As we approach a New Year and receive countless holiday newsletters sharing the highlights of people’s lives and seeing cheery photos on social media, don’t forget that behind every photo, and every written word, there’s a deeper story. Don’t compare and worry that your year wasn’t perfect. There is not perfect year. No perfect month. Practically no perfect day. There’s just life. Behind the smiling photo and the stories of baby announcements, trips across the world, wonderful parenting moments, there’s the stories they’re not telling: the stories of miscarriages or the years it took to conceive. The day they almost missed their flight back home or the day they nearly froze or overheated in the extreme weather. The day their toddler painted the walls of the house and they frantically tried to clean it before it all dried. These are the moments we all have. It’s what makes us human and it’s what makes life a continuous adventure. After all, without the lows, we wouldn’t have those highs that we all share with the world. Embrace the year you’ve had, the lessons you’ve learned, and the struggles you’ve faced and worked to overcome. You’ve got this! Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year everyone!
~ Justine
Dear Family and Friends,
It’s almost the New Year and it’s time I share with you, all of the amazing things I did this year. Not to make you feel bad or anything, but my year was pretty awesome and almost nothing bad happened to me AT ALL.
We began the year of 2019 by announcing that I was pregnant! Now, I know what you’re thinking, there are no baby photos. Without going into too much detail, I miscarried, had a D&C, and spent months trying to find the will to get out of bed, things didn’t work out. Okay. It wasn’t the best time of my life. It may have be the worst time ever, but I swear, that’s the ONLY thing that sucked this year in my otherwise perfect existence.
A few weeks after later, Gwith and I took a trip to New York in beautiful, sunny, February! There was barely any snow on the streets (so none of that dreaded winter wonderland NYC experience that you see in movies) and it was just freezing cold. Don’t worry, Gwith had heating packs placed strategically throughout his clothes and only sometimes looked like he was making obscene gestures to passerbyers when shaking his hands in the air to activate them. All that aside, we had a great time: we saw Avenue Q on Broadway, which was amazing, ate some incredible food (besides the coffee I drank that made me sick all night long), saw the Friends building, stayed at the hotel from Gossip Girl, and took a day cruise to see the Statue of Liberty. It was not windy at all getting those photos and Gwith didn’t almost freeze to death countless times. I swear.
In March, I took a trip to Nashville with my best friend! It was absolutely fantastic and we had a great time. We listened to incredible music and ate at some amazing gluten free restaurants. The airline even delayed our flight for two whole days and slapped us with all of the extra expenses we had to incur from the delay. It’s been great dragging ourselves out of the debt of extra food, hotel nights, and clothes we had to get for the sudden storm we didn’t expect, and that we did not budget for.
We arrived back fully refreshed from our trip to find my son ran out of his preschool class, crying, and chasing down Gwith because he absolutely hated LOVED it there. He loved it there so much that he cried for ten whole minutes and the teachers never noticed he was even gone. They were very attentive. Despite his pleas to stay at this amazing preschool, especially those read between the lines sayings like “I don’t want to go to school” and “school makes me sad”, we decided to switch him elsewhere.
His new school has been truly amazing. The teachers are actually attentive, the environment is incredible (gardens to pick fresh fruit from, chickens and goats roaming the property), and 99% of the kids are wonderful… except for the one who bit my son. He was scared to go to school again for months and would spend every drop off crying, leaving me traumatized and crying in the car on a daily basis. It was a great summer experience. In the end though, all jokes aside, the teachers are wonderful and attentive, so it only happened once and the kid isn’t going there anymore. Now that my son gained confidence on dealing with a bully, he’s not only stronger for it, but he absolutely loves his school and has made wonderful friends.
Gwith has been traveling around the world and country a lot this year for work as well as some personal reasons. He went to New Zealand for his best friend’s wedding at the perfect time of year. I don’t mean the weather. I mean the lucky bastard missed our son getting violently ill during the night and I had to clean his floor, his bed sheets, our bed sheets, and multiple stuffed animals during the night. YAY!!! He also went to Japan for the Rugby World Cup on a whirlwind weekend getaway in September. Now that may sound short for such a long flight but in that time, he managed to experience the best of Japan! He went go karting next to big rigs going 50+ mph, got to sleep in a tiny pod that barely fit his body, and he tried to kill himself without telling me by eating pufferfish. The waitress swore he’d live…and I guess she was right. I’m glad he got to go there and play Russian Roulette with his life. It’s what every wife imagines when their spouse goes off on vacation. It keeps the mystery alive, am I right?
This year we also traveled to Wisconsin for our anniversary and I ate lots of cheese. If you know anything about me, eating copious amounts of cheese is basically all I needed to make this year perfection. I have no witty jokes about this, I just felt mentioning cheese may make you jealous and it was worth putting it in the newsletter.
In October, we went to Colorado for my 10 year high school reunion where I got to catch up with the five or so people I remembered and stand awkwardly in a room with a bunch of other strangers I swear I never saw before a day in my life. I looked absolutely amazing though that night and practically sparkled throughout the room. No seriously. I got my makeup done at a salon because morning sickness was kicking my ass (more on that soon), and the woman thought glitter was an appropriate addition to my face to show that I must’ve never wanted to leave high school. The great news is, I got home after the reunion and finally deleted 90% of my high school class from Facebook because frankly, if I didn’t want to talk to them when in the same room 10 years later, I clearly don’t need to follow their lives while at home.
In other family news, as hinted by the mention of morning sickness in the last paragraph, I’m pregnant again and we are all eager for this little one to arrive in June! Also, I kicked Gwith out of the bedroom for the past three months and into the guest room because his breath and general breathing noises offend me now that I’m pregnant. The doctor said we’re having a girl and we’ve excitedly painted the nursery a beautiful purple color. I’m a little nervous, given the fantastic year we’ve had, that the doctor will have been wrong and we’ll find out on arrival it’s a boy…because so far, our luck has been fun!
I know what you’re all thinking, you’re beyond jealous of all of the amazing adventures we’ve had this year! And you should be. After all, if 2020 can even come close to matching this year, I just may take a trip to Japan myself for some adrenaline pumping street go karting and indulge in some pufferfish.
Happy New Year everyone!