Phew.  That is me exhaling.  We made it.  And Lawd, it wasn’t easy or always pretty.  But when I look back at a year of photographs I realize just how *supremely* blessed we truly are.  Why is hindsight always 20/20?  Why can’t we appreciate what we have while we still have it?I’m slightly obsessed with treasuring the moment.  Likely because I grew up with a unique family dynamic.  The youngest of eight, none of my siblings fully-blood related but all a part of my life since I was three, at the oldest.  They’ve all I’ve never known as family until I grew old enough to know not all families were made like mine.

It wasn’t until our wedding rehearsal dinner that I ever had all seven siblings in the same room at one time and as much as I should have been focusing on everything else, it was all I could think about for months leading up to the occasion.  I knew it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and I wanted to revel in it.

My children will not know the childhood I had because they will not live it.  They will have two loving parents, in-love, with siblings who have lived the same experience.  They will not worry about splitting holidays, offending the other side until they are married and gone.

I am who I am today because of the life I have already lived so I cannot regret.   In fact, I feel supremely fortunate to have so many siblings representing so many different facets of life.  I find the good and yet still rejoice in the simplicity of our current life as a nuclear family.

I look back on the photos of this past year and I smile.  Wow.  Did I really make that?  Am I really living this dream?

Yes, I am.  We made it.   We are creating it.  We will cherish these days and all of the days to come.

This was a year-in-the-making and, God Willing, there will be many more.

Written while listening to Greogry Isakov “Big Black Car”