2016

I want to write more often. I want to write in the same way that a starving child wants a slice of bread and a glass of a water.

Which is to say, I need to write.

When I am not writing consistently, when I am not making the time to document my feelings by stringing them into words, I find that it leaks out of me in other areas of my life. It is this inherent need to create. It's the strangest thing.

It's just like Sylvia Path said, "I write because there is a voice inside me that will not be stilled."

I suppose the internal battle that I am fighting is this: the things that used to fill my cup, they all feel so empty and superficial these days. A blog. Social media. None of it matters so much.

I think that I spent a good deal of 2016 in denial. I was a tiny helpless chick hatching from her shell, acutely aware of the cracks and the breaks and the world outside of them but trying subconsciously to stay inside of my shell while it was all coming down around me instead of breaking free.

I was fighting for life to stay the same.

I am a reminiscer. I am always thinking back on life, looking through pictures, reading journal entries, taking long drives down roads passing old familiar places. And so I sometimes wonder, when I look back to reminisce in ten or twenty years, what will I think about this time of my life?

First and foremost, I will always remember it as our first year without James. I will remember crying so much that my eyes would swell until I couldn't see, and then crying into ice packs to try and stop the swelling. I will always remember his body in the casket, all handsome and dressed up in his green army uniform, a gentle smile painted permanently on his face. I will remember clutching his stiff arm and sobbing. I will remember how I stumbled clumsily throughout the year, grasping for stability while wandering through darkness. I will remember living in a fog. I will remember anger and guilt consuming me. I will remember pain and tears and depression and regret and heartache like I had never known before.

I will also remember it as the year that we chose to change. The year that our pain and loss gave us the courage to take the leaps we needed to refine. It was the year that we dipped our toes into the minimalist movement. The year we sold our big and beautiful home to move into our tiny condo. The year we purged ourselves of all the unnecessary to simplify our lives.

And thus, the year we started to learn what it meant to really live. The year we let go of things and searched for memories to make. The year we stopped living paycheck to paycheck, the year we paid off our debts and started seeing investments and savings. The year of our first visit to Hawaii, many weekend roadtrips to new destinations and old destinations, climbing new mountains, earning our first time at DisneyWorld badges.

I will remember it as the year of the two year old. My last baby. How he potty trained himself effortlessly, but he was such an awful sleeper. I will remember all of the days I spent at work with tired eyes, all of the nights I spent laying on the floor at his bedside to keep him content. I will remember how utterly exhausting a two year old was, but I will also remember his chubby cheeks and the way he held my hand and whispered "I luh-you mom", the way he liked to kiss me right on the lips and cling to me as though I was the only thing he needed in the whole entire world.

I think that, in the long run, I will always remember this as a transition year. An eye-opening, terribly hard, life changing year that transitioned me into a life that had more meaning. A life of following my dreams, of conquering my fears, of living to the fullest, of really knowing my worth, of loving harder and not taking my people for granted.

Christmas this year was pretty downright awful, being the first one without James while also walking through the first year anniversary of his death. There were a lot of tears, a lot of emotions, a lot of pain. But there were also moments of peace scattered throughout.

I remember this one small moment at lunchtime on Christmas Day. The boys were playing with their new razor scooters, cruising back and forth from the living room to the kitchen. I was standing over the stove top in our tiny kitchen, stirring boiling noodles for the pasta I was cooking, and as I stood there it suddenly struck me how absolutely wonderful it was to not want for much. I was watching my little family surrounding me and I realized how much happier of a person I am to be so content and fulfilled without needing things.

Here we were in this little and perfectly comfortable home. We had just celebrated a simple, unembellished and no-frills Christmas with nothing but a tiny handful of presents, solely because we truly didn't want much. I was so worried about how the boys would handle such a small amount of presents but they exceeded my expectations. I was filled to the brim with gratitude at how well they did, at how genuinely pleased they were with what they had been given, at how authentically happy they were with what they had.

I am so anxious to walk away from 2016. I am coming out of this fire refined, a completely different person than I have ever been before.

I will never be the same.

Pumpkin Patch + Corn Maze

This was one of my very favorite nights. Every single year, excluding the deep winter months, but especially during the Autumn season, I fall in love with our beautiful college town all over again.

We had planned to take the boys to the corn maze. We headed out and stopped on the way for kids meals and enormous chicken sandwiches at Wendy's. We hadn't planned to stop at the pumpkin patch, but we decided last minute that since we were passing it we should swing by. Thus my not being photogenically ready for a place like the pumpkin patch. Had I planned it, I would have dressed the boys in flannel shirts and put some hair gel in their hair, but as luck would have it we left home in all of our regular old clothes, the ones that probably describe us best. Jace picks his own outfits and as of late he will almost always choose anything minecraft, with light up batman shoes to boot! Beck sports a hat 99% of the time. And I'm not even mad about my not dressing us up for some pumpkin patchy pictures, because the authenticity that comes from candid shots you weren't prepared for are some of my favorite things.

After the patch we headed for little bear bottoms, arriving just as dusk was beginning to settle in. We spent the majority of the night watching the boys climbing and jumping all over the haybales while we sipped hot chocolate. I ran into an old friend who is getting ready to move out of town, so her girls got to play with the boys and we got to chat about life, which was wonderful. We did attempt the corn maze for a while. We wandered around letting Jace lead the way, deciding whether we should turn left, turn right, go straight. After fifteen minutes that boy had led us in a full circle right back to the entrance of the corn maze, which when he saw he shouted excitedly, "I DID IT! I FOUND IT! WE MADE IT!!!!" and so we didn't have the heart to tell him that it was actually the beginning again.

We stayed by the haybales until late, until it was cold and far past the boys bedtime, and then we packed up the car with our pumpkins and our treats and we made our way back home. And then to top it all off, after the boys went to bed Dan and I stayed up to watch World War Z, which is my favorite Brad Pitt zombie movie. (It's actually the only Brad Pitt zombie movie. And the only zombie movie I really like.)

It was all such a perfect evening. Have I mentioned how much I love this time of year?

4th of July

The fourth of July was a jumble of activities and emotions. We spent the entire weekend celebrating, lighting fireworks, eating junk food, chasing the kids around. On Monday, the actual fourth, we spent the day with my family at Snowbird Mountain Resort, and do you want to hear something pathetic? I am still sore from Monday. I do Yoga and run trails every week, but give me an entire day filled with hiking hills while packing around my thirty pound toddler and that is what I call a workout my friends!

Snowbird was such a perfect day. I had never been there outside of wintertime with a snowboard strapped to my boots, so experiencing the views and the greenery was amazing. We rode the lifts and the tram, we saw a moose, the boys played in bouncy houses, Dan and I bungeed the vertical drop, we flew on the mountain flyer, rode down the alpine slide. We had a picnic by the river and ordered ice cream cones. It was considerably cooler in the mountains, especially from the very peak, where it was even a tad cold in our summer attire.

We may have started ourselves a tradition, I don't know. It was just lovely.

By the end of the day we were all exhausted and sometimes I think to myself, self? I get it, why some people never want to leave their house once they have kids. Kids are hard. But at the end of a long summer day like this, when they both fall fast asleep in the car, you know they are dreaming sweet dreams and you are glad you could help them to make such a good memory as today. This is their childhood after all, they should really soak up the simplicity while they can.