2012: My Top Five

As some of you may know, 2012 was a pretty tough year for us for a lot of reasons. Some family stuff went down which was (and still is) ridiculously difficult to deal with, but despite that the year was still pretty brilliant. Rhys asked me what my top five moments of the year were, and of course that just seemed like an invitation for a blog post, so here you go! My top five moments of 2012...

5. Cake Party! - for my 25th birthday in June I had a party back in London for which, because I wasn't drinking because I was pregnant, I asked people to bring different types of cake. There was a ridiculous amount of cake, and my sisters made me one that was shaped like books. It was awesome. It also doubled as a baby shower so there were tons of presents and I just had a great time :-) 

4. Jesus Christ Superstar - my siblings directed, stage managed, and performed in an amateur version of Jesus Christ Superstar (or JCS as it's now affectionately known in our house) over the summer to raise money for their church's youth pilgrimage to Rio this summer. I kind of expected it to be painful, but it was seriously really good. They're a very talented bunch if I do say so myself!

3. Holiday - In August Rhys and I went on holiday to my parents' friends massive house in Devon. We spent all of my childhood holidays there and it was just brilliant to be able to show Rhys all the places we used to go as kids :-) Hoping we get to go back this year!

2. Olympics! - When the Olympics tickets went on sale, we applied for about £300 worth of tickets thinking we'd get nothing, and ended up getting tickets to both the final of the women's football and ATHLETICS!! Although we ended up giving the football tickets to my mum and sister (who had a great time), we went to the athletics and climbed up about seventy flights of stairs (while I was about 7 months pregnant - fun!), and got to be there when Jess Ennis ran her amazing hurdles race and for the high jump. The atmosphere was just incredible and I'm so happy we got to go. 

1. Benjamin - Obviously, Benjamin is my favourite moment of 2012. Not the whole 'actually giving birth experience', but that kind of becomes insignificant after he's actually there. And look how cute he is. Just amazing. 

It's really nice to think back to the nice things that have happened, because at time 2012 really felt like we wouldn't get through it. I know it was a difficult year for a lot of people, but now we're through it I really feel like all the awful has kind of only made us better. I can't say I'm glad that some of the stuff that happened happened, but I'm starting to appreciate that it happened for a reason. Also the tough times made me realise how truly amazing my family and friends (both in real life and online) are, so I'm really grateful for that!

Anyway, enough of the sap, as my 2nd blogoversary is coming up on January 9th so I'm sure there'll be enough of that to last everyone all year then!

Here's another, more blog related top five:

Top 5 books of 2012

5. Maine by J. Courtney Sullivan

4. 1602 by Neil Gaiman

3. The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making by Catherynne M. Valente

2. Peaches for Monsieur le Cure by Joanne Harris

1. Let's Pretend This Never Happened by Jenny Lawson

You should all read all of these books now, and I know they were my top five because I actually managed to review all of them!

Happy New Year, everybody! :-)