It seems like 2016 was rude to everyone it ran across.

And basically that was everyone.

The Gibsons had a heckuvah year, too.

Here’s the Quick-n-Dirty on what happened to us during the Year from Crap in somewhat chronological order. Some funny, some trivial, some not-so-fun and not-so-trivial.

*My sweet brother in law, Steve, passed away on January 1st after suffering from ALS.

*I went back into the hospital a week after delivering Josephine due to fluid on my heart and lungs.

*This time spent in the hospital meant I missed Steve’s memorial service and also had Tony’s birthday in the hospital.

*Josie spent the first 4 months yaking all over the place and would stop breathing when she did. Thankful for a wonderful chiropractor friend who spent careful time adjusting her and solved all of our problems! I never changed our clothes so many times. Ever.

*Josie wasn’t sleeping through the night.

*Sent my kid to school with a Sea Island Shooting School shirt on. Shirt contained guns. She was dress coded.

*Sent my OTHER kid to school with the same Sea Island Shooting School shirt on. Shirt contained guns. She was on a class field trip. TO THE STATE CAPITAL. These shirt days were on the exact same day.

*Part of our house flooded when a toilet wouldn’t stop running and eventually overflowed.

*THAT is a LEVEL FOUR on Disaster One’s (clean up crew company) Hazmat Scale. That means that we had plastic sheeting and zipped rooms for weeks as we listened to the rattle and hum of the dehumidifiers and fans for even MORE weeks.

*The Rattle and Hum I am referring to is not a U2 album. Unfortunately.

*Josie wasn’t sleeping through the night.

*Flooded house means all new flooring because they weren’t able to match our existing hardwoods.

*New flooring means new banisters because the old ones are totally different colors.

*New flooring and new banisters also means new vent covers.

*It only took 4 days for part of the basement ceiling to mold over. That is how much water was leaking.

*We ran over our own dog. OUR. OWN. DOG. He’s fine, but that was most terrible.

*Had trees removed and some relocated in the front yard. Relocated tree died anyway and the electric dog fence was cut and it sounded like this….cha-ching.

*Painted the exterior of our house. No problems occured there.

*Painted the ENTIRE interior of our house. The wrong color. REpainted the ENTIRE interior of our house. All the while we are living upstairs in our bedrooms because guess what? FLOORS ARE STILL NOT DONE. That part actually sounded like this…cha-ching cha-ching.

*Root canals and various other dental crap.

*Moles or chipmunks or groundhogs or SOMETHING has taken over the backyard. They are now moving to the front yard.

*Our dog does not care to rid our yard of these ground digging varmints.

*Josie wasn’t sleeping through the night.

*Apple maps has successfully gotten me lost more times than I can count.

*We scraped the wheels on the car various times and Tony so sweetly got them all repaired. THE VERY DAY I picked up the car? I scraped a wheel. “That’d be $75 more dollars Wheel Scraper Lady.”

*Someone in Detriot needed gasoline so he/she decided to use my card number in order to purchase that gas and various other items.

*Someone in Alpharetta needed groceries (me) so she used Tony’s card number since her card was cancelled because of the Detriot Gas Thief. In turn, Tony’s card was cancelled because he has never purchased groceries online from Walmart before. He has now.

*Tony’s brother, Todd, passed away unexpectedly. We will be trying to cope with this one for a while.

*Our Christmas tree fell over. The smaller one, not the huge one. But still, it was pretty big.

*Our other Christmas tree came with bugs.

*Tony has done more change orders, or something landscape-y like that, for the Braves stadium than he can even count and major changes have taken shape within the company.

Many of these are silly and trivial moments in our lives; however losing two of our favorite people were hard hits to our family. We plan on talking and sharing about Steve and Todd often so that we keep those men in our hearts and minds for years and years…and years.

As for 2017?

I’m claiming it The Year of the Gibson.

(and here are some of my favorite images from 2016)