A brief hello and recap; or, one last post for 2013.

Yes, this is me blogging on New Year's Eve, because I've been spending the day taking care of all those little fiddly tasks that just never quite get done because I don't want them to carry over into the new year, and that includes blogging.

I'm still pretty ashamed that I haven't blogged at all since February. It's not been a bad year, all things considered, once we finally dug ourselves out of the black hole of recurring sickness in which we were all mired when last you saw us. (It lasted until mid-March-ish, if I'm remembering correctly, but felt a whole lot longer.) I'm going to use that as the basic excuse for not blogging, because it kind of burned up my energy for the first half of the year.

But a lot of really awesome things did happen this year. Like we got a second car. Finally. Yes. The angels sang. And it's *gasp* reliable. More heavenly choruses. We call it Zippy, because cars that accelerate are kind of a new thing in our experience.

Also, my next-to-littlest sister got married to a really awesome, totally geeky guy (she gave him SLC ComiCon tickets for Christmas and I think they go to midnight showings of every superhero movie ever. With matching t-shirts. It's pretty awesome). The Little Guy likes to refer to him as Uncle Monkey, for reasons best known to himself, but A thinks it's hilarious, so it works.

My next-younger sister and her family came out to Utah to visit for a month this summer, which was great. Lots of partying and shoe shopping for bridesmaid shoes and such. They all got to be here for the wedding in the summer, so that meant extra nieces running around in floofy dresses twice the size of the girls themselves. (Also, an extra, and extra-fun, nephew running around.)

In addition to being a super geek and lots of fun, A also happens to be from California, so they had a reception there a couple of weeks after the wedding. Which meant that the rest of the family (minus next-younger sis and fam, who had to return home back east) went to California, too.

And since we happened to be Right There Anyway, we also went to Disneyland. Yes. My parents, my youngest sister, my brother and his wife and three kids, plus Shallow Man, the Little Guy and myself all went to Disneyland together and it was so much fun. We hadn't been since our honeymoon. It's a lot different with kids in tow, but still great. We took turns watching the kids so the others could go on Big People rides, and we all were impressed by the new Cars Land, which is brilliant. They got all the details just right, including the fact that every third blink of the traffic light is actually slower. Watching the Little Guy and his cousins' faces just LIGHT UP when they met Lightning McQueen and Mater and found themselves actually in Radiator Springs… well, it was worth any other hassle. I'm really glad we got to take him while he's still in the grip of Cars mania.

While we were in California, the Little Guy ate a hamburger. This probably doesn't mean anything to the rest of you, but it was a big enough deal that it made it onto this extremely abbreviated list of the year's highlights.

The Little Guy has been going to a special preschool to help him with some of his speech delays and he just loves it. The best part is that he gets to ride the school bus there. You will have to imagine the level of glee and wriggling that erupts when he sees the bus coming around the corner and he starts yelling "SCHOOL BUS!!!" because no mere words of mine can do it justice. He's actually been getting a bit annoyed with me during the holiday break because he's pretty sure that I am keeping him away from the magical school bus of hope and wonder ON PURPOSE.

The Little Guy managed to get a stomach bug on Christmas Eve so Christmas was…different. We still got all the festivities done but it was a verrrry late night. I expect it will be another couple of decades before we get to sleep in until 9:45 a.m. on Christmas again.

Shallow Man still loves his job, the getting of which is still the highlight of 2012 (which is never going to get a year-in-review post. It was just too hard in too many ways to want to relive it. I decided this probably sometime in March this year, which is another reason I hadn't blogged). It's amazing the difference it's made to have him working someplace that is so good for/to him.

Shallow Man also decided to go and catch pneumonia again this last week (probably just walking pneumonia, but STILL; you'd think he'd have had enough sickness earlier this year) so we're quarantined at home for New Year's Eve and it's actually been really nice. Not least because it gives me the excuse to get in my pajamas by, oh, seven.

Which is kind of what I've been doing every day since October anyway, because I'm pregnant again. Yeah, I can barely believe it myself, but we're very excited. I'm due the end of June (a couple of weeks after my sis-in-law; we're excited to be due so close together and are hoping for "cousin twins"—please note we are only having one baby each, though) and just hit second trimester so I'm hoping that I'll start feeling less sick and getting more energy back. While I haven't been as sick this time around as I was with the Little Guy, I've still lost weight during the first trimester. Mostly I have just had no energy (which was part of why Christmas Eve was such a late night, because I hadn't had the energy to wrap presents before then, and why there have been as many fiddly bits to take care of today). Which also explains the lack of blogging for the last couple of months, and why I didn't even attempt NaBloPoMo this year. (I did try NaNo and kept up for, like, two and a half days. Which is pretty impressive, given the circumstances.) We should find out what gender the baby is in mid-February.

And I may not have gotten a lot of other stuff done, but I did read a whole lot of books. I don't have the grand total available at this exact moment, but I'm pretty sure I passed last year's total of 61.

And that's pretty much it for this year for the moment. I'll probably add a bullet-point list of other highlights later, but for the moment the main point is to actually get one last blog post up for the year. I hope to be better in 2014; fortunately I've set the bar pretty low for myself with a grand total of 6 posts in 2013. (Sorry again.) Gooooooo, me!


Here's hoping you all had good years as well, and that 2014 will be totally awesome for everyone involved. 
Love and kisses, Zaphod Ellie.