Merry Christmas + Hello 2019

At Old Faithful Geyser, Yellowstone – photo taken by my dad
Dress: Free People wearing size XS Booties: Lucky Brand, Faust Booties 

Please consider this your digital Merry Christmas from us since we would love to send everyone a card if we could have! *wink*

I haven’t written a goodbye (this year), hello (next year) post for years. I forget that this blog is still a journal for me and that I’d like to document the things I’m thankful for this year, especially since I’m slacking on my yearly birthday reflections – I have yet to discuss my year of age in review, so maybe I’ll print this post off and say it’s all good.

Share some highlights from 2018 –

• Concerts: Weezer, Fleetwood Mac, Christina Aguilera.
• Signed a one-year contract with Olay, a brand I absolutely love and am a lifer.
• Took a 10-day trip with my parents and hubby through WY, UT, ID, MT, SD so much fun! See the post here. That’s when we took this photo by the geyser!
• Started our home expansion project after years of saving up the cash and dreaming about it.
• Spent another memorable weekend in Vegas with my girl gang, and celebrated 13 years of friendship hosting our annual Christmas pajama party!
• Two of my best friends getting married this year – Melayne and Rachel – and photographing Melayne’s engagement, being a bridesmaid for that wedding and photographing Rachel’s intimate wedding in Nor Cal with Benjamin as my second shooter!
• Working with The Home Depot this year, a big bucket list company and also got us to really work on that neglected patio space.
• My good longtime friend’s castle wedding in Victoria Canada, the Hatley castle was where they filmed X-Men!
• Sedona trip with my Club MED girls, love how long our friendship has lasted, almost 15+ years! Cheers to that! 
• An incredible year for business, full of growth, learning experiences and the ability to be creative in new ways for me. I still very much love what I do and am thankful to make a living doing it.
• Sharing a part of my past that I wish never happened (broken engagement) created a huge response and so much outpouring from those going thru it and I am honored the Lord would use my story in a way to bring hope to others. I hope to share more stories this year.
• Working with my alma mater – I got paid to go back to college and was spoiled and had an amazing time reliving some of the best years of my life all over again! I’ll share my coverage of UofA homecoming in January when it posts on the Arizona Alumni website!

Things I’m looking forward to in 2019 –

• New blog design in January
• Completion of our home expansion project – February!
• An international trip – yes making plans to go somewhere…(just trying to finish this home expansion thing to get it off my mind).
• Another family trip through the East Coast!

I’m still making plans for 2019, which is exciting.

I don’t really have set goals, while I should set some (and do), I also like to go with the flow and just enjoy what comes, it makes me appreciate the surprises without expectations.

If anything, the goals I should set should continue to be for the future – saving up, retirement, that stuff we need to think about that’s much less glamorous than the highlights I mentioned. :)

And just like that, time marches on and I want to say thank you for being here, reading, your support through visits, clicks, comments, subscribing to these posts, liking my social media posts, I am thankful. I never knew I could make a career out of blogging, something I did so casually and I still enjoy it as much today as I did seven years ago. I also know that sometimes closing years are triumphs for some of us, ones we want to bury and sometimes the future also brings us fear (I definitely have my fears of the future but have to remind myself to just be and enjoy). Life is full of every emotion, many experiences, and we must remember that there is one reason we are here.