Average Jane’s Friend-Filled 2011

When I saw Mocha Momma's photo retrospective yesterday, I immediately knew I wanted to do something similar. Then I started looking through my 1,333 photos from the past twelve months and I could see I had a daunting task on my hands.

I obviously needed an angle, so I decided that I would stick mainly to posting photos of friends and family from last year. I immediately realized that in many cases I had done a rather poor job of photographing people while I was out and about (one of my birthday parties is represented solely by two photographs of cupcakes), but that will be a resolution for 2012.

Here's my sister and my nephew at his sixth birthday party celebration. That's a balloon sword—get your mind out of the gutter.

I did a lot of volunteer work for The Animal Rescue Alliance (T.A.R.A.) all year long. This was a St. Patrick's Day parade. That's my long-time friend Amy on the right.

Mission Pub Crawl! A bunch of my favorite tweeps meeting up to start the all-day extravaganza.

Hanging out in Rockwall, Texas with Kay and Kathie from my Soroptimist Club.

All-day Dune game with my gaming peeps, including A Librarian and Kanga.

Dinner, drinks and animated conversation with Guavalicious and Cagey.

Getting ready for the Urban Photo Safari with Susan.

Relaxing with some of the Regular Girls on a hotel balcony in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. Eventually there were seventeen of us vacationing together.

More Regular Girls hangout action in Eureka Springs. By this point in the trip, we had all pretty much foregone makeup, but I think everyone looks beautiful.

My San Diego BlogHer roommates: Siel, Liz and Cagey.

Sarah and Suebob, two more of my favorite BlogHers.

Doing a jigsaw puzzle at BlogPaws with Melanie and Stacey.

Sarah again and Laurie, catching up with me during an unforeseen extension of my trip to Washington, D.C.

Let's not forget (wo)man's best friend: my new dog, Toby!

Another game night with the usual suspects. This time including Vince and Nuke.

My husband and his Aunt Pat at their family reunion.

I tried to stick as much as possible with photos I hadn't posted before, so if you expected to see yourself but didn't, you've probably been immortalized in an earlier post this year. Or I forgot to photograph you. Sorry.

Looking back over all of these photos of social activities—which represented a fairly small percentage of the actual social events of the year—it's easy to see why I felt so very busy in 2011. I took four trips (not including business trips), attended dozens of parties, met up with friends for dinners and happy hours, and played lots of board games. That doesn't even count lunches, holidays and the many other opportunities I had to spend time with my favorite people.

If I can take away one thing from 2011, it's that I'm incredibly fortunate to have SO MANY wonderful people in my life. I might not see all of them often, but the connections are there.

Thanks to all of you for your support and friendship in 2011. Looking forward to an even better 2012!