After reading Carrie's blog, I got the idea of writing a recap of 2004.. man there has been so many changes.

At the start of 2004, I was working at Levi, Ray, and Shoup as a salesman traveling 2-3 days a week all over the US in a private jet. We had a newer (built in the 70s) home in Springfield, IL near the lake with a nice above ground pool. In a lot of ways, the entire thing was a good situation. Having a newer home in town, meant that I didn't have so many distractions. Instead of spending my free time mowing, or working outside, I spent it with the family. Going to Parks, visiting Amber, etc, etc. But, the travel was very hard on the family as well. Broderick started to act out more towards Holly and things were more stressful when I wasn't around. At the same time, we found we were really missing the Champaign area, so I looked into moving back to town.

LRS gave me permission to work out of the house and come back to LRS 1-2/times a week.. but by that time, I found a job as a Project Manager at Human Kinetics.

Over the winter, propane had run out at the farm and several water pipes broke (actually, as I fixed the leaks, I found something like 6-7 breaks).. This collapsed a big part of the living room ceiling and flooded the basement with 2-3 feet of water.. a big mess. So initially, we looked into buying a house instead of moving back to the farm house.

We found a cute place in Sidney on a corner lot. Not a huge place, but comfortable. Unfortunately (or fortunately), the house inspection turned up a lot, including a sewer that was just dumping into a lot behind the house. The owner refused to fix the problem, so we got out of the contract.

That led us to decide to remodel the farm house. Of course, at that time, we had no idea how hude the project really would be, but now that we are on the tail-end of it, I am so happy that we decided to go this route. The kids love it out in the country and we have lots of room.

This summer, we decided to finally get a horse, Lefty. It was supposed to be Bridget's pony, but I think I have taken him over. :) This next summer, we'll enlarge our herd and get at least another horse and maybe a couple more horses. It's hard for Bridget to just go out and ride by herself, and I am the only one comfortable enough just to hop on him.

We've had our share of animal problems this year. Sam got hit by a car which required surgery that included removing part of his liver. Later JD just a nasty cut on his riight hip which required stitches and not much later, but Sam and JD got into rat poison, which just about killed both of them. Suki is looking very old right now and has a hard time getting up and down the stairs.

Bridget and Broderick are both doing well. Most days they play together very nicely and often miss the other when they aren't there. They are both very smart kids and good readers. Broderick especially has a good mind for grasping theoretical things. Bridget loves science and reading. Even though she doesn't particularly like it, she is good at math. She tested for Unity's gifted program this year, but didn't make it. They only tested 4 kids in her class... so even that was a big honor.

Bridget loves horses (of course) including pegasus and unicorns. She also likes American Girl dolls and coloring/painting.

Broderick still loves farming and played his John Deere American Farmer game. He also really enjoys trains, cars, big rigs, and just about anything that moves or has wheels.

Holly has really thrown herself into working on the house... redesigning everything. She decided to stop going to school for her interior design degree. She found that she didn't enjoy the classes and found that she didn't want to do that sort of thing full time. The house now has a shop built in for her and she still has some regular customers. Once the house is finished, I suspect that she'll work on picking up business.

This summer, we went to Fripp Island, SC, although the family did not come with us, which was kinda strange, but also nice.

The family has been mostly healthy this year and I really can't complain! I hope 2005 let's us finish the house and find the time to enjoy life more!