2015 was in many ways an excellent year for me and mine. The second full year following Mom’s death had it’s own pitfalls and moments of sorrow, but it went on and was definitely more happy than sad.
Family
We soaked up lots of family time, skiing, hiking, camping, backpacking, cooking, walking, reading, playing and just hanging together. It’s odd – I thought things might get quieter as the kids got older – I think because I thought they’d take less of my time to manage, and they do! – but we do so much more together.
Tabby is turning into a young lady right before our very eyes. She’s worked hard at school and at home and generally has a great attitude and work ethic. She reads like it’s breathing and impresses me constantly with her artistic abilities and insights. She got her ears pierced over Christmas break after working hard for this all semester, and it makes her look even more grown up. She’s enjoying learning piano and getting pretty good and has fun with karate and swimming.
Benji is still our darling little guy. I’m so glad he’s not too big or cool to give me lots of hugs and kisses and snuggles. School can be a struggle for him with all the requirements to sit down and concentrate, but he does well academically and we’re grateful for that. At home he’s a huge ball of energy. He spends his freetime building either with legos or in Minecraft. We’ve also gotten him interested in running on the treadmill and we’re hoping to help him beat some winter blahs that way (fully supervised of course). He’s a force to be reckoned with on the slopes and so so much fun. He also had a major puncture this year, but it was of the unscheduled variety – he had his finger slammed and badly injured in a door at school and a few hours at the emergency room later and minus a fingernail, he is much improved.
Matt and I are doing our usual balancing act, making sure everyone’s fed, bills are paid and the house doesn’t look like too much of a disaster zone. We bought a second treadmill on a crazy sale in early December so we can workout together in the evenings … important because we’re training for another half marathon in April! We sneak away just the two of us whenever we can manage it – date nights when dad takes the kids or sometimes a day off when the kids are at school and occasionally, we hire a sitter to watch the kids so we can go for a run or a bike ride. It’s a nice little luxury.
Work
Matt took on a new and extended role about halfway through 2015 and it’s making him happy and keeping him busy! He goes to the office about once a week and traveling more (none of us loves this, but it’s good for him and his career).
Work has been going great for me as well. I work long hours sometimes, but usually it’s very manageable. We’ve picked up a ton of work this year and really gotten our “hit rates” up – that’s marketing speak for how often we win work. Some of it is the improving economy, I’m sure, but I fancy that some of it has to do with some cool new things we’ve been doing. Cheeeeeers!
Travel
It was a fun travel year. The coolest trip we took, was probably the surprise trip we took in May! It deserves its own post (which it never got), but I won (!!) a trip to San Francisco to go to MakerFaire! So Matt and I took off while my dad watched the kids and we flew to CA and did it up right! It was a blast!
We also had a few ski trips throughout the winter and filled up the summer with camping trips and our first ever family backpacking trip.
Our longest trip was from Denver to Nashville, with some stops along the way. We pulled the pop-up to Missouri and dropped it off at my mom’s cousin’s house. Then we went onto Nashville, spent a few days there, including a great trip to Mammoth Cave in KY, and then picked it up, took it to family reunion and came home. Exhausting, but wonderful!
We finished off the year with an amazing trip to Big Sky, Montana over Christmas to ski!
Home Improvement
We did lots of little projects around the house throughout the year. We organized our laundry room and some kitchen drawers. We did a bunch of yard work. We planted a garden.
But probably the biggest project of the year finished up right before Christmas when Matt installed our new barn door!!! He and a family friend worked for HOURS on it and it turned out so amazing. And trust me, it’s even better in person.
There are probably another load of things I could and maybe should talk about, but those are some of the highlights. It was a good year.
And so while Tabby and I were hiking around Vail and the Holy Cross Wilderness, Matt and Ben were doing their own thing.
The highlight of their trip was getting to hike their first 13’er, Mt. Parnassus, a cool 13,574 ft. above sea level. Pretty impressive.
The other highlight for Ben, besides running around like a savage, of course, was whittling. I feel like as a female, I cannot comprehend this, but I do find it cute- as long as he doesn’t cut himself.
