2017, Year Of Change

As the year ends, I am dusting off the blog and reflecting on the past year. As with any year, 2017 has been a mix of highs and lows, but mostly it has been about change. I guess every year is about change, but we have made some big ones in the past couple of years.

In 2016, we moved from Michigan, where I was born and raised and never left, to Colorado. I moved quite a bit throughout my life but always throughout Southeast Michigan, so this was a huge transition. My husband and I tend to make leaps of faith. With this one, we said goodbye to jobs and longtime friends, sold our little house in Ypsilanti, did a massive purge of stuff, and packed up what was left along with two dogs and one kid and headed west.

For a bit more than a year we lived with my in-laws and most of our belongings sat in storage in boxes. While that was difficult at times, mostly because of my fears, we could not have done the move without the help and support of my in-laws. In many ways it was a special year that allowed us to hang out together in a unique and wonderful way. We are glad we moved. We love our new home state. We love the mountains. We love the sunshine. We love the rivers. We will be launching a new blog in 2018 that will focus on our big move and our new life here.

Still, all this happened in 2016. In 2017, we made another leap of faith and moved again. This time, just a few miles away, well a little more than a few, but we moved into our own place in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, exactly where we’d hoped to be at some point. As with most things in our lives, it wasn’t a planned move. It was sort off a

sudden thing. An opportunity arose. We weighed the pros and cons, and we jumped at the chance to live where we could step out our back door and walk to the river. As a bonus, the community we have moved into has welcomed us in such a warm way. We feel quite at home in our new place.

This year also saw the release of my first book, a chapbook of poetry, and 2018 will begin with an official book release event in February at the local library. Kiki began taking college classes. That helped her meet some people here. That was the hardest part of the move for my social butterfly. All of her friends are in Michigan. Now, she has some good friends here in Colorado, and that is helping her adjust a bit more, that and the fact that she now has her driver’s license. Jay got to do a lot more fishing. It helps that he can walk into the park behind are house and make casts. We did a bit of hiking, not as much as we would have liked, but the hikes we went on were wonderfully cleansing. We saw some of our dear friends from Michigan in June when they came to see Dead and Company with us in Boulder, and Kiki welcomed lots of new and old friends when she attended her first Little People of America National Conference, which was held in Denver this year. We also took a trip to Gunnison, where we fished and hiked.

It has all been good, but life is life and that means with the good comes the not so good.

This year ends with the loss of one of our beloved dogs. Maynard the Wonder dog left us just before Christmas. He wasn’t feeling well starting a couple weeks before Christmas, and then everything progressed pretty quickly from there and he was gone. He was a good dog. A bit of a mischief maker, he had penchant counter surfing and for chatting early in the morning if he sensed Jay or I making even the slightest move toward waking up. He loved splashing in rivers, got excited for a good long walk, and relished a good belly scratch. We miss him so much. He definitely made deep imprints on our hearts.

As sad as it all was, 2018 will be here in a handful of hours and we will move on. There is a lot to look forward to. We have been so blessed to be able to spend more time with family, which is what we missed in Michigan. It’s extra special to have the opportunity to see our nieces grow up and to get to spend more time with our parents. We’ll do a lot more of that in 2018. Happy New Year to everyone who finds their way to this little blog! My hope is that you all make steps toward fulfilling whatever dreams and goals you make.