How it flew by..

It just occurred to me th at it's the end of the year. Geez, where did the time go? It's always good to reflect upon the past year and think about experiences, heartaches, hurts, God moments and blessings. I ended the sentence with blessings b/c I am much more prone to remember the others first.

Randy and I began 2011 by building a brick patio behind our house. Let me just say that it was quite a project...a project that was constructed during one of the coldest months of the year..even down here at the beach. It was very frustrating, and turned out to be much more expensive than we planned, but we love it now.

Here we go!

The finished product! yay

 After the completion of our patio, we had to build a brick walkway throughout the entire backyard which would connect the back house (guest house) to our house and the fence. (Keep in mind our backyard was a bunch of dirt). This took much longer than the patio.
In February we celebrated our 1st anniversary with an evening get away to a bed and breakfast about an hour from our house. We spent the night on Valentines Day, and oddly enough, most restaurants were closed in the town we stayed in b/c it was a Sunday night!! After much frustration, we bought a pizza from Hunt Brothers' (located in the Piggly Wiggly grocery store), and ate chocolate and some pita chips we also purchased. We completed the night by watching Sleepless in Seattle on our laptop since the B&B didn't have a tv or dvd player! It was an evening to remember.

Pathway btwn the houses before the construction

Pathway after construction

Riding bikes at the state park for our anniversary      

    

In February, I was also diagnosed with Crohn's Disease. This was quite a shock since no one else in my family has this problem with their small intestine. After a few weeks of keeping a food diary, I realized that I was lactose intolerant. I also stopped eating foods with gluten and most starches. I also had to give up vegetables such as cauliflower and brussel sprouts. It's been quite a challenge to change my our food lifestyle. I began making breakfast with almond meal, and lunches and dinners without any dairy products. 10 months later, it's still challenging for me, as I was a cheese lover! B/c of the tests I took to diagnose the Chrohn's, I ended up losing 4 pounds..which is a lot for someone who hardly weighs anything to begin with. Packing on the pounds is not something that I can easily do, and it's been quite a battle.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       In March we continued working on our brick pathway, and finally completed it towards the end of April. I can't tell you what a relief it was! It told Randy I never want to do brick work again!! I forgot to mention that we had to put sprinklers in our front and backyard to prepare for the sod that was coming in May. Here's a pic of what our backyard looked like at one time!