While I am a firm believer that ANY time is the right time to make a resolution, you can’t deny the feeling that the new year brings. The calendars turn. The days start to get longer. Everyone is wishing you a “Happy New Year”. Personally, things are feeling like they are turning around for us too (more on that in the next paragraph), so while I do like to set goals whenever I feel like setting them, this New Years is a good time to reflect, adjust, and move forward.
2015 was hard. Not bad, but not easy, either. Juniper had physical therapy once a week and had her helmet appointments as well for most of the year. She also had audiology appointments, developmental appointments because she was a preemie, and saw an allergist–all on top of her regular doctor appointments. It was rather exhausting to keep it all straight. Thankfully, everything has checked out and she’s doing really well. In the second half of the year, she developed a bad cough and began vomiting every night in the middle of the night. We were running on very little sleep and too much laundry. Finally, we cut milk completely out of her diet a few weeks ago and she is not vomiting anymore. (Fingers crossed!) She is also close to graduating physical therapy and discontinued her helmet in September. I feel an overall relief that the major things are winding down.
2015 was full of good, too! Robert quit his day job early in January of last year and found an awesome part time gig at Kyle’s Bikes. I continued to build my Arbonne business and finished the majority of my studies for my Public Health degree. We were able to travel a lot and went to Arizona, South Africa, and North Carolina to visit family. We also went to Duluth for Robert’s first trail marathon.
The word I had in mind for the year 2015 was “Abundance”. Not in the sense of financial wealth, but in the sense of an abundance of everything. I feel that was accomplished and despite the bad, we had an overabundance of good. I’m so grateful for the time that Arbonne has given back to us as a family. We didn’t foresee Juniper’s medical complications, but she is thriving now and I’m thankful we were able to be the ones involved in her care every day. Without it, we wouldn’t have been able to take Juniper to all of her appointments, work/study from home, spend time together every day, and travel as much as we did. Even with accumulating PTO, our former jobs would not have allowed us to do all of that.
We celebrated Juniper’s first birthday. We got to walk with lions, clothe and feed children in South Africa, be a unicorns for a day, and spend valuable time with friends and family.
Sometimes it’s easy to find and focus on the negative, difficult, or exhausting parts of life but hard to find the positive. So what is in store for us in 2016? I’ll fill ya in with my next post.
How did your 2015 go? Was it the way you planned or a total surprise? Comment below!
happyavo 