Happy New Year!

HAPPY NEW YEAR: A recap of 2009 for the Culver family:

We had a great year! Where do I begin?

In February we headed to Denver to see Kiley for a 3 day weekend. Omaha to Denver is about an 8 hr. drive. I really don’t like driving long distances and would much rather fly, but seeing Kiley is so worth it! We were fortunate to find a great hotel (thanks to Aaron of course). While in Denver we went to Red Rock amphitheater, The Cheyenne Zoo, the downtown Denver Aquarium, The Hard Rock Cafe and much more. We really got in a lot of fun activities for such a short period of time.

In March we moved from our 2 bedroom apartment into a 3 bedroom, 3 bath condo. We love having a garage where we can park during the snowy and cold winter months. The girls and Stanley have especially loved having a big backyard to play in and Aaron enjoys having a home gym since he works out almost daily. Although we are just renting, we have decided that we will renew our lease in the spring for another year. We would love to stay in this home until we purchase our first house together next year! Cecelia also started soccer in late March. The season only ran from late March till early June. Her team never won a game and only scored 2 goals during the season, but Cecelia made one of those lucky goals! Cecelia showed great ability and played every game for the whole 50 mins.! We will be putting her in Soccer again this coming spring.

In April I celebrated my 24th birthday! Another year older, another year wiser. Aaron has always said that he wanted to experience Las Vegas before he got married…so in April, while I was on spring break from school we headed to Vegas with about 10 of our friends. We were there for 5 days and had an awesome time! We are tentatively planning on meeting a few friends in Vegas for a long weekend in September to celebrate Aaron’s birthday this year.

In May I successfully finished another semester of nursing school at Methodist. I was planning on taking clinical in the summer, however Methodist didn’t offer the particular clinical that I needed to take. Because of this my graduation date got pushed back from August of 2010 to Dec. 2010. I was very frustrated with my school but in hindsight it was probably better that way because I was trying to plan a summer wedding after all.

In June my sisters threw a bridal shower for me. The bridal shower was held in the great room at my work. Lots of family and friends from out of town were in attendance which made me so happy! The following week my best friend Karissa threw me a bachelorette party! We celebrated by going out to eat downtown at Old Chicage, heading to a few bars down town and ending the night in a suite at the Downtown Double Tree. It was such a fun night! Stephanie Nobbs who now lives in Florida and Rachel who lives in California were both in town for not only the shower but the bachelorette party as well. The celebrations wouldn’t have been the same without my best friends. Aaron took the training wheels off of Cecelia and Kiley’s bikes in June, and they almost immediately learned to ride without training wheels. After that we were taking them for daily bike rides.

In July we celebrated Cecelia’s 5th birthday!!! My goodness, where does the time go? My mom made a beautiful slide show for Cecelia which we played for her at her parties. Of course, I cried like a baby watching all the pictures of her birth and first 5 years. She is such an amazing kid! We are so lucky to have beautiful, healthy, happy kids. On July 31st Aaron and I finally were united in marriage! We had a small, intimate, perfect ceremony at Mt. Vernon rose gardens. The same district judge who married 2 of my older sisters, united Aaron and I. Cecelia and Kiley were of course our flower girls. My sister Nikki was my made of honor and Aaron’s long time friend Mikey was his best man. After the wedding our limo took us to Vivace Restaurant down town where we had our dinner reception in the party room, we ended the night celebrating with friends and family downtown before heading back to our suite at the Double tree (we love that hotel). Our wedding was amazing. Just us and 30 of our closest family and friends, I wouldn’t have changed anything! I have to thank our families for contributing so much towards our wedding in order to make it perfect.

In early August we took our honey moon. We flew to Tampa and spent 2 days with my best friend Stephanie before we boarded a cruise ship and traveled to Grand Cayman in the Cayman Islands and then to Cozumel Mexico. In Grand Cayman we went snorkeling, had lunch at the hard rock and of course went shopping. While in Cozumel we took a speed boat to an all inclusive private island where we enjoyed authentic food and drinks, and white sand beaches. The island was so beautiful, quiet and relaxing! I spent a good portion of our day there laying in a hammock reading and resting. Wow, just writing about the warm weather makes me sad… the high today in Omaha was a sizzling 6 degrees! I love, love, love the warm weather and ocean and can’t wait for summer and our next vacations. Just a few days after coming back from our honey moon we had to get in gear for Cecelia to start Kindergarten and me to return to clinicals! Lots of shopping for clothes, shoes, backpacks and school supplies. What a bitter sweet milestone in a child’s life. Cecelia actually has 3 girls with whom she attended 2 years of pre-school with in her kindergarten class with her. Plus, she got an awesome teacher. She has learned so much over the first semester of Kindergarten and we are so proud of her accomplishments!

In September we celebrated Aaron’s 27th birthday. Cecelia started Cheerleading/Pom. She enjoyed it a lot, but has decided now that she would like to return to gymnastics next fall. Cecelia is really outgoing but it seems like every time things get a little tough, she wants to give up...that's not a characteristic we would like her to have. On the other hand, do you force your child to be in an activity they thought they would like and didn't end up enjoying? Oh, the joys of being a parent. Sometimes I wish they came with a manual.

In October we did the usual activities…Vala’s pumpkin patch, carving pumpkins and trick or treating on Halloween. This year Cecelia was a witch and Stanley was the incredible hulk, it was too cute!

In November Kiley turned 8! To celebrate we headed out to Denver again. Aaron once again found another great hotel. This time we brought my niece, Mercedes with us. Since we were out numbered by kids we decided for this trip to be much more low key then our March trip. We brought presents, and cupcakes and spent our first night in the hotel eating pizza and swimming. The next day we took Kiley shopping and skating and out to her favorite restaurant to eat. We had to head home early on Sunday because Denver got almost 6 inches of snow and we were afraid the roads were going be terrible and dangerous. Fortunately, the roads were fine after we got outside of Denver. We hosted my family at our house for Thanksgiving…lots of family and lots of fun! I thought we could easily host it since our house has a lot more space. I’ve come to the conclusion that no ones home is large enough for my family. I have 5 sisters, then add their husbands and kids and our parents and it starts to get really chaotic. I'm so happy we have such a big family though.

In December I finished up another semester of nursing school. At this time next year I will have my bachelor’s degree in Nursing. I’m so excited to start working and making a significant contribution to our household. I'm so over having to work part-time and go to school. When you combine the time I spend doing both, it's really like I'm working over time...but not getting paid. Kiley was with us over the holidays. We had a really great Christmas and everyone got everything on their wish lists. It was our best Christmas yet! We finished up the new year by enjoying a nice dinner out with 12 of our closest friends and a small party at our house. It couldn't have been more fun. I loved it!

2009 was very busy. Hopefully we will continue to be blessed in 2010!