At the end of it, I’d have to say 2005 turned out to be a pretty good year for me. It started off a little slowly, with us looking for a house to buy and going on the misguided holiday to Malta. In hindsight that holiday was just a bit of bad luck on our part, as when I went back there with work a few months later I had a much better time.
The first real highlight of 2005 would come in April, when we bought our house. Usually that kind of thing is quite stressful, but I have to say that with us it went really smoothly – perhaps because we were the first people in the chain. It was a really good move on our part, though – it’s good to have a place we’re actually investing money in and a roof that doesn’t leak.
Next highlight would have to be when Fliss discovered she was pregnant less than a month after we moved into the house. To say I was shocked at the time would be an understatement, but nine months of denial later and things have worked out alright.
When June came around I walked Hazel down the aisle, well, half way down the aisle, at her wedding to Ian on what was a great day for them and all of the assembled family.
Shortly after returning from the wedding trip I ran my first 5k and put in a fair effort, even if I felt I could have done better.
In July I turned 33 and celebrated by visiting cousin Iain in London – my first of several trips down to the capital over the months that followed. We had a really good weekend of excess in the hot weather, but it didn’t exactly help in my preperations for my second running event a couple of days after I got back. Indeed, the least said about my gruelling experience in the Sefton Park 5 Mile Run the better.
As the summer passed with a few more trips down to London and we enjoyed some great weather in our own back garden, it hardly seemed like we needed our week in Portugal when we went in September, although once we were there it was really great to unwind and catch up with Kieran and Ele.
The tail end of the year comprised of work, work and more work, as I’d blown all my holidays with the trips to Malta and Portugal, so it was just a matter of staggering to the finish line. Along the way I took up playing tennis again and managed to get a few of the lads at work involved in regular lunchtime games. These fizzled out a bit in December with all the partying going on, but hopefully we’ll pick up where we left off in the coming weeks.
In November I rejoined the gym to help me prepare for the Santa Dash, which went off quite well in early December and punctuated quite a year of activity for me, all things considered. I’d like to follow it up with a few more runs this year, time permitting, so we’ll see how it goes.
The festive season was a quiet one, while we waited for our baby to arrive. As it turned out, Elisha arrived right on schedule on the last day of the year, giving us a memorable end to 2005 and plenty of new responsibility for 2006 and beyond.
I hope you enjoyed 2005 as much as I did – it really was a year of highs for me, so I’m looking forward to continuing that trend in ’06.
Cheers!
