On living, laughing , loving and losing.
This year has brought a lot of changes to the missfamily. We moved from our home of 7 years to a new house about 20 miles away. It was a great move for us. We now live on an acreage, with lots of room for the kids to play. No traffic to speak of as we are the only house on a dead end road. I love living rurally. Being able to go outside in our skivvies and not worry about what the neighbors will think. Hot tubing after dark with no worries of who will drive by or stop by. No body from work stopping by to see if I would go work for them. Generally living as far away from town as we do, no one just “stops” by.
This year has been great for laughs. The first part of the year I worked way too many hours. I was managing a store in another town. I was able to take a step back from that at the beginning of the summer, and start to enjoy spending time with the kids. Lazy summer days were here. I was able to work 20 hours a week or less. It was awesome to be able to be at home so much. It was also nice to be able to spend more time getting to know other dopers. In June of this year we went to my annual family reunion. (my dad‘s side ). I always have such a good time with my family. We all camp over a weekend. We have a big barbeque on Saturday, play games for prizes. Everybody wins something. In July we had our annual family reunion on my mom’s side. We do this every year on the 4th of July. We watch a parade, have a big picnic. Spend time remembering, laughing and playing , too. August brought a couple of big events. My sister got married, and the kids started back to school. Both made me cry. Also, in August, was the KC dopefest. It was awesome to meet everyone there. I rode down with two other dopers, Wikkit and my best friend withaK. It was hot but it was nice. I got to try some of Bakers very yummy treats. At this dopefest we hatched a plan to have another dopefest in September. Big events happened at the September fest. I became very close to a few other dopers. In October we had another KC dopefest at the zoo. Followed the next weekend by a very mini dopefest in Columbia. At this mini fest, Horseflesh and I got new tattoos, while sperfur and withaK watched. November was huge for me personally. Lots of doper gatherings in December. My favorite being the wedding of sperfur and withaK.
This year has been huge for loving for me, too. I learned a lot about love this fall. I learned that loving is not always easy. It sometimes hurts, and its hard to love someone and let go of them. Its also hard to watch those you love make mistakes, and it is hard to be the one making the mistakes and asking those who have been hurt for forgiveness.
Losing someone you were close to as a child is hard. This past November, my cousin was killed in a car accident. She was only 28. She had a two year old son. Every day I wake up I am thankful that I have my kids, and every day I am thankful that they still have me. This was a huge wake-up call for me. I decided that work was no longer a priority for me. My family needed to come first. In 10 years, would the company I work for even care about me as a person, would they remember what I gave up for them? Would my kids remember what I gave up for my job? I would rather my kids not think back to special days and have to remember me not being there because of work.
I can only hope that 2004 is good to my family, friends and me.
