Throwback Monday

There's a trend making it's way around social media where people are sharing what their lives looked like in 2016 . It sounded like fun so here we are. 

Ten years. I had to scratch my head a little to remember what we were doing in 2016, but thankfully I have a blog to help with that. 

Turns out we were building a house. Ha!



How do you forget that? 

I guess I've successfully blocked the process from my memory, but at the time it seemed to fill our every waking moment. 

When I say we were building a house I mean the entire year of 2016 was dedicated to that endeavor. We actually broke ground on September 24th of 2015 and then it proceeded to rain for the next month so we didn't start construction until mid-October of that year. 

And it took a looooong time. Almost fourteen months but who's counting? My camera reel from 2016 is filled with a lot of red clay, lumber, plumbing, and stone. 

And that was pretty much it. 

I mean not it it, but the home build did consume our time and our thoughts and our lives for the entirety of 2016.

As home builds do. 

In other old news...having newlyweds in the family made for a happy distraction in 2016. Daughter1 and her hubs married the year before and promptly moved thousands of miles away, which incidentally would become a trend for them going forward, although we blessedly didn't know it then. 

God gives us grace for the day y'all. 

I made two trips to the Evergreen State that year and I loved it. I didn't love the distance, but I'd never spent any time in the PNW before my daughter1 moved there, and I thought it was so beautiful. 

The trees...all the green...I loved walking in my daughter's neighborhood with her picture perfect view of Mt. Rainier. 

Loved walking the path through what I dubbed the Jurrasic forest and then the way it opened up into the wide expanse of the Puget Sound. 

Loved hanging with this guy too of course. 

He was an adorable and only slightly naughty one year old puppy who had no idea he'd be coming to live with us just three years later.  As I said, grace for the day. 

We bought a boat-

Our dock went in before the house was even framed, and this was smart on our part if I do say so myself. 

I mean hubs was all over that so I can't take any credit but having the dock meant we could hang out in the lake while the builders did their thing. 

May 7, 2016...dipping my toes in the lake from our dock for the first time. 

We had to navigate through the overgrown prickly brush on the hillside to get to it, but still we were a step closer towards calling home home. 

What else? OOOhhh the apartment. It was actually kind of fun living in a furnished apartment while we built. I could clean the whole thing in about an hour and best of all daughter2 lived in the same complex.

She was teaching school and we got to see a lot of her and her sweet Greyhound. 

Scrolling through pictures I see we had time with extended family, some fun weekends spent both here and away with friends, some of whom we haven't seen in a while which makes me a little sad, but also grateful for the people whose paths have crossed ours whether for a season or forever. 

I see too, that taking sunrise/sunset pics has been a thing for at least a decade. 

Mostly I'm struck by how ten years feels like forever. I'd almost forgotten we lived in that apartment because life flows like a fast moving river and we have to keep paddling forward. 

Still, it's okay to glance over your shoulder now and then. 

Cheers to the next ten. I don't know what they'll bring...

...but I know there will be grace enough to meet us there.