Goodbye 2014!

Looking back at this year I honestly don’t know where it has gone. It seemed only yesterday that LP was a 2 and a half year old, not talking much and really shy with Little Man being a baby, new to weaning and only recently sitting up by himself. Now look at them! Where has it gone?!

It may have gone quickly but we managed to pack quite a lot into it. I wrote a post a few days ago about our 2014 Bucket List that had a lot of things we’d achieved during the year but this post is about our year in full. Not much happened at the start of the year except the Baby Show in London. I went with a friend and we had a nice day pottering around. This was one of my first experiences of taking a pushchair on public transport, I survives and have taken the kids on trains many times since!

In March I met up with the lovely Munchkin Lindam bunch and cemented one of my favourite blogging partnerships as well as meeting some other lovely bloggers too! This was one of my first proper blogging events and it was a really great day.

We then went to Cornwall in March for a wonderful friend’s wedding and met up with my awesome Tweet Street bunch of Twitter chums. These girls keep me sane and I am looking forward to seeing them more next year. The wedding was fantastic, we had a great holiday and before I knew it I was back to reality and planning my return to work over the last few months of maternity leave.

Sadly my Grandad passed away in April after a long battle with cancer and we definitely missed him around Christmas time this year. I think the first year is always bound to be the hardest.

May was filled with celebrations with Little Man’s first Birthday and our 5th Wedding Anniversary. This also marked the start of my ‘Beginning of Us’ blog series that ran until just a couple of weeks ago. This was something I loved hosting and I really enjoyed reading everyone’s stories and sharing them on here.

In June we had a wonderful weekend in the New Forest that reminded me of everything I loved about the New Forest as a child. It was great to spend some quality time together and I’m looking forward to more holidays next year.

Over the summer we enjoyed days in Brighton, Worthing, Peppa Pig World, Little Street, Wellington Country Park,  and so many visits to Legoland. We crammed in as much family stuff as possible before I went back to work at the start of July.

In June I went to my first BritMums Live conference and had an incredible time. I met bloggers I had looked up to and chatted with online for months, learnt stuff and came away exhausted but full of enthusiasm and a new fire for blogging. I couldn’t imagine not blogging now and am looking forward to BritMums Live 2015!

In August this blog had its 1st Birthday and had a month of giveaways to celebrate. It was a great month and I couldn’t believe how much support Redhead Babyled has gained over the year. It was fantastic to see.

LP started preschool in September and after a term there she has grown more than I could ever have imagined – she has gone from a toddler to a proper little girl and it is amazing to see. She also started her swimming lessons and makes us so proud every day.

We squeezed some great blog events into the last half of the year including the Piper launch, an evening at Warner Brother Studios for the Making of Harry Potter and an Amazon Prime event and LP, Dave and I all had lovely Birthdays as well as a wonderful weekend away for Dave and I. We have finished off the year with a Pantomime, a visit to see Santa and lots of quality time with friends and family.

Overall this year has been really good. There have been a lot of firsts for us as a family and we have gone from being a family with a baby and toddler to being a family with two small children who play together, share things and love each other incredible and for me that has been the best part of this year, seeing our children’s bond develop and grow.

On top of this, two close friends have had beautiful babies this year, I have found out that three other close friends are expecting babies next year and overall 2014 has been a pretty amazing year. I wonder what 2015 will bring?