2010 Recap

I've seen lots of folks doing 2010 recap posts, and I thought it might be fun to go back and look at all that happened in 2010, and share some blog posts of these highlights. We had a really fun year filled with lots of trips and great memories. And while this post shares some of the highlights, I definitely have to say that some of the best times have been not necessarily "blog worthy" but just the every day moments of living a life serving God and loving people.  So here we go:

January

A relatively quiet month. Enjoyed playing in the snow with my puppy and celebrating our newphew's second birthday.

February

Went to Colorado to visit my sister and go skiing and began training for the Flying Pig half marathon and learned a little bit from it. Also gave up sugar for lent.

March

Celebrated Derek's 26th birthday and put down flooring in our attic to make it a functional space to store stuff.

April

Visited with my best friend from high school, started eating sugar again after Easter, planted a garden, and went to Keenland to watch the horses race.

May

Ran my first half marathon, the Flying Pig, celebrated our 4 year anniversary, welcomed a new nephew, baby Oliver, into the world, and went on vacation with D to Marco Island.

June

Went to Young Life camp in Minnesota with some of my favorite LCA peeps.

July

Went home to Columbus for 4th of July weekend and went on vacation with Derek's family to Hilton Head, summarized in multiple posts.

August

Celebrated my birthday, and participated in the world's largest water ballon fight.

September

Paid off all our debt except for our house!

October

Went to the World Equestrian Games, went to the lake for a weekend with some friends, and took the PE Exam.

November

Went to Chicago to visit Kari, went on fall weekend with Young Life, decorated for Christmas and spent Thanksgiving with Derek's family in Northern Kentucky.

December

Welcomed our third nephew, baby Connor, into the world, made lots of Christmas cookies, experienced a mini ice storm, had a Christmas party at a castle, and celebrated Christmas with our families - with one recap post still to come! And of course just found out I passed the PE exam and become a professional engineer.

I'll be back soon with our final Christmas wrap up post of Christmas with Derek's family, but I wanted to get this little post in here while it was still 2010 :)  Hope everyone has a wonderful new year and I'll see you next year!

Christmas in Columbus

After our little trip to PA to visit our new baby nephew Connor, we headed to Columbus to spend some time with my family. Unfortunately, I needed put in some hours at work, so Wednesday and Thursday I worked from my company's office in Columbus during the day. The evenings were much more fun with time spent visiting family, going out to eat and even finishing up some last minute shopping. Columbus has great restaurants and shopping, so those are 2 of my favorite things to do when we are in town. Also, while we were in town my mom made me an appointment to get a manicure and pedicure. I LOVE my pretty fingers and toes.

On Christmas Eve we had dinner J. Liu's which is a super yummy restaurant and it was my first time going there. Jason Liu, the owner was there walking around to tables and greeting everyone, which I thought was cool, especially since it was Christmas Eve. It began snowing while we were eating. After dinner we went to the candlelight Christmas Eve service at the church I grew up in. I love singing Silent Night in the glow of candles on Christmas Eve. It stopped snowing while we were in church but it snowed enough to recover the ground. Then we drove around my parents neighborhood and looked at Christmas lights. We finished up the evening with me, Derek and my parents reading Christmas books in the family room. I read the Berenstein Bears Christmas Tree, my dad read How the Grinch stole Christmas, and my mom read Twas the Night Before Christmas. Then my parents went to bed and Derek and I stayed up. I read Eloise at Christmas Time to him. Its one of my favorites, but a little long and my parents didn't have it in them to stay up for it. I fell asleep on the couch while Derek watched the Christmas Story. He woke me up when it was over and we went to bed.

We slept in a little on Christmas morning. When I woke up I saw a handmade Christmas card on my dresser. Derek made it for me while I was sleeping through the movie. Then we went downstairs and opened up presents with my parents. We got lots of fun gifts including a super soft and fuzzy north face jacket, a pair of red Toms, some pretty new pajamas, jeans sweaters and a new fancy pants camera! I am so excited to learnn how to use it and takes lots of pretty pictures. (I had some of the cutest subjects to test the new camera out on at Christmas with Derek's family, but you'll have to wait for those in another post - this one is getting pretty long.)

After opening up our gifts we ate some breakfast and then got the house ready for Christmas with my extended family, who all showed up at 12:30. We exchanged gifts, (I got more clothes and lots of other things I asked for :) and ate yummy Christmas lunch/dinner together. I love that all of my extended family lives so close and we are able to get everyone together for the holidays. I wish that I got to see them more often, but was happy that we were all able to be together on Christmas.  After some quality family time we packed up and headed down to Northern Kentucky to celebrate Christmas again!

Pass!

