2010 was an amazing year for me and at the time I called it “the best year of my life” and now that 2011 is ending I’d have to say it was a close contender for that best year spot!!

Like most people in the blogging world I like to do end-of-the-year recaps. Here are mine from 2008, 2009 and 2010. Recently I’ve started recapping ‘my year’ on my birthday instead so rather than do two yearly recaps  I decided to borrow this idea from Lisa. Here are my top 11 moments/experiences from 2011!

1. Completing my hot yoga challenge. In January I spent 40.5 hours doing hot yoga when I took on the 30 hot yoga classes in 30 days challenge. This was the first non-running challenge I’d done in a long time and the physical, mental and emotional affect it had on me was amazing!

2. Buying our townhouse. At the end of January 2011 we officially signed the papers to buy our first home. We spent a lot of time looking for the right place and almost a year later I couldn’t be happier with where we ended up. It’s in a great location, is not making us house poor and is the perfect size for us. I absolutely love our little home.

3. Getting engaged. This was probably my top moment in 2011. After being together for 6 years Eric asked me to marry him in March on a random Thursday night at home. I am so excited to marry my very best friend in 2012!

4. Traveling to Ottawa, Minneapolis, Victoria and Orlando. I did a lot of traveling in 2011 and it was amazing. All four of my trips this year involved a blogger meet-up (and in 3 out of 4 cases an entire weekend with blogger friends) and once again I am so thankful for the amazing friends I’ve made through this space.

5. Getting a puppy! I love Chloe so much and I’m so glad we decided to take the leap and finally get the dog we’ve wanted for years in August. She brings so much fun and joy to our every day lives and it is 110% worth the extra work and money.

6. Completing a sprint triathlon. Training for this race took up a lot of my time and I was so nervous going into it but it was an amazing and fun experience. Never has a race gone by so fast – i guess the three sports will do that for you – and I can’t wait to do more triathlons in 2012!

7. Running a sub-2 hour half-marathon. The entire weekend in Victoria with Lisa, Lauren and Leigh was amazing and a top moment for me but I’ve never felt so proud of my running performance as when I crossed that finish line in 1:58:18. That race was hard for me and I left EVERYTHING out on the course to achieve my goal but I did it and that was an amazing feeling.

8. Planning our wedding. This has been several moments over the course of the last 10 months (wow, how have we been engaged that long?) and there have been many stressful moments but also many awesome moments like finding and buying my dress, picking our first dance song and booking our honeymoon. Overall it’s been more fun than stressful and I can’t wait to see the whole day come together in just over six months!!

9. Signing up for marathon #2. I have wanted redemption after marathon #1 for quite some time now but wasn’t sure if a 2012 marathon was in the cards for me. When they revealed the new point-to-point course for the Vancouver 2012 marathon I signed up almost immediately. I start training on Tuesday with the local Running Room and I can’t wait to cross the finish line of my second marathon in May!

10. Hosting friends and family in our home. Now that we have a 3-bedroom townhouse we’ve actually been able to host our families and friends when they come to town! It’s great having the extra room. Our families visited and stayed with us 3-4 times this year and we hosted three friends for an awesome and fun long weekend in August! It’s great having the space to host people.

11. Contentment. Never have I felt more content and at peace with my life and myself as I have this past year. I’ve had many moments where I stop and think how lucky I am and how happy I am with almost every aspect of my life right now. Yes, there are hard and crappy days still – I’m only human – but for the most part life is pretty darn good! I can’t wait to see what 2012 will bring.

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Question of the day: What moments would be on your top 11 list for 2011?

Good morning! Happy Sunday! I wanted to blog last night but I was dead on my feet after spending over 12 hours at Universal Studios!

But let’s rewind! Where I last left off Eric and I were looking for a place to go for appies and drinks since we were still very much on West Coast time and hungry at 9 PM. We ended up at Bahama Breeze, which despite being a very expensive cab ride, was really awesome!

We had a plethora of drinks and appies and just relaxed, chatted and enjoyed one anothers company. It was such a fun night and made Eric and I realize we need to make an effort to go on more date nights like this – with no phones! – when we’re at home.

We crashed into bed around midnight on Friday hoping that a full nights sleep would get us fully on east coast time finally!

Saturday morning we were tired and dragging our feet. We actually just missed the 8:45 shuttle to Universal but it came back so we were able to catch the second one. Before doing anything else we beelined it back to Harry Potter World for one last magical visit and to go on the Forbidden Journey ride one more time. This time we only waited about 40 minutes

We sadly said our goodbyes to HP and headed over to spend the day at Universal!

