I do my best each year to make sure that we get Christmas cards out to our friends and family. Even after sending out over 100 cards this year, I know that it's nearly impossible to reach everyone so I'm posting my Christmas letter and picture here for anyone that I might have missed (and for posterity sake!)
Merry Christmas to your and your family!
~Sadie
I’ve been trying to formulate our Christmas letter in my mind for a few weeks now and there were a few paths I ventured down that just didn’t seem to quite capture the year we’ve had. If you asked me to pick just one word to describe 2012 for the McGrath’s it would be CHANGE!! It has been quite a year and has flown by faster than I could have ever imagined.
As I look back on the year, I think back to how different our lives were this time last year. We’d put an offer in on a short sale property the weekend of Thanksgiving and were anxiously going through the process of buying our first home together. We knew that short sales are NEVER a done deal until you’ve got the keys in your hands but we never imagined the rollercoaster ride we were about to embark on. Nearly eleven (11!!) months after putting our offer on the table, we finally moved in. There were plenty of moments when I thought it would never come together, but someone Up There was looking out for us. It’s perfect for us and our growing family. It needs work, but mostly it just needs someone to love that house again, and Ryan and I are certainly chipping away at the list of projects.
Little did we know when we decided on the house just how soon our family would be “growing”. I found out that we were pregnant on the day after Christmas (nothing like making life changing events around the holidays…helps you remember when they happened). I surprised my parents with the phone call while they were in Cabo, asking if they were ready to be Grandparents times two. See, my sister Joey, was due just 3 months before me (like I said…a year of CHANGE). I didn’t intend to blurt it out right then, and expected to just leave a message, but once my Dad answered, there was no turning back. I think half of the bar wondered what was going on when the whole crew with them was screaming and crying. Makes me tear up just writing about it. We told Ryan’s parents a day or two later and it wasn’t long until I had to start confessing to the cousins that came to New Years with us. Babies are hard to keep a secret on New Year’s Eve!
Eight and a half months later we still had no idea if we would ever actually get the house we’d been longing after for so long. August 10th will be a date I never forget. It was on that date that we found out that the offer was actually going to go through AND that Abby was breach and I’d be having a C-section. Talk about a big, overwhelming day. Abby wasn’t due for a few more weeks but she was on her own little schedule and I went into labor on August 14th. Less than three hours after my water broke I was holding a teeny tiny baby in my arms. Everyone says that you can’t imagine what that feels like until it happens to you; they are right, you can’t! To quote a book I just read “There must be in life a turning point, when the world as we know it ceases to exist. A moment that transforms us into a different person from one heartbeat to the next”. Having Abby was just that type of moment. It all happened so fast that Ryan didn’t even get ahold of my parents before we went into surgery. My Dad talks about walking up to Mom shoving a phone in his face yelling “It’s a girl! She had the baby!” It took him a few minutes to understand what happened.
So much and more has happened this year that there’s no way I can fit it all onto one sheet of paper. Many of you have been by our sides as we’ve gone through this crazy busy year and we couldn’t have made it to the other side without the love and support of our families. For those of you that live a little farther away, I’ve continued to blog all things “McGrath” on our family blog, www.sadieandryan.blogspot.com.
Wishing you a very Merry Christmas!
Love,
Sadie, Ryan and Abby
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