2013: a year in review

Reflections on my goals for 2013:

Finish growing Mango and become a mom. Learn what that means. Pay attention to the experience. Savor the precious times, and allow myself to truly feel the frustrations, the challenges, and the headaches that are sure to result. Learn. Love. Have so, so very much fun. Laugh. Laugh so very, very much and so very, very often.

•  It happened.  Every bit of it.  Mango became Nugget became Buddy Bear became James, my sweet boy, full of joy and love.  I felt it all - physically and emotionally - and have been challenged in ways I could never have imagined a year ago. At times I still forget that I am a mom...and then I remember...and my heart swells with the enormity of it all.     

Slow down. Do less of the stuff that doesn't matter, and instead spend my precious minutes embracing what does.

•  I'm not sure anything about this year could be considered slowing down, but I know for certain that we did a heck of a lot of the stuff that matters.  The less important stuff still crept in, but the important stuff?  Good lord, we embraced it. 

Hug my family. A lot. All of them. Even if they're not huggers.

• Huggers or not, I buried them all.  Suckers.

Build a coop and...

• Fail. To be completed Spring 2014.

Raise chickens! And cook Sunday morning breakfasts with fresh eggs gathered hours before.

• Fail again.  See build a coop bullet.

Finally purchase a decent camera AND teach myself to use it.

• Thank you credit card points, we now own a nice camera.  Learning to use it is still a work in progress, but isn't learning always a work in progress?  If you do it right it is.

Join a CSA.

• Veggies and meat: check.  Assessment?  Veggies: ehh.  Meat: awesome!  We even ventured to the farm that grows the meat to meet the pigs and the turkeys and the cows who would then become...dinner.   

Travel to North Dakota or South Carolina, the only two remaining in my quest to visit all 50 States. Mango will join me. We'll take nice photos using our new camera and camera skills. Chris can come too if he behaves. Maybe we'll take the Vanagon to ND to celebrate our one year anniversary? Road trip.

• Fail. Maybe 2014?

Learn to drive a stick. FINALLY. It will happen.

•  CHECK.  And I love it. 

Camp with a baby. Toss the kid in a backpack (with airholes) and hike a mountain. Sit by a campfire to snuggle said baby for a bit before putting the peanut to bed and pausing for a minute to reflect with Christopher about where this magical world has taken us.

• July 2013. With a three month old. Love, love, love.  Mini man is a trooper.   

Convince the parents to travel with us. Somewhere, anywhere. But get away for at least a weekend, at least three generations in tow (we get bonus points if Mimi's in the loop and adds a fourth generation for us)

•  Road trip to Montreal, September 2013: boo-yah.  We're still working on four generations for 2014, but in the meantime we took one heck of a journey with the moms, the baby, and some big goofy grins. 

Bake bread. Real bread with yeast and kneading and deliciously crusty crust.

• Pretzel rolls, blizzard 2013: yes!  Not likely to happen again anytime soon.  Delicious, but so is bread from a bakery.   

Live it up. More often than not. And never regret a second.

• Success, success, success.  So many smiles, an abundance of laughter, and my fair share of tears.  I wouldn't trade one single bit of it. 

2013, you opened my eyes to a whole new world, so full of love, so devoid of sleep, and so very incredible. Adventure comes in all shapes and sizes, but life lesson of the year told me that the best adventure of all looks a little something like this: