It's the first whole week of the year and I'm sitting here trying to organize my thoughts and focus. It's been quite a while to say the least since I last shared anything with you and oh, how I've missed sharing our adventures with you. However, I needed to focus on the end of the school year for both kids and prepare for our first holidays just us 4. No grandparents, no aunts, no uncles, no cousins. Just us 4.
Our lovely neighbors invited us over for Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and yes it was an emotional holiday season but we made it through and counted the blessing of having made new friends that seem more like family here. For New Year's Eve we decided to host a small dinner/party with three other families. To say our holiday season was an international affair is a reality. We shared our holidays with friends from other nationalities that were kind enough to share their holiday traditions with us.
For example in Costa Rica for most Costa Ricans it is baby Jesus who brings them gifts, for Germans St. Nicolai visits on December 6th and then again they get gifts on Christmas Eve when they are visited by "Christkindl" which means Christ child and the tree is brought inside their home, decorated, lighted and suddenly a bell is rang for everyone to see the magic of Christmas happen before their eyes. We had friends from Germany, Costa Rica, United States and Venezuela join us in our holiday traditions and celebrations.
It was certainly fun to celebrate the end of 2014 and start of 2015.
A year that was full of challenges and triumphs for us as individuals and as a family. This week in 2014 was full of anxiety, fear, uncertainty as we were dealing with my husband's health and was in a difficult emotional position when I had to drop off my parents at the airport as my husband lay in bed at a hospital, little did we all know that as they were landing in Los Angeles my husband would be undergoing emergency surgery that lasted double the estimated time and wasn't for one procedure but instead 9 different procedures.
It was the year in which I kept losing my focus and regaining my focus on my weight loss journey, I'm happily wearing a size 16 and in some brands 16W. After all that the anxiety I had this past year I am happy that I was able to maintain my size and feel proud of myself for it.
Our now 5 and 9 year old have matured and grown so much, they've learned a lot from living here and experienced the true meaning of the holiday season. We took several small trips around Costa Rica, sadly we have yet to visit the Caribbean and I say sadly because it is on our list.
Welcome 2015! This year will be no different in the sense that change is inevitable and we are gearing up for some changes. For starters we will finally have both kids in the same school, after 5 years they will finally be together something they both are looking forward to.
I finally have a group of friends that I see or keep in touch with consistently, we are an international group of women that are here to support our spouses but do often get homesick and long for having the support of our loved ones when we are stuck in a rut.
2015 is full of hope.
Hope for new experiences, new adventures and changes to become better and stronger. For the past 2 years I have been choosing a word to describe what the new year will be all about, perhaps it's more of what I need to work on and each year it has certainly been all about that word!
Back in 2013 I chose "relax", my need to be in the know of everything {our present, our future} of what will happen when... or what will happen if... 2013 was the year we moved to Costa Rica and "relax" was all about learning to just enjoy the ride, boy was I in for the ride of my life.
2014 I chose the word "health" thinking it would be my year to finally run 5km and lose even more weight, little did I know that on 01/05 my husband's health would decline and it would take 3 months to nurse him back to good health or that I would fall and hurt my foot and not be able to exercise at all for a month or that towards the end of the year I would be dealing with high blood pressure and need a series of tests done on my heart in addition to bed rest.
For this year I chose the word "trust" because I chose to trust the decisions made and those that will be made are the best for us and our family.
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