Reflecting on 2019

“I choose to make the rest of my life the best of my life.” – Louise Hay

It’s very hard to fathom that another year has gone by and we’ll be entering a new decade tomorrow! After feeling like we were on speed most of December, we ended the year relaxing and being very lazy together. Slowing down has allowed me to think through all of 2019’s adventures, challenges and lessons learned. We traveled, we laughed a ton, we cheered each other on, we learned together, we navigated through the frustrating times of parenthood, siblinghood and marriage, and we loved each other through it all. I am so grateful for this little family of ours and everything we experienced in 2019. We are all really looking forward to welcoming our baby girl and becoming a family of five in 2020.

Whether your 2019 was joyful, sad, difficult or challenging, I hope your experiences allow you to grow and learn in 2020. I am so grateful to have spent another year blogging and creating recipes, and I want to genuinely thank you for just being here. As I enter into 2020, these are lessons I plan to keep in mind…

These are the days. 

I felt this most while we experienced Christmas with our kids a week or so ago. These are the moments we will remember, these are the traditions that will live on with our family, these are the days I’ll look back on and wish I could have held onto forever. We are living in “the good old days” now and I must enjoy them, savor them and bottle them up as much as I can. I’m especially trying to do this with this pregnancy and savor every kick, craving and time with our little family of four. I hope to do the same when baby girl arrives.

Sometimes chapters closing are blessings in disguise. 

It’s really hard for me to accept change when it’s not on my terms. I tend to take things personally, wonder if there was something I could have done to prevent it and my emotions are all over the place. Change is never easy, but what really helped me this year when I was abruptly told a door would be closing, was thinking about the happiness it would bring me having this chapter closed. Sometimes you need someone or something else telling you things are over in order for you to blossom and put your energy towards the people/things you value most. Shifting my focus helped me gain a new perspective and realize this was a huge blessing in disguise.

Finding friends is tough, and may take time, but it will happen. 

A common theme I’ve noticed among adults my age is how difficult it is to find friends and just good, genuine people to be around at this age. It’s not like elementary school or high school, when you’re around the same people your whole life and you kind of click/connect with everyone. Adulthood is not easy and finding friends at this age is definitely not easy!! Over the past few years, all of my close friends have lived in different states (and are/were in completely different stages of life) and it’s just been hard experiencing motherhood and marriage without them physically here with me. Finding “our people” took a lot of time and patience, but looking back on it, we are so grateful for the journey and finding the group of people we get to do life with.

Time is a thief and a privilege. 

As much as I try to hold on to every moment, I can’t, and while I have a really hard time watching time slip through my fingers, I’ve also made an effort to really think through what a privilege it is to grow old and watch loved ones do the same. Just being able to spend another year with my husband, blow another set of birthday candles out with my family and watch my kids reach another developmental milestone is a blessing and something I never want to take for granted. There is so much beauty in watching time pass by.

I hope you all have a blessed new year, and again, thank you for being here with me.

Photo by Julia Maruyama Photography