When I first sat down to write this post, I originally had titled it “An Overwhelming Year.” But after reflecting on all the amazing things that have happened in my life, I had to rename it. Positive thinking can shift your entire emotional state: one of the many changes that have taken my life in a new direction.

2018 held so much blessing for my family, but those blessings came with a lot of chaos and anxieties. I’ve felt incredibly overwhelmed, and I’ve felt entirely loved. I’ve felt totally broken, and I’ve felt completely whole. 

Last year I didn’t post a single blog update. I made multiple promises to my Facebook page that I would “update soon.” Well, here it is. 

We bought a house!

Well, sort of. We are in the process of renting to own my parent’s house. It’s been an emotionally charged, bittersweet endeavor moving back into the house I grew up in, and turning it into a home for my family. 

The house was built in 1925, about five miles away from where it’s located now. In it’s lifetime it was home to an Oregon state senator, a school house, a boarding house, and a vacant house. When my parents bought the house, they had it moved to our current property. In order to transport the house, they had to remove the second story. It turned out that the second story was going to cost more than the house itself to transport, so it was left and demolished and burned on site. 

We had a thick, lush forest in our backyard growing up, which I so passionately loved! But my parents had most of the trees logged and cut into lumber that was used to rebuild the second story of the house. 

This house has been a project for many years, and will continue to be one for our family. It’s got a lot of issues, many unfinished areas, some that have new damage, too. We knew this going into it, and it’s why we have such an amazing deal on the home (not to mention having good relationships with the sellers!) and will likely have the house totally paid off in 5-10 years.

As you can see, we have a huge project ahead of us, but what a blessing it will be to own our home out right in our 30s!

We had a baby!

In June, Desmond became a big brother. We welcomed Dash home after 6 days of laboring. I will always treasure the memories of laboring at the zoo while my brother was here to visit.

I started laboring on Father’s day, the contractions would get closer and closer but never intensify. I was having Prodromal labor, or false labor. The stress was in never knowing when exactly the time would come. We joked often that my brother, who is medically trained (though I’ve never fully understood what it is he does) would have to deliver the baby. 

My midwife’s advice was to keep active, keep walking during the day, to see if the labor would progress. And to take Epsom baths in the evening to see if we could get it to stop. I spent a lot of time bouncing around my parent’s (current) house on an exercise ball. As I labored, we tried to spend as much time together as a family that we could, as my brother only visits every once every year or two. 

Without going into too much detail, Dash was finally born at 12:42 AM on Saturday morning, just under an hour of us arriving to the birthing center. 

The dance studio closed! 

It was made clear to me that when one dance studio closes, a new one opens. The studio that had been my home for 8 years, where taking classes turned into teaching classes.  The studio where my passion for dance was ignited and turned into a career closed in May last year. 

There were many tears shed among the dancers, instructors, parents and owners, but in our anguish, one parent and dance coach came forward and announced to us that it had always been a dream of hers to own a studio, but it never seemed the right time as she would be competing with the studio her daughters had learned at. 

Now was her time, and she put in all the hard work to open her own studio with as much of the old studios teachers and students as she could. What seemed like a tragic end, became a beautiful beginning for us all. 

I set intentions! 

Honestly, this was the first time I’d ever set intentions. I’ve had a lot of experience setting goals and making plans, but never had I sat down and set intentions for my life. This last year I learned the importance of having intentions to support my goals, of setting up long term visions of what my family should look like and setting goals, with time stamps, to support my intentions. 

You’ve got to know where you want to go, before you can determine how to get there. 

I started a path to minimalism!

Thanks to some amazing ladies on the internet, I have found a passion for decluttering my home, and my entire life. I was tired of spending all my days dreading my never ending To Do list. I was tired of constantly cleaning up after my family, and not just ‘, enjoying our time together. I was tired of that terrifying stress whenever someone would ask to come over, knowing that it was going to take at least an hour to get my house presentable. 

I was tired of being tired. 

 

As you can see, we had a lot of big shifts and changes in the last year. Now that I’m finally getting my life in order, I’m excited to get back into the swing of this blog business.