A Tribute to 2011

Like many of you 2011 has been one heck of a roller coaster ride for my family. I can honestly say it has been the WORST year of my life- HOWEVER! We have also had some of the biggest blessings we have ever experienced this year as well! So here's quick run down (for journaling purposes) of all the bad and good that has brought us to today!

January 2011: Our car broke down while getting ready to enter the freeway. After hundreds of dollars it was determined NOTHING was wrong with it. It broke down again. Same story.

I started working towards turning my hobby of photography into something more lucrative! It worked really well until I had my car accident. I've also grown a lot as an artist and learned more about my own style as a photographer! :)

February 2011:

We traded in our electronically confused car (which was a 2006- it should have never fallen apart like it did on us) and got a 2007 Nissan Quest mini van! With the trade in and what we had to put down on it we got an amazing deal and have loved having it! We even learned that it is a 4-wheedrive which wasn't something we thought we would be able to get in a van for under 20K. YAY US! :)

April 2011: An hour after I turned in my registration for my very first triathlon I got hit head on in an intersection by two teenage girls with my two children in my new (to me) van. Now this is what is so weird about this situation. This horrible experience has actually

turned out to be a huge blessing...

We ended up shelling a lot of money out between our deductible, renting a car, and buying new car seats. I ended up with a lot of soft tissue damage that needed to be cared for for about 4 months. I was still dealing with some basketball injuries, and some left over stuff from training for my triathlon, and the way PT works is they try to fix everything while focusing on the "main" injury. Another blessing!

The owner/ driver of the car decided to get a lawyer and sue me.

As the year progressed it was determined that "little-Miss -can't- pay- the- bills" that hit me with her little car had NO

car insurance. MY insurance determined I wasn't at fault (there were no witnesses which made this really hard since I was turning left (on a green arrow mind you)) because of my character! Yay for being a good mommy with a good driving record!!! haha!

My insurance company is now suing the driver for over 30k in damages. I feel bad for her since it has since gone to collections... hopefully it will be a lesson to her that you NEVER drive w/o insurance on your car... EVER!l

May 2011: I found out I am PREGNANT!!! woo hoo! I was sick for three months. (Not too shabby!) But would have never been able to run in my triathlon because of how sick I was... maybe this was a blessing too??

July: My parents moved to Las Vegas (away from Sylvia and I). We also learned of some serious health issues concerning several members of our families.

August: Josh and I went under contract for our first house that we waited on for several months. It fell through due to legalities we weren't prepared to wait for. Our first lender lost all of our hard copies of our private information. After an awkward decision and many letters begging us to come back to him we found another lender that was amazing.

September: We learned Lyndi may have down's syndrome. Then we learned that she actually might have Trisomy 18 (edwards syndrome).

This was the longest several months of my life. I was heart broken and have never had a stronger testimony. We also learned that she is a little baby girl. We are so excited about having another little baby that we cling to all we have!

October: WHAT AN AMAZING MONTH FOR US! We found out that Lyndi is a healthy amazing little baby! We went under contract with our second home!... and it was an amazing experience!

We got refunded back EVERYTHING that we had put towards the car accident in April. Perfect timing for the buy our home! :)

Also- Josh got a promotion! He's now becoming a Content Lead of his own crew for Run Studio's at Microsoft. I'm so proud of him!

November: We closed on the house and are now officially home owners!

December: We moved into our home! My sister has baby Grace. Due to several different reasons my parents weren't able to come down for Christmas which broke all of our hearts, but Josh's family came up on Christmas eve and spoiled us rotten! We spent our first Christmas in our new house!

Now as you can see there were a lot of hidden blessings in all of our trials. If we had not bought the van when we did my car accident would have been catastrophic for our family. Even though my husband is a penny pincher- having the money tied up with the insurance company until the time we actually needed it in October was so inspired! Having the torment of not knowing what was happening with Lyndi actually took our minds off of other family health issues AND the stress of being jerked around with the first house. The stress of trying to buy the first house was a huge blessing because the price of the house we did buy didn't go down until after we walked away from the other one.

Through all of our trials... we still are walking away from this year with so much more then we ever had. We love each other so much more and our testimonies of tithing and the power of prayer are stronger then I can even emphasize. And on top of all that... I have made more friends this year then I ever have. I love my friends all dearly and am so grateful for all of the support and prayers they have offered us in their own homes.

God bless and happy New Years everyone. I hope that 2012 brings more happiness and joy to all of our lives and that we all learn to find the beauty in the dark days as well.

(ps. Sorry the pictures are all old... I'll work on getting some new ones up of our house and baby Grace in this next week hopefully!)
Love Nichole