Year's End

A little belatedly, a few new year's thoughts and a couple pictures.

It is the beginning of a new decade! The last ten years were a whirlwind for me. Everyone was talking about what a difficult decade it was and how glad they were to see it go, but it was a good, full ten years for me. At this time ten years ago I was living in Wenatchee, Washington, teaching first grade and living 300 miles away from my family for the first time. I had three years experience teaching preschool but this was my first job in the elementary grades. It was very hard work but I was enjoying it. There was so much to get used to in a new state, a new way of life, but again, it was a worthwhile kind of a challenge. I think it is really strange how life seems to have come full circle for the time being--here I find myself a new resident of Washington again, in another round of adjustment. I'm just glad I'm not in an apartment this time. (Even though I loved my apartment at that time.)

So much lay ahead. I had not yet met my future husband; K and T, the ones who now are the source of the flow of my day-- did not exist, and I didn't even have a computer yet, though I was itching to get one so I could email and find new lesson plan ideas on the internet. Little did I know that in only two years I would leave that state for Idaho where I would teach a combined grade classroom. I would meet Brent, marry him a couple years after that, have a daughter, quit teaching to become a stay-home mom, move twice, lose a child to miscarriage, have a son, move back to Washington. Life just keeps happening.

It's a series of chapters opening and closing--

but not in neat succession.

They overlap,

sometimes to pause..

then resume redefined,

other times begin again without missing a beat.

Sometimes they end with finality.

What were you doing ten years ago?

Now a picture or two. Here are the kids in their Christmas outfits. It is really hard to get a good picture of the two of them together. We had just come home from church and they were wanting to run around and blow off steam rather than stand still and smile. Can you tell that K helped with putting up the tree ornaments?

And here is a picture I took on New Year's Eve. That morning there was freezing fog. That stuff is no fun to drive in, but it's always fascinating to watch how it changes everything's appearance. Snow tends to coat things from the top down but the icy frost that develops in freezing fog grows on every little surface, giving plants a highly detailed yet fuzzy appearance.