books and
received a ton of them for Christmas. 

I’ve also
had a good year with my business start-up. 
Sure, I haven’t made any real money but I’ve had a blast and reaffirmed
that what I want to eventually do is run it full-time.  My blog has grown a bit.  I have more readers and more interest in my
style posts, especially.  You get what
you give so I know I need to give more but time does get away from me as
blogging is low on the priority list.

I’m
pretty proud of myself for losing 25 pounds in 2013.  It’s not that I thought the baby weight would
just come off but I thought it would eventually come off.  Well, yes it did once I started working out
and drinking my Shakeology religiously. 
I was a Beachbody Coach for a while and I wholeheartedly believe in
their products.  My program of choice was
Slim in 6 and like I said, I drank my chocolate Shakeology every morning.  It worked so great for me but I fell off and
stopped working out and drinking my shakes and I slowly gained 4 pounds toward
the end of the year.  Boo… hiss!

Things
I’m looking forward to this year, you know, 2014 (these are not resolutions):  Potty-training!  I know it will take a couple of years for Dax to be
completely self-sufficient on the toilet but I’m excited about beginning to
teach him such a major milestone.  This
year we are going to take a family vacation so I‘m looking forward to planning
it.  We’ll probably go somewhere in Texas
so we can drive and make our lives easy. 
I don’t think I’m ready to get on a plane with the baby yet.  Maybe next year…  I’m definitely looking to grow Frenchrum
Emporium.  This will take baby steps but
I plan on adding more home goods type of inventory and focusing on designing
and sewing my own clothing for resale. 

Both the
hubs and I are determined to work on our fitness and lose a bit of weight by
our Anniversary next month.  We decided
to focus on this goal before the New Year. 
No reason to wait to lose weight! 
More than anything, we need to continue getting our house in order.  I’m so disappointed that we are still so
unorganized after living in our home for almost a year.  Again, time just gets away from me but
hopefully, I can use some of the upcoming holidays (MLK’s B-day and President’s Day) to clean, sort, organize and
continue decorating.

So there
it is, however pedestrian and generically suburban it seems, life has been
pretty good.  I count my blessings daily
and give all glory to God.  May you all
be blessed for the coming year!

Random Icy Backyard pic