2015 Year In Review

Now that the new year is upon us, I thought I would reflect a little on what has happened over the past year.

If you've been around my blog for a while, you know I always like to give our years some sort of a theme or a title. Usually I can sum up the year in one word. But looking back on this year, I'm not exactly sure what stands out, except that this was the year we were really really busy!! Maybe I could sum it up by calling it the year of growth. I think everyone in the family had a lot of personal growth this year. 

For Shawn it was his promotion at work. Last January Shawn was promoted at work and now he's the boss. This year has a been a bit of a struggle for him as he's had to make a lot of changes at work and deal with some difficult situations, but he has learned and grown so much from it. He's really good at his job and I'm proud of him for how hard he works. He's really had to stretch himself this year to deal with all the work changes, but he has done a great job. 

For me the defining moment of this year was definitely going back to school. That has been a huge thing for me. So far the classes aren't hard, but just being brave enough to give it a try was hard for me. My self confidence has grown leaps and bounds as I have realized that I really can do this. Deciding to go back to school was the first step in finally completing a goal I set for myself over 20 years ago. I'm finally doing the thing I always wanted to do, and that's huge for me. It's scary and it's overwhelming and it's requiring me to step way out of my comfort zone, but I'm doing it and I'm proud of me. :) 

For Josh I feel like I could write ten pages on how he has grown this year. That kid is going places. He's getting straight A's in a very difficult academic program, he's the editor of the yearbook, he is competing on his schools academic decathalon team, he made a fantastic National History Day documentary that he's excited to enter into the competition in February, He's finishing his Eagle Scout project, he's doing volunteer work for the Leo Club, (which is the junior Lions club), and he was one of 15 kids in the country chosen to go to France this summer to study WWII. And when he's not busy with all of that, he has a fantastic group of friends and he has a very active social life. I feel like I don't see much of him these days, but he's spending his time doing great things and I'm so excited to see where it all takes him in the future. He has big plans and I have no doubt that he'll accomplish whatever he sets out to do. 

This year has been a fun year for Matthew. I have seen amazing growth in his piano skills!! A year and a half ago he couldn't play anything and now he's performing for people every chance he gets and he even wrote an original song. My mom and stepdad left the country 18 months ago to do missionary work. When they left he hadn't started piano lessons yet. They just got back from Malaysia two weeks ago and are now living back in my hometown, and Matthew is getting ready to play the piano for their church congregation next week. They haven't heard him play yet, so he's really excited to perform for them. Matthew turns 13 this coming year and we'll have another teenager in the house!! Speaking of a year of growth, Matthew's doing a lot of physical growing these days. He's starting to hit the crazy growth spurts and all those surprising changes that come along with puberty. He would hate that I just said puberty. Sorry Matthew. :) 

Clarissa is making great strides academically this year. She has really started reading and has discovered that she loves books! Which I'm super excited about because I only have about a hundred books that I've been waiting for decades to share with a daughter. We're going to have so much fun delving into the Ramona books and Pippi Longstocking and all the other awesome books my boys never wanted to read! She also started tap and ballet this year, which she has really enjoyed! I have enjoyed watching her learn and grow so much. She's so creative and artistic and I have really enjoyed watching that develop. I can't believe how fast she's growing up. It still feels like yesterday that we were waiting for that referral call.

This year was also the year of the vacations. Shawn and I went to Mexico to celebrate my 40th birthday and we took a really fun family vacation to Oregon. I put my feet in the ocean twice this year! When you live in Idaho, that doesn't happen very often!

So overall, I would say this was an extremely busy year of growth and new adventures for our family. i will look back in it as a good year. We managed to get through it with no major traumas or crisis and we all learned and grew from our adventures.

So goodbye to 2015. I will remember it with fondness and I'm excited for all the adventures to greet us in the coming year.

Happy new year to all my blog readers. Thanks for checking in with me. :)