2018 Year Wrap Up

How is is 2019? Honestly. How did we get here? 2018 seems like such a blur and like the longest year ever at the same time. I can remember January and February and March 2018 like it was yesterday. But here we are. March 2019. And my life is still not where I expected it to be, but wonderful all the same.

So here's my 2018 wrap-up. As if you're dying to know.

I don't want this post to be extremely long, so I'm going to try and condense it the best I can.

I rang in 2018 with my family in Mexico. It was wonderful and one of my favorite places to be. It was a different trip this year because I spent 5 weeks in Mexico with my in-laws, but without Anthony for 3 of those weeks. It was hard to be away from Anthony, but I think being in Mexico for an extended period was relaxing and cathartic for my soul. It would actually be the last trip we shared with Grandpa, too.

Once we returned from Mexico, Anthony and I were making some big decisions. Him switching careers, me entering back into the workforce after almost a year of being a house wife and working on my passion projects & Etsy shop, and we even decided to move to a new town. The next few months became busy with home hunting, starting a new job, and our typical trying to grow our family.

I had two surprise birthday parties, thanks to my loving husband! It was so great spending time with my family & friends. There was even confetti!I was so surprised and excited that I got emotional, too. I got to do some home decor shopping and start planning what our new home would look like. Picking out paint colors was clearly my favorite thing to do because I started out with 54 and narrowed it down to 6. We put our house on the market and began preparing our new house to move into when I started my new job. I felt like I was running ragged between early mornings at the coffeeshop, late nights working at our new house, and packing up our belongings.

I was involved with a women's retreat at my church and shared my testimony with infertility and waiting on God's timing. Although I do have my faith and a very supporting husband, this year was so taxing on my mental health and I struggled quite a few times with where we are and where I want to be. I became exhausted & overwhelmed of trying to get pregnant without seeing any progress in my hormonal health. So Anthony continued to support me and encouraged me that we could do something different and look into finding more help. So 2018 was the year that I started seeing a naturopath doctor to help analyze my health and get my body functioning as it should. Again, more ups and downs, tearful nights, negative tests, blood work and hormone levels. This also created space for more God, more honesty with myself, more grace, more love, more connections, more emotion, more acceptance. I have definitely had an amazing amount of support, encouragement and love from family and friends that I hardly talk to on a regular basis. The way that people can connect through heartache and difficulties is truly something remarkable and I am forever grateful to those that have spent time encouraging me and validating my heartache. Thank you.

Anthony and I made a few trips to Arkansas for family. We also spent a weekend at listening to music at Riverfest and added LANY to my new music. My sister-in-law and I went to a Charlie Puth concert which was SO. MUCH. FUN. I fan-girled way too hard and had such a blast singing and dancing with my little sister! I got to see Ed Sheeran in concert for the second time and got to see my brother-in-law Matt enjoy Ed for the first time. I also added LAUV to my new favorite bands after seeing them open at Ed's concert.

I had the opportunity to tour a nearby mausoleum which was really cool! I have this weird love for cemeteries and old buildings, but especially this mausoleum. It was super cool and I learned a lot about the history of some local people! I also convinced my husband to take me to see a very cool art installation in KC. And I wandered around in a private cemetery on the property of a house near where I grew up. I think I like cemeteries because they're so quite and it makes me think about the people whose names are on the headstones and what kind of lives they had and that hopefully they aren't forgotten.

I met a black rat snake face to face. Celebrated 4 years of marriage back in our special honeymoon spot in Breckenridge, CO. I met the rest of my Paraguayan "brother"-in-law's family, that I love so, so much and feel like I've known for ages. My oldest sister gave birth to her second daughter. My best friend gave birth to her first child, asking me to be his godmother! My sister graduated from law school, her life long goal, and got engaged! We spent lots of time with family and friends. We also spent a lot of time just being together.

I want to end with talking about Grandpa Donald's passing. Grandpa passed away on August 16, 2018. His health declined pretty quickly in the last couple of months of his life. It wasn't exactly expected, but we did know that he had Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma, or cancer of the blood. He had also had a hip replacement that didn't heal well and then got a second surgery to fix it. I am forever grateful that I was able to spend so much time with him and the family the last couple of weeks he was here. I was even at the home when he passed. It was so....strange. I've never seen someone die before and it was awful to see grandma lose the love of her life and best friend after 60 plus years of marriage. It is weird to realize you'll never see someone again, after you've watched them take their last breath, which is so painful and hard to imagine.

Grandpa was such a sweet soul and treated me like another one of the kids. He was incredibly ornery, too! Always joking with the kids and being silly, he loved to make people laugh. He was so generous, with everything. He had wanted to take the Cowan family to Disneyland just because I have never been before and it was his favorite place on earth. I am so sad we were unable to go, because of his and grandma's health, but I know it's a trip I have to make that will be so special.

I made my first homemade pie, from scratch, just for him. And Grandpa was awesome at baking pies! On what ended up being his last cognitive day, my first cherry pie was the last thing he ate. And he made sure to let me know my crust was too thick! Haha! I loved Don very much. We had a special bond and I miss him so, so very much. It's so hard and weird to look at pictures and think of the full life he had and all the memories that died with him that we will never get to hear or experience with him again. What a weird thing "life" and "death" are.

Here's to praying 2019 will be filled with many more memories, painful or joyous, with more "life" than death.