It’s Thanksgiving Day and before we know it, Christmas and the New Year will be upon us. 2018 hasn’t worked out as I planned. In fact, 2018 has been a difficult year for me personally.
The first half of the year
Jan - April was rough for a number of reasons. It was a cold and snowy winter in the Northland. The cold didn’t recede until the end of April and snow hug around until May. It was a rough welcome after moving up here in December.
In January my wife’s grandfather was diagnosed with advanced Alzheimer’s. He was placed into a nursing home and my wife was made his guardian in Feb. We spent all of our free time from then to June conducting an inventory and listing repairs to his estate.
The Summer
After getting the inventory under control, my parents moved up from Denver. They were just as sick of the traffic, crowds, and cost of the Front Range as I was. So after visiting a couple of times, they decided to spend their retirement here.
So we spent the month of June and part of July helping them get settled. The rest of the summer was spent doing outside work on various properties. We also started the process of sorting her grandfather’s “stuff”. Which is really just a nice way of saying his dementia had been occurring longer than we realized. So there is lots of stuff to clean up and go through.
The Fall
We didn’t have much of a fall. It kind of went from summer to rainy to winter. Now it’s time to get things ready for winter, which kind of snuck upon us. We did however replace our fifth wheel this fall, so next spring/summer we can take some time for us. Unfortunately, my Dad’s cancer has had a resurgence. So I help my parents with whatever they need while my Dad goes through chemo again.
What’s coming
The upside is, things are slowing down with winter moving in So maybe we can get finally get settled into our house, we still have things to unpack. I am also hoping I can spend some time focused on learning a development language or two.
I’ve had time to reflect over the last year, and I’m thankful we moved up here when we did. There is no way we could have handled this from Denver. It’s been rough and we’ve made sacrifices, but living in the woods has made it worth it.
I hope 2019 is a bit easier, and I hope everyone who reads this has a good holiday season.