January 02nd, 2019

Happy New Year Everyone!  Regardless of how you prefer it, colourful, sparkly, neutral or flowery, it has still arrived.  2019!   We are just a little more than 24 hours in to this brand new year and so far, things are pretty good. I am encouraged.

Actually, I'm always excited about a new year.  I kind of segment my life out into years.  The year each of the boys were born. The years they graduated high school. They years they got married. The year we moved. The year we moved again.  Each year seems to have one big moment that defines it for me.  So as each year begins, I wonder what is going to be The Moment for me this time around.

It's almost always a surprise.  Most of my life has been a surprise to me. I would never have imagined when I was young that this is where my life would take me. If ever I day dreamed about my future, and believe me I did a lot of day dreaming as a kid, I absolutely never once saw myself living this life.  I have traveled to amazing places and seen incredible things.  I have met the most wonderful people and had the best experiences. I am married to the best man I've ever known and have the most wonderful sons and daughters in law in existence.  I have my sister who is awesome and her girls and their families who are all amazing.  I have the the very best friends on the planet on top of all that.  Yes,  I have been very fortunate in my life.

  And those are just some of the random thoughts that were floating around in my head on New Year's Eve this year. Tim always says that in the inside of my head is a scary place.  Perhaps it is.  There are always layers and layers of ideas and imagines and music and thoughts rattling around in there all of the time.  Heh.

Tim worked New Year's Eve day so I bustled around catching up on laundry and cleaning after a weekend of having fun and doing absolutely nothing useful.  It felt like a perfectly ordinary Monday really. But after dinner, we walked down to watch the sunset. Just knowing it was the last sunset of 2018 made it important somehow.

When we got back, we settled in to watch a little TV until we got sleepy.  But knowing, as we do, that our town would be filled with New Year's Eve revelers setting off fireworks here, there and everywhere to ring in the New Year,  we knew we wouldn't be getting to sleep at anywhere near a normal time, so we didn't fight it.

Instead, a little before midnight, we drove to the jetty and parked facing the pier.  The pier is 3.5 miles from the jetty and directly across the water.  Tim had read that Sharkey's Restaurant, which is just off that pier, would be doing a fireworks show for New Years.  I suppose we were thinking that if we have to hear it anyway, we may as well get to see it too.

We sat, with a few other like minded folks, in absolute darkness, with the windows down and the moon-roof open, listening to the ocean that we couldn't see in the darkness and admiring the stars.  I always pick out Orion first.  I'm not sure why, but it's the one I always look for right away.  The darkness was so deep and the stars so many, it was mesmerizing.  I tend to forget how thick the night sky truly is with glittery stars.  

Right on the stroke of midnight, the sky light up again, this time with fireworks.  We enjoyed the show and when it was done, wished each other a Happy New Year before heading back home.  It isn't far but on the way, we could hear and see other smaller fireworks going off  Some folks were having their own celebrations at their homes.   But eventually all was quiet again.

It was kind of hard to fall sleep after that but I suppose that eventually I did, because when I woke up the next day, on the first day of 2019, my very first thought was Happy New Year!

So that is what I wish all of you.  A New Year filled with Happiness, Good Health, Prosperity and Magic.  We can never have enough magic in our lives.

Hope your New Year Celebration helped to ring in the Best year of your lives (so far!)