2014 Year In Review

I've read a few year-end review posts recently and I find them fascinating. I wish I had my own archives of year-end reviews to look back on. So I thought I'd jump on the bandwagon and get started this year.

What Went Well

Gym & Fitness

I got my first gym membership in December 2013 and started going regularly. I also started running (very slowly) for the first time in my life. These habits continued into the start of 2014. I even ran my first ever 5k. For me, this is a big deal because I really hate running. So to run 5k without stopping was a pretty big accomplishment. Sure, I took last place out of all my co-workers I ran with, but I finished middle of pack overall. Most importantly I finished!

ng-conf

When ng-conf was first announced, it sounded like it was going to be a small conference here in Salt Lake City. So I was surprised when I missed out on the early bird tickets both times. But I was fortunate to get tickets in the final round. It seemed they were golden tickets though as demand was huge.

It was a great conference and I was lucky enough to score early bird tickets first round for 2015!

New Home

We built a new home in Farmington, UT. We moved in on March 14th. We decided to build so that we could get everything we wanted and not spend so much time on remodeling projects. It is a great home and we love it. There are so many kids in this new neighborhood. Our kids have made lots of new friends.

Little League

When we moved to Farmington I signed the boys up for little league baseball. I got an email saying they were in need of about 30 parents to volunteer as coaches. I found that I really didn't enjoy coaching in Alpine so I stopped volunteering. But since they were in great need I said I could coach any of my sons they wanted me to. They asked that I coach in the Mustang league (9-10 year olds).

It turns out that I had a blast. I had some great kids on my team. I got pretty competitive as a coach because for the first time I found that my decisions could often make the difference between winning and losing. In previous leagues they didn't keep score and there technically were no losers nor winners. We ended up taking 3rd in the final tournament which was pretty good as we had about 12 teams in the league.

My 9 year old son really wanted to play on the all-star team but I just didn't feel he was at that level. The league had about 6 kids that didn't make the the A or B team that really wanted to play. So we put together a C team and I coached it. We got killed every game, but it was a good experience for my son to learn and get more pitching experience. He was also pretty happy to get an all-star uniform.