It feels like I just wrote my top 11 of 2011. But that’s because the last year has been a blur and also because I blog about 4 times per year. Although I’m trying harder, and now with being in a new house that needs DIYing all over the place, I hope to continue posting more often.

12. Hosting. We had two parties this year, which sounds lame. Except that I’ve never had a party EVER before. Well just birthday parties as a child, but that doesn’t count. It’s really fun to invite people into your space. And I also like how clean the house is when they come over. I mean…. it’s that clean all the time…

11. New Cars. I didn’t get a new car, in fact we actually sold a car, but I did get to visit the General Motors plant in Oshawa and drive a bunch of cars around. I was able to test out the traction control on a wet track, ABS, cornering and other fun things you’d never do in your own car. I also drove a Camaro, a Volt (electric car) and a bunch of other new cars. Between you and me, I didn’t care for driving the Camaro all that much. I feel like I’m carrying a 2×4 on my shoulder, and every time I turn I’m going to take out a fire hydrant or pedestrian without realizing it.

10. Kelowna. Two of our good friends got married (to each other) and so we took a road trip out to Kelowna to celebrate with them. I also learned a lot about how and how not to dress when you’re going to an outdoor wedding on a day that’s supposed to be 40C.

9. UEP. I was able to participate in United Way’s Urban Exposure Project and learn a lot more about photography, while keeping busy and meeting new people. Then we had an art show and some very lovely friends attended! By that I mean my former boss and my immediate family. Everyone else was doing laundry that night.

8. Road Trip. This is kind of on the list further up as well, but aside from the Chicago aspect of moving out “east,” I really loved spending 5 days in a car with Graham, and we got to see Dog River in Saskatchewan, which is not Dog River at all.

7. New Life. Two members of our wedding party (and other lovely friends!) had babies this year. This is number 7 on the list and not, say, number 1 because we then had to leave (or were already gone) and didn’t get to spend much/any time with the babies.

6. New Job. I had visions of us moving across the country and me ending up with a temporary just-for-now job or something because nobody would hire me. I’m not sure why I thought that, but I did. Then I found a fun job with fun people. That’s pretty much all I could ask for! Here’s me at work with a diaper cake on my desk, and collapsed on the floor after a particularly intense 3-day trade show.

5. Breaking the Board. This is quite high on the list because it was a really cool experience. I broke a wooden board with my hand in a self defense class. Hiyah.

4. Staying with Friends. While this one was particularly difficult to navigate, I’m so happy we got the chance to do it for two reasons. Graham knows everyone at his school really well because he attended with them before we were married. Alas, I lived in Alberta then and so I didn’t really get to know them. But so we stayed with 3 sets of friends while waiting to take possession of our house and I loved getting to know them better, and also their kids better. All 3 couples have one or two children who generally looked at us with a bit of a glaze – now they know who we are and will chat openly with us when we see them all at a function.

3. Visiting Chicago! I loved our road trip across the northern US and particularly loved our stay in Chicago. Scroll down a bit for the posts from the trip.

2. Buying our first house! Albeit, plenty of headaches came along with this – we’ve never bought a house so that means we didn’t have a clue what to do and needed our hand held all the way. Unfortunately, nobody was willing to HOLD our hands, and so we ended up with a lot of “You need what from us? WHEN?!” conversations with various service providers. That was less awesome.

1. Building a Marriage. Avert your eyes, things are going to get mushy. Well, not *too* mushy. We celebrated our first wedding anniversary in October and this year has been so fun – learning about each other and ourselves, re-learning why we love each other and truly starting our journey together.

So there you have it! Did you do a 2012 recap? Leave me a link in the comments!