Happy!

Today is the very first time in close to a year that I woke up feeling unbridled joy and gratitude about simply being alive.  I can feel the sense of happiness all the way to my stomach, a feeling of giddy anticipation of life, that I thought was gone from me forever. Typically that is how I've felt for the last decade, until our lives fell apart, that feeling left me. I closed myself off from feeling anything. For close to ten months I've felt like I've been just existing, getting through each day.  I haven't felt like *ME* at all. Living like this has left me sad and depressed and wondering if this is all there is to life now, will I always feel so down, will I ever feel excitement and passion about my life again?  I never realized just how much I love planning and going on adventures until I got busy putting together  some vacations over the last few weeks.    I love knowing that we have adventures booked that include hiking, exploring and deep uninterrupted time in nature.  I thought after all that happened last year, the traveling part of my life would be on hold for many years to come, and as it turns out,  there is no better time then this year for a little travel before we both get busy working lots of hours with our new business, and before we start the huge task of building our new down sized empty nest home.  I am now beyond EXCITED for  this year to unfold!  We are headed to Montauk with cherished friends in another week, to the northern coast of CA in 3 weeks to visit our first baby, then at the end of March hubby is going with the middle two boys to GA for their annual dirt-bike trip, May brings us to our annual trip to Letchworth St Park, and in June we are going on an amazing 2 week trip out west with my mom and her hubby.  After that.....we work, work, work for our entire summer, which is fine with me as I don't enjoy going away in the summer, every place is always way too crowed.  In September we will get to camp on the Islands at Lake George with our oldest son, who started camping there with us 25 years ago.

What an amazing wonderful year I have ahead of me.  I am deeply, truly grateful for each day I am privileged to be here on earth.