12 moments from 2012

I've seen a few blogs with Twelve in Twelve lists (12 moments from 2012), but my friend Donna was the first person whose site I read regularly to do it. She went back through her blog archive to remind herself what they've done this year, but I went a step further and decided to use my top 12 most-viewed posts for my list. It actually turned out to be 13 posts because there was a tie for No. 12. Yeah, I'm special like that. But just in case you were wondering, here are 12 of the big things we did this year:

12 (and 13): We went to Walt Disney World while we were on home leave, and while there we went to the Tomorrowland Terrace Fireworks Dessert Party at the Magic Kingdom. This was every bit as fun as it sounds -- desserts and fireworks, together at last! -- but it's hard to imagine we'll spend that kind of money again. But you never know ...

We also, during one of our regular trips to Vicenza, ventured up to Monte Berico. The views are lovely.

11. There are lots of happy things about living in Milan. You can read about them here.

10. We met up in Florence with our friends Melissa (and Cambree) and Jeanae (and Aubree) and had all kinds of excellent Florentine adventures.

9. We had a great weekend in Bologna, eating and seeing things.

8. I went to Nove with our friends Virginia and Rachael and bought lovely ceramics -- and have continued to write about them since.

7. Laura turned 11. Since that was in March, that means she's almost 12. Are we ready for that? Only time will tell.

6. The parade of cats on our Christmas tree has been joined by a Santa Claus fresh from Afghanistan.

4 (and 5). I chronicled some of the good and bad things about living in Milan. A preview: The good outweighs the bad.

I also wrote about Santa Maria della Sanita, but I suspect its high number of page views was due to spammers. But it still is a lovely church.

3. Almost a year ago, we bought a Canon EOS Rebel T3. I talked about how much I liked it, and my opinion hasn't changed at all.

2. Back in February, I wrote about the fortune cookie valentines I'd made for Laura to give to her friends. She forgot to hand them out, but my instructions are there for the benefit of other moms (and dads?) with less forgetful children.

And somehow, probably also a result of spammers, my most-viewed post of the year was this, about Owen demanding to see a somewhat abandoned train at a distant spa we traveled to for a birthday party. Although the post itself was unextraordinary, it probably was appropriate that a post about trains took the top spot. Welcome to my world.