Funny how we spend the last weekend of December remembering how we spent last year, and the first week in January planning (or resolving) how to spend our next year. How to do better, how to be better and how to live better.

Looking at 2019, it is our year of travel and new experiences. Meeting new friends, catching up with old friends and forging our village. To be honest, we rarely travel. If we do it is by car and camper.  Looking forward to 2019, it is the year of adventures by plane!

We will be reconnecting with our PACS1 Families in Texas for our we hope more frequent family gathering. When we held our first gathering two years ago, we had less than 50 families world-wide and 18 of them came to Virginia to meet.  Since that time, the Europe PACS1 families have held their own get togethers. We have had smaller meet ups and mom get-aways. This year in Texas we will have almost 30 families from across America, Australia and Europe take advantage of the opportunity to gather and share and meet in real life. We will have PACS1 siblings forge connections with other kids who get it. Who understand how awesome yet some days frustrating it is to have a sibling that demands more attention, that gets away with more, that they know one day they will be responsible to care for. We will laugh. We will ugly cry. We will share. We now have over 110 PACS1 families across the Globe. To have a weekend with almost 1/4 of us is quite the reunion.

Look out Texas.

We will fly to Vegas to celebrate my mom’s 70th birthday. We will be adults, childless and reconnect as a couple. Flying twice in one year is huge, when you realize the last time David was on a plane it was 6 years ago.

We will travel to Rangley Lakes with our camper and David’s siblings to revisit their childhood. We hope that the memories we create there for our children and nephews are remembered forty years from now. We remember that it is spending time together as siblings and in-laws is how we keep our family strong and Bridget’s support system in place. So that Abby is not alone on the day she one day has to care for Bridget, but my nephews are there for her now as David’s siblings are for us.

We will trek to Vermont for our annual camping trip with our fire fighter family. Where each year Abby get to be a teen and hang with her friend as they kayak down the river. Where each year Bridget get’s more adventurous and needs a translator less when she asks any firefighter that walks by if they want to go to the Pool in perfect ABA Fashion: You want to take me to the pool, yes no yes. And then show them the way.

In 2019 we will spend time, together and with our family: our born-to-us families, our sisters from other misters and our brothers from other mothers, our PACS1 family, our townie family. We will spend time investing in our village and being there more times than they are there for us.

OMG it’s January and I am so looking forward to what the year will bring!

What adventure are you looking forward to?

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This is how I co-hosted after a long sabbatical and finished the sentence “OMG it’s January…” with Kristi Campbell of Finding Ninee