Universal was really fun, and a lot less crowded than HP! We went on a bunch of rides while we there: Terminator, The Simpsons, Men in Black, Jaws, Disaster, Revenge of the Mummy and The Simpsons again.

It was a really fun day!

Finally around 3:00 PM we broke for lunch and had some very questionable, and very expensive, fried fish. At least our restaurant had a nice view of the park!

Universal was really cool and had a bunch of little “neighbourhoods” that were fun to wander through!

I loved the Christmas decorations

After going on The Simpsons ride for the second time (that ride was SO fun, up there with the Forbidden Journey as a must-do ride!) we actually got caricatures drawn of us. After sitting there for 35 minutes and paying $40 I was slightly disappointed because he’d drawn me with blonde hair.

However, I don’t have a photo to show you because I forgot it at the restaurant last night!! I was SO mad at myself but it turns out they called in the middle of the night to let me know they found it, so Eric and I are going back there today to pick it up and I’ll share a photo in the next post!

Anyways, after the Simpson ride and getting our photo drawn it was time to meet Stephany for dinner!

We met at the Hard Rock Cafe, which was really good. It’s also the biggest Hard Rock Cafe in the world – little tidbit for you  Stephany was awesome and we had so much fun chatting about blogging, books and other things!

After we said goodbye to Stephany Eric and I wandered along CityWalk one more time and considered going for a drink, but then we decided we were just too tired and headed back to the hotel for sleep!

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Today is our last day in Orlando and we’re planning on going back to CityWalk to get our caricature, and then taking a cab to this giant flea market and tonight we have tickets for Medieval Times.

Our trip has been amazing and so, so fun but also has ended up costing a lot more than we budgeted for. I never realized that we would have to take a cab EVERYWHERE we went since nothing is walkable nor is there good public transportation in this city. We paid $33 to go 8 miles in a cab on Friday night! By the end of the trip we’ll have easily spent over $200 on cab fares which seems nuts to me since we’ve taken advantage of the free shuttle every chance we could and also took a shared shuttle ride to and from the airport to save a bit of money.

Eating has also been really, really expensive and it’s almost impossible to eat cheaply. I’m not complaining, just things we didn’t think about when planning the trip! I also thought three days here would feel really short but it’s actually been perfect and is kind of similar to Vegas in that respect. Everything is just so go-go-go and expensive we are ready to go home after three days!

Anyways, those are just some of my observations from the trip so far. See you tonight or tomorrow with one last recap

Happy November friends!

Where is my blogging mojo these days? The combination of sitting in front of a computer all day at work and the evenings get dark so early has made me a little lethargic and not in the mood to sit in front of the computer AGAIN when I arrive home!

So here are just a few things that have been happening complete with photos from my iPhone. I swear I never take photos with my actual camera anymore…

Friday night my brother, Eric and I carved pumpkins. Can you guess which one belongs to who? Carving pumpkins may be my favourite part of Halloween! Especially because it means roasted pumpkin seeds to snack on. I decided to go the sweet route this year and made my pumpkin seeds with earth balance, brown sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg.

I wish I could say that is all the damage that was done when it comes to eating mini chocolate bars but my food blog gives me away. Oh well, I still ate a lot less than I probably normally would have. Didn’t want to let the whole internet world know how much I love chocolate!

We also got trick-or-treaters for the first time ever, about 20 I’m told (I left for yoga around 6:30). The first little guy that came to the door was about 2 or 3, dressed as an elephant and said “can I have some food please?!” So cute! I love Halloween

Things with the puppy are going great. I love going for walks, hikes and little runs with her in the trails. I am doing a post later this week on all the lessons we’ve learned since getting her. Basically we adore her and can’t imagine our lives without her.

On Saturday I drove to a city just over an hour away to meet Jamie for lunch and coffee. It was such a beautiful fall day for a drive along the water. The trees were the most amazing shades of orange, reds and browns. The photo does not do it justice at all.

It was also really fun to catch up with a friend over delicious lunch and pumpkin spice chai lattes

Life has been quiet but really really good lately. I feel content and happy. Oh and we leave for Orlando and Harry Potter World a week from Thursday! I’ll blog more details about our trip early next week

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Questions of the day: how was your Halloween? Do you get trick-or-treaters? Do you have a mini chocolate bar addiction like me? What kind of STUFF has been going on in your life lately?