I'm Baaaaaack . . . . .

One year and one month later, I'm finally making this blog a priority once again. I've missed it . . . not sure if anyone else has . . . but, as I looked back at it recently, I realized what a wonderful history of my time in Colorado it provided when I was writing. With my mother having died from an Alzheimer's-related complication, and having shown symptoms in her early sixties, my memories have become increasingly precious to me. Last year has to have been one of the best of my life, and I was so busy living that I didn't really record . . . well . . . anything. I have pictures from our travels, but outside of documenting in a journal one trip to Nanaimo for Robert's dad's funeral, I have nothing. So, while I originally started this blog so that my beloved friends and family in Arkansas would have a window into my life out west, the driving force behind my re-entry into the blogging world is to capture my own life in a format I can return to should the memories begin to fade.

It was a growth year, that's for sure. Robert and I moved in together on December 17, 2008, and started our journey as a family with Bug, 2 Boxers (Cooper and Chloe), and a Golden Retriever (Kayla). In that short time, an awful lot happened. We lost Robert's father to colon cancer in January. In February, Robert started a new job, and we bought a new car (one which I'm still trying to learn to like). Bug finished elementary school and started middle school. Robert suffered a torn plantaris tendon in his men's soccer championship game, two days before we were to leave for California for him to play in a long-anticipated hockey tournament with his former Canadian hockey buddies -- so our summer plans of tennis, hiking the mountains, and biking were over with a nasty slide tackle. In August, we started a soccer team - - - Robert became the coach of Bug's team, while continuing to coach a boys' premier competitive team out of Westminster. I (naively) took on the roles of team manager and fitness trainer. In September and October, Robert patiently nursed me through surgery and the yucky recovery thereafter. Over the course of the year, we traveled to Canada four times, Seattle once, and made lots of weekend jaunts to the ski resorts. We've had to deal with immigration issues, an "ex", and agonizing decisions over where, in the metro area, we want to live.

I'm exhausted just thinking about it all . . . but, it was an incredible year. I have the life partner and relationship I've dreamed about since I was a little girl . . . the one I could never find until I learned some really hard . . . life lessons. Bug. . . . . . finally . . . . . has the father and male role model that has never existed in her life. She has a smart, beautiful, and wonderfully talented "older sister" in Robert's 25-year-old daughter. She has a loving, athletic, fun "older brother" in Robert's 28-year-old son, who has a beautiful, sweet wife, from China, and the most adorable daughter, who just turned 2. We are a twenty-first century, multi-cultural, multi-national family. Robert and I successfully merged dogs, dishes, and lots of furniture. We triumphed over those inevitable first-year challenges . . . and there were some challenges considering our collective baggage of failed marriages . . . two each . . . (and, for each of us, our "second spouses" were real doozies). Yet, I've never felt so incredibly blessed in my life. I feel like I've found the yin to my yang (or is he the yang to my yin . . .?), anyway, it's the best. I have a peace about me that I'm not sure I've ever felt. Robert has said the exact same thing to me. My daughter has blossomed in ways I could not have imagined. So . . . a resolution for 2010 was to not let it get by me without recording some of these terrific life events . . . the triumphs and the tragedies. :) Make no mistake . . . I'm still in search of that "high altitude attitude" . . . I hope you enjoy the journey with me to find it.