New Year's

I was excited to have a not exciting New Year's.  It's time to find our new normal, so we intentionally made a not very big deal about this holiday.  

New Year's Eve, Ben smoked ribs (which were his best yet!) and we played games.

New Year's day was cold and extremely windy, but we put our brave pants on and went to the Leo Carrillo tide pools.  The calendar said this was the best day of the month to go, so we decided it was the perfect way to kick off school. 

Any day by the ocean is a good day in my books.

The only exciting thing we saw was a star fish, but it was a great intro into the tide pools.  I know there will be many more tide pool posts coming in the next 3 years, so I'm not worried.

After cleaning up from all the sand that had blown on us, Alison and I made kielke.  I really need to make this more than once a year because I was rusty on those noodles.  Good thing the kids don't care what noodles look like and still devoured dinner.

While most people are reflecting on the last year and setting goals for the coming year, I just feel frozen.  2018 was full of dreaming about life in California and now I'm sitting here staring at it, the blank page that it is.  I am excited to see what fills the pages of our life, but it's a little strange to be a foreigner in your own life.  As Ben would say, we'll just take it a step at a time and next year's post should be far more exciting.