2009 - Our Year in Review

Now that I am married and have a family, I keep thinking every year that I should write a Christmas letter.  It hasn't happened yet.  In fact, this year, I didn't even make a Christmas card!
However, 2009 has been a pretty eventful year for us.  So, if I had written a Christmas letter, here's what might have been in it.
In January, we enjoyed a visit with my brother Josh and his fiancee Suzanne.  While they were here, we celebrated Christmas together up in Banff, threw them a bridal shower, and celebrated my mom's birthday.  A week or so after they left, I began feeling inexplicably nauseous.  After a few days of no other symptoms besides nausea, I realized that I was not coming down with the stomach flu that the rest of my family had had prior to Christmas and sent my husband for a pregnancy test.  Sure enough, we discovered, to our surprise, that our second little one was on the way!  We had hoped to have our kids pretty close together, so we were very excited with this news. 
In February, we celebrated Cole's first birthday.  We had a party with family and a couple of friends, and I made him a monkey cake.  Cole enjoyed digging into his little teddy cake that his daddy decorated for him.  He was such a mess at the end that he had to have a bath in the sink!  Although my maternity leave was over, we had decided before having kids that, if at all possible, we wanted for me to be able to stay at home with them.  I've always wanted to be a stay at home mom, and we both felt that it was important for us to raise them ourselves as much as possible.  So I applied for a year of unpaid leave from my job and began doing adoption and foster care home assessments on contract for a private agency.  This allows me to set my own hours, so for the most part, I'm only away from home when Jeff is home to take care of the boys, and I do my paperwork from home.  I've always enjoyed doing home assessments, although I have found finding the time to type them challenging with a toddler around!
In April, I also took a very part-time, temporary job at our church, leading the children's ministry.  In addition to recruiting and organizing volunteers, my job involved teaching the grade school class on Sunday mornings.  I'll admit, I was a bit intimidated.  In the past, I've only worked with the little ones - toddlers and preschoolers.  I was pleasantly surprised to find that I really enjoyed working with the older kids.  I enjoyed being able to have more in depth conversations with them, and see when they were really grasping what we were teaching. 
In June, Jeff, Cole and I took a trip down to Seattle to visit Josh and Suzanne, and my mom's family.  Mom came with us too.  We drove down, and Cole did great on the trip.  It helped to have an extra person along to entertain him.  We had a great time visiting with Josh and Suzanne, seeing the sights of Seattle, seeing where they planned to get married, and visiting mom's family.  We were there for Father's Day and had a barbeque at my aunt and uncles house, with my Grandpa and Grandma.  It was really special to be able to introduce Cole to his only living great-grandparents. 
In July, Jeff's brother Lawrence and his wife and son visited us.  We enjoyed having them here.  Cole liked having his older cousin here to play with.
In August, Josh and Suzanne got married.  Unfortunately, we had to miss the wedding, as it was only 2 1/2 weeks before Zach was due, and we didn't feel it would be safe to travel that far, especially out of the country, that close to his due date.  Given how quickly he arrived, that was probably a good decision!  I was very sad to miss the wedding, but got to see pictures and it looks like it was a beautiful day. 
On Labor Day weekend, we went out to Rowley and Drumheller for a Hansen/Ells family reunion.  We were a little nervous about going so close to my due date, but I really didn't want to miss it, so we took the chance.  We had a great time at the big family dinner in Rowley and brunch in Drumheller on Sunday. 
On Monday morning, Labor Day, I woke up around 5 am to use the bathroom.  When I went back to bed, I started having contractions and couldn't go back to sleep, so I got up to walk around and see if they would subside.  At 7, I decided it was probably time to wake Jeff up and head to the hospital.  We made it there with 20 minutes to spare and Zachary Arthur Lawrence Franklin was born at 8:34 am, after 3 very quick hours of labor.  A lot of women hate me for that! :)  Cutting it so close, I did the entire labor and delivery drug and intervention free, which was what I had really wanted.  Zachary weighed 7 lbs. 8 oz, and was 19 1/2 inches long.  We think he is going to have red hair, but right now, he's pretty bald, so it's hard to tell!  He was healthy from the start and continues to do very well.  My mom stayed with us for a few days after Zach was born to help out.  It was wonderful to have an extra set of hands to help out as we adjusted to having two children.  Cole has done very well with the adjustment and is a very affectionate and helpful big brother.  But, like any toddler would, he has moments of jealousy.  His current opinion is "Mama is Cole's and baby is dada's!" 
In October, Jeff's parents came out to visit for a couple of weeks.  We enjoyed having them here for Thanksgiving.  Cole warmed up to his grandparents quite quickly and really enjoyed the extra attention and playmates.  Unfortunately, the end of their visit was a bit marred by Cole's first bout with croup!  A couple of weeks after they were here, we found out that Jeff's dad needed open heart surgery.  In November, he had quadruple bypass surgery.  We are very thankful that he came through the surgery well and is recovering. 
In November, my dad turned 60.  We celebrated with a big family party, with over 50 people there!  The food was great and it was fun to hear everyone's memories of Dad!  We partied the whole weekend through, with a birthday party for my brother, who share's Dad's birthday, on Friday night, a party for all the November birthdays at the Danish Canadian Club on Saturday morning, and a baby shower for my cousin Chandelle and her little boy Gabe on Sunday.  It was so fun to see so much of our family on the weekend!
And that brings us to December, which of course, brings us to Christmas.  I have already posted about a lot of our events this month, so I won't bother recapping them.

All in all, it has been a wonderful year.  Our boys are a constant source of joy.  They are both so happy and are simply amazing.  Cole is learning new words and skills every day and makes me laugh all the time with the things he comes out with.  And Zach is so content and smiley and has the sweetest little giggle.  I could go on and on about them, so I will save that for another post!  For the most part, we have been healthy this year.  We've had a few stomach bugs and colds this fall, and the aforementioned croup, but are thankful that there has been nothing more serious.  I have been having problems with my gallbladder since Zach was born and apparently have numerous gallstones.  So I will likely be having surgery this coming year sometime to have that removed. 

We already have several things to look forward to in 2010.  Cole will celebrate his second birthday in February.  I've already started planning his party!  We have a new niece joining our family in April and another niece or nephew in May.  We are hoping to go visit Jeff's family in Thunder Bay in June.  And we are looking forward to another family wedding when my cousin Justin gets married in August.  I will continue to do the home assessments and may start providing care for 2 kids in March.  And we're very excited to see what else the year holds for us!

I was going to add pictures, but this post has already gotten very long, so I will do a separate post of our year in pictures!
We wish you all the best in 2010!!