What a year it's been! I'm going to try to recap. Ya know, people send out those family letters in their Christmas cards. While I read every single one of them we receive, I've never been much for typing one myself. So, I figured I'd give it a shot this year. I feel like I have so much to update and yet I don't know that there's really that much. But it sure feels like it's been a whirlwind year.
We welcomed in 2016 as official empty-nesters. We had to learn how to just be us. For the first time in almost 23 years, we were "just us" in the house on our own. The quiet stillness took some getting used to. But now we love our quiet nights! It's been nice to reconnect and focus on us and our relationship.
January and February moved right along with the normal winter blahs. We were ready to get out into the garden and spend time on our porch. But before that, our lives we changed in a moment. On March 17 in the wee hours of morning, Drew woke up throwing up large amount of blood. I rushed him to Memorial Hospital where we spent the next four days. After lots of blood tests and an endoscopy, it was discovered that he had "more ulcers than I can count" (to quote Dr. Oh) as well as a hiatal hernia. He went into the hospital not taking any prescription medications but would leave with two that he will take for the rest of his life. Our diet also had to completely be changed. That's not really a bad thing but it took some getting used to. We're a beef-eating family. Now we're limited to twice a month. Otherwise, it's turkey, chicken and lean pork. Nothing fried or spicy. Lots of vegetables. Perhaps the biggest thing was cutting out our Diet Coke. We were huge Diet Coke drinkers! Neither of us have had one since March. In fact, a few days after his hospital stay, we tried one. It tasted horrible! We haven't had a sip since. Drew had to take it easy for awhile until he regained his strength. But he's been so much more active with our new lifestyle. This hospital stay also brought us to a fantastic family physician. She's a wonderful Christian woman who is very caring and compassionate. While she points out things in our lives that need to be changed for our health, it never feels like she's condemning us for past mistakes. We're thankful for Dr. Frentz. 
June 8 we took our first trip to Saint Joseph, Michigan and immediately fell in love with this quaint little beach town! The lake is stunning, the beach is beautiful, the shops in town are tremendous, and we love the slower pace of life there. This was our first trip of many! I'm now Facebook friends with people we met over the summer, we've traveled up for the Saturday Farmer's Market, gone up to have dinner and watch the sunset and even made a rush trip, getting into town 15 minutes before the sunset and then got ice cream before coming back home. We spent more time on the road than we spent in town but it was so worth it! I don't know why we never went there before. I feel like so many years were wasted by not going. We'll definitely be back! After all, we have friends there now. 
This fall, we built a video shelf in Sarah's old room. It is floor to ceiling and wall to wall on one whole side. Yes, we have that many movies! No, we're not ashamed to admit that! We enjoy watching movies together. And we're pretty darned proud of our shelf!It turned out great and we had fun working together to build it. 
That project just wasn't enough for us. We decided to rearrange our living room. Living in a little 3-bedroom house that's less that 1,000 square feet with four people, it was always pretty cramped. Now that we have two extra rooms, we're able to put our office (which used to be in part of the living room) in Sarah's old room with the video shelf. Jon's old room will eventually be a guest room for when Drew's parents come to visit. So, we moved everything around and gave ourselves an amazing space to relax in. Now we hardly ever want to go anywhere!
Thanksgiving weekend, God told us it was time to go back "home" to our old church. So that Sunday morning, we found ourselves sitting at Bethany Missionary Church and feeling like we had never left. We were welcomed back with open arms and have really felt God moving in our hearts and lives in ways we haven't for quite some time. We're thankful for a loving church family who really seeks to lift others up.
On the job front, Drew celebrated his one year anniversary as General Manager of Worldwide Jewelry and Pawn in Elkhart. It keep him very busy and he deals with quite a bit of stress. But he loves what he does. I'm proud to say he's able to help so many people through his job. He has a great team of employees working for him.
In January, I was transferred from the learning lab where I had been working in to the computer lab as the computer teacher. I've had the opportunity to use many of my teaching skills in this position. I love going to work every day and being able to touch 600+ students every week! I not only get to teach students various computer skills (typing, research, etc) but get to enjoy watching them get their "aha" moments and have fun learning! I work with great teachers who are willing to entrust research projects and things to me. It's been a great transition!
Grandkids are growing like weeds! We've been able to make many memories with them! It's still odd to not have kids coming home at night, cooking for two, and not having to tell teenagers to quiet down so we can sleep. But we're blessed with each other and are thankful that God has given us another year to learn and grow closer to Him and to each other.
May 2017 be another year full of blessings. Wishing you and yours a blessed New Year!
No comments:
Post a Comment