merry christmas and a happy new year!

i know things have been real quiet around here as of late, but i wanted to check in and confirm that i’m still alive!  i have a LOT of catching up to do here on the blog in 2018 [HELLO new years resolution], but i’m trying to cut myself a little slack since i’ve been out of town 9 of the 18 weekends since september 1, and because my job is definitely a time suck too.  aaaaaand because i made a fun little [or not so little] scrapbook as a gift to jamie capturing the story of how we met and our first year together [guys, it is LOOOOONG and took me 6 months to make but i finally finished it!] so that took lots of my very minimal free time.

and the truth of the matter is that i can come up with every excuse in the book as to why i haven’t been able to post much these days, but i’m still thoroughly disappointed in myself for my lack of blogging.  kinda makes me sad.  so that’s where my sounds-easier-than-it-is new years resolution for 2018 comes in:  BLOG MORE.  and then my second new years resolution comes a-sittin’ on my other shoulder and it’s all like BE KIND TO YOURSELF, and self-kindness is most certainly underrated, but it also leaves me making a whole bunch of excuses for myself for 2017… but oh well, here’s to goals for the new year!

anyway, let’s talk about 2017.  what a year it’s been!  here are a few monumental things that have happened:

: :  i moved to colorful colorado!  posts on my big move are here, here, and here.  i never dreamed that i would be able to wake up and see the mountains every day and it certainly is a treat.  and living in the same city as jamie hasn’t been bad either. ;)

: :  jamie and i met each other’s families, starting on the first day of 2017 when he met my family, and then i met his family gradually throughout the spring.  we’ve spent a good amount of time with both my family and his family since then!

: :  i started two new jobs this year… one in january when i moved to colorado and then one three weeks later when a new position opened up within the same company and i took it!  more on that here and here.  it’s been challenging but rewarding and SUCH a learning experience… i went from never having managed anyone to managing ~35 people.  and i realized that i love leading people!  also, jamie started a new job in the spring as well and is killing it in his new position!

: :  we found a church that we love, park church, and have started getting involved beyond just sunday service.  also, jamie might kill me for telling you guys this, but they offer premarital classes at our church and we went ahead and took the plunge and completed them.  it can’t hurt! ;)

: :  we fought a lot during the first half of the year and then somehow, suddenly just stopped getting into fights.  i know it’s going to happen from time to time but i think we’ve gotten sooo much better at resolving conflict in a healthy way without it turning into a big argument, which has been nice.

: :  this year we’ve been in 12 states together!!!  colorado, texas, south dakota, nebraska, wyoming, iowa, georgia, tennessee, kentucky, virginia, illinois, and arkansas.  and 3 of those were states i’d never been to – nebraska, wyoming, and kentucky – so i got to check those off my list.

: :  jamie and i got to spend every holiday together in 2017, which was pretty damn fun!

: :  i attended 6 weddings this year, and jamie attended 5 of them with me [there was one that he couldn’t make that was in texas].  we are now officially professional wedding guests.  i was a bridesmaid in one of the weddings and jamie was a groomsman in another one.

: :  jamie’s brother got engaged and married in 2017, and my brother got engaged this year too!

and here are some things that we didn’t do this year that are on our list for 2018:

: :  we’ve never been to a movie theater together.  not once.  which i think is pretty funny considered we’ve now been dating for 1 year and 5 months.  eventually we’ll cross that one off…

: :  jamie bought a significant amount of camping gear this year, but we haven’t been camping together yet.  we want to camp in moab!

: :  visit the house that jamie grew up in.  when we go to south dakota to visit his family, we always stay at his family’s cabin in the black hills on the western side of the state, but he grew up in the middle of nowhere on the eastern side of south dakota, and i have yet to visit there!  i would really like to.

: :  climb a fourteener!  [which is a mountain above 14,000 feet.]  can’t wait to do this, and it’s nice that we won’t have to go far!

: :  go white water rafting.  again, right in our backyard.

: :  have our parents meet.  there is a date set!

: :  also, we’ve never been out of the country together.  there are lots of places on our list to go!  i think this is one of the things i’m most excited about, being the wanderluster that i am.  not sure that we’ll accomplish this in 2018, but we’ll see.

gosh, i get alllllll the feels from this year, guys.  is it possible that 2017 could be my best and also hardest year??  because i think that it was both of these.  [notice that i said best, not necessarily favorite.]  it was my best because i did something brave and moved away to a new city where i barely knew anyone and then took a really tough job because i wanted to better myself.  and i stuck it out.  i surprised myself by doing things i never knew i could do, enduring things i never thought i could endure, and honestly changing a lot more than i never knew was possible in one year.  it was my best year for personal growth, for building confidence, for showing determination and grit.  it was also my best year because i got to spend the whole dang thing with jamie veurink, the man i love.

but.  i’m not going to lie here, this year was frickin’ challenging.  i cried a LOT this year.  i wanted to give up a lot this year.  [i learned that sometimes the worst part about hard times is knowing that you will get through them.  anyone else been there??]  i had some of the worst days, the hardest days, the most stressful times.  i reached some lowest lows and then sometimes even got lower.  thankfully, i had stellar support to carry me through those days and get me going again.  jamie and my parents have been amazing throughout this whole moving-and-new-job adventure, and i am ever grateful for them.  i can’t thank them enough.  and so, i’m admittedly glad that this year is over, but i’m appreciative of the opportunities and the support from my amazing loved ones, and i’m ready for a new year and new opportunities.  i think 2018 is going to be a fun one!  can’t wait to see what adventures it brings.

and finally, thank you to all of you readers for sticking with me through the fun times and hard times, through the positives and negatives, the ups and downs, the times of frequent posting and the times of crickets!  happy happy new year to you and your families.  xoxo