I had the next installment of our Christmas celebration wrap up all written out and ready to post today, but it will have to wait just a bit longer, because yesterday I found out that I passed the PE exam and am now an official licensed Professional Engineer! If you've been around here for a little while you know that I spent some of Auguest and nearly all of September and October studying for this fun little 8 hour exam over all things civil engineering, so to have passed it on the first go round is a huge relief and blessing. Thanks to all you who prayed for it, I know that helped carry me through that marathon of a day. I'll be back soon with more Christmas!

Christmas Wrap Up

We're back in Lexington! We left the evening of Saturday the 18th after the Castle Christmas Party and drove up to Columbus. We spent the night at my parents house, left Moose with them and headed to Indiana, Pennsylvania to visit Kevin and Kayla and our newest nephew, Connor! We stayed there Sunday and Monday and headed back to Columbus on Tuesday. We stayed in Columbus until Saturday evening celebrating Christmas with my family. I also worked from our company's Columbus office Wednesday and Thursday so I didn't have to take an entire week of vacation. Saturday evening we packed up all our Christmas gifts and Moose and drove down to Northern Kentucky to celebrate Christmas with Derek's side of the family. We stayed in Northern Kentucky Sunday and Monday and drove back to Lexington today.

breath.

Needless to say, I have a lot to do around this place the next few days, but am also trying to get in as many hours at work as possible so I can take as little vacation time as possible. So I will be breaking up Christmas celebration details into multiple posts. It's more manageable that way and I have loads of pictures I need to get organized and put on the computer.

So for now I will `leave you with some pictures from our trip to PA and little bitty baby Connor.

Derek's Aunt and cousins holding Connor - ignore the Doritos bag ;)

Kevin, Kayla, Aunt and cousins with Connor:

Derek and Connor:

Connor is absolutely precious. I love just holding him while he sleeps. He is so sweet. And I love all of his dark hair. We got to see him again in Northern Kentucky so I will have some more baby Connor pictures coming soon, as well as details on the rest of our long Christmas trip.

Christmas Cards

A few weeks back I posted about Shutterfly's holiday cards, and how we decided to do a picture card this year. We got our amazingly talented friend Jenna to come over a take a couple of pictures with us and Moose. We are in love with how they turned out, and also with how the Christmas cards look. When they came in the mail we were so excited. So I thought I would share with you the 2010 Warnick family Christmas card:

Family Frame Christmas Card

Shop Shutterfly.com for elegant Christmas photo cards.

View the entire collection of cards.

Merry Christmas!

Castle Christmas Party

Saturday night we have my work Christmas party. At a castle! Just outside Lexington sits this caste:

picture from here

Someone started building it a while ago for his wife, then they got divorced and it was never finished. In the last few years it was finished and has been turned into a bed and breakfast. Everytime we drive past it we always wonder what it looks like inside. So when I found out we were having out Christmas party for work there I was super pumped! I did my best to take pictures, but it was kind of difficult to capture it all. Here are a few phots from the evening.

Walking inside the walls:

The fountain covered in ice:

These were the only outside pictures since it was dark and hard to get a good pictures. This fountain was in the gardens where there was also a swimming pool and tennis courts. There was shuffle board up on the roof.

Inside:

Here are some pictures from one of the rooms:

I forgot to take a picture of the dining room where we ate and the billiards room where we hung out after dinner. It was all beautiful though. And I got to wear my favorite dress! (Ignore the mess in the background - we left for Columbus right after the party and so that was the messy state of us finishing packing up.)

Thank you PB for such a great Christmas party. Also - the food was AMAZING! They don't have a freezer there, so everything is made fresh from local ingredients. It was all so good I never wanted to stop eating. I really hope we go back next year!

It's the Ice Again!

One of the good things about living in central Kentucky is that we don't get a whole lot of snow. A few inches is a big deal around here. The not so good thing about living in central Kentucky is the ice storms. Growing up in Columbus, Ohio I had never experienced in ice storm in the first 18 years of my life. Then my sophomore year of college we got a big one. As in UK cancelled a few days of classes. Tree limbs were so weighed down with ice that they were touching the ground. Power lines sagged or even broke becuase of the weight of the ice. It was unlike anything I had ever seen. It was kind of like what you would picture the end of the world to look like.

A couple years ago, we had another pretty big ice storm. I think UK cancelled classes for that one too. My parents came down the following weekend, after a lot of it had already melted and were still amazed by the amount of ice on everything. There are trees in our neighborhood that still don't look the same because they lost so many limbs from the storm.

This morning, I am working from home because we have yet another ice storm. This one is not nearly so bad as the last two, but anytime you get ice accumulating on roads, trees and powerlines it's a little scary. Here are a couple pics from my yard.

And here is my coworker today - he is obviously having a very productive day!