Long time, no write! If you follow me on social media you know that our lives have drastically taken a turn so I do have a decent excuse for not writing much last year. I promise I will go into more detail about it later but it will likely be a long-winded post and I need to find the time to sit down and get the words out.
In the meantime, it appears the last time I wrote it was March...*gasp* it’s worse than I thought... I successfully turned 37 and the sky didn’t fall (go figure). The spring and summer were easy, breezy, and beautiful, aside from all the forest fires. We took it easy with no big trips but we did some camping and hiking and trained for our 5-day backpacking trip in the Cascades with my brother-in-law that was planned for Labor Day weekend. Here are some pics for those who prefer visuals:
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| Savage Lakes |
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| Savage Lakes |
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Kayaking Chapman Lake
That sun on my arm makes it look really defined. Me likey. |
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| Thomas Lakes- I'm picking up a lake theme... |
A few other highlights I want to document:
- Brian decided to tackle our chimney last summer. It was covered with ugly faux stone paneling. You may recall we took a piece off a few years ago and discovered 45 layers of lead paint and a million wasp nests, so it got put on the back burner; but Brian decided this was the year, and... It. took. forever. Turns out getting lead paint off old brick is no joke. Toward the end of the summer he finally found something strong enough to get through all the paint and we are so pleased with how it turned out!
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| After taking the faux stone paneling off. |
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| Poor guy scraping lead paint. He looked like he was a new extra in Breaking Bad. |
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| Celebrating our 13th anniversary and the glorious sight of brick! |
- In June we spontaneously drove to Denver to meet up with our BFF’s for dinner and attended a free Five Iron Frenzy concert. It warmed my heart to hear them live again with great friends and I felt so young, driving 6 hours round trip in one evening just for a free concert. I may be 37 but I’m hip.
- In July the stars aligned and TWO of my BFF's came to visit me in one weekend and we got to spend a wonderful time together catching up, eating a big family dinner outside under the twinkle lights, and basking in being reunited for the first time in so many years.
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Our husbands crack me up. Do you like how the females look almost exactly the
same in both pictures? We're models. |
- In August I also got to reunite with my other BFF from high school and had a great time catching up with her and her family! 2018 was so full of old friends and nostalgia and I thoroughly ate it up!
- I wouldn’t label this a highlight, but it was memorable: In December I was awoken 2 times in the middle of the night by one of my biggest fears: earthquakes. They were in the 3.4-3.6 range on the Richter scale, which is 3.4-3.6 Richter's too many. They obviously didn’t do any damage to our home, and each lasted less than a minute, but man did they rattle me. The other night, my cat vigorously scratched an itch on her face while I was on the bed and my heart started pounding out of my chest thinking it was another earthquake. At work a large semi cruised through town and I almost hid under my desk. No more earthquakes, please and thank you.
Now that we’ve caught up a bit, I typically do some sort of yearly reflection in December or January, so here it goes... As a reminder, my mantra for 2018 was:
Get a dang baby already.
And Jesus answered them, "Have faith in God. Truly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, 'Be taken up and thrown into the sea,' and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him. Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours."
I know I was a bit cryptic at the beginning of this post, but I figure everyone already knows that *spoiler alert*: We got a dang baby! And she’s awesome. More to come on that story later...
2018 was a roller-coaster year in my head. I was very focused on adoption and had a lot of conversations with God. Some were me dutifully trying to be a good and faithful servant, but some (most?) were me being a whiny brat. I’d love to say that I adhered to the Bible verse above and did not doubt, but boy did I doubt. Thankfully God is merciful and gracious and I can stand here now with a new understanding of His perfect timing.
I am failing to think of a clever saying or an applicable Bible verse for 2019, but my biggest desire
is to savor this time with my daughter (that word gets me every time... I have a
daughter).
I’ve often expressed how left behind I’ve felt with the whole parenting gig, watching all my friends
and family have children and watching them grow up. I find myself sometimes wishing away these early days in my excitement to get to know her and see her personality be revealed. However, these early baby days are really special, I've waited a long time for these days, and dang do they go fast. I’ve come to realize that the cliche “The days are long but the years are short” is all too true and I find she has this habit of learning something new or making a new sound, and before I know it she’s moved onto something else and that thing or sound is gone forever. She’s a great lesson in enjoying each minute, because you never know when quite literally everything about her will change.
So with that, I wish everyone a pleasant new year and I hope you, too, can slow down and pay attention to the little moments that make up your life. It’s these moments that make reminiscing so fun and as Andy Bernard so eloquently said:
And finally, in honor of tradition here's my 2018 Instagram Top 9. Lots of secret baby heads (I can't post photos of her face online until the adoption is final).
Here's to 2019!
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