we’re back! jeremy and i have taken a brief, but much needed break from exploring. there have been lots of ups and downs lately but we have been reminded of how together we always come out on top, even better than before. we have stepped outside of our comfort zone and included ourselves in new communities and have met some great new folks around town. this is super important to us as we seem to only stick around this amazing city to work and sleep. any chance we get, we are on the road.

this past weekend marked my twenty fifth birthday. it was a long weekend for us which would usually mean driving until our eyes begin to shut and sleeping in our car. as much as i love to call walmart parking lots our home sometimes, spending my birthday enjoying the “little things” couldn’t have been more perfect. we stopped at a few of my favorite coffee shops, enjoyed the autumn sunshine, had a cozy backyard campfire and ate lobster rolls for dinner (my favorite!).

last year, i made a list of twenty four goals i wanted to accomplish before i turned twenty five. i did achieve many of those goals, but some were left unfinished and some even completely forgotten about. i am usually one to beat myself up for incomplete goals, but this year i have decided to make that goal number one; to not be so hard on myself. at first i was pretty bummed that, for example, my goal of creating a small series of drawings was left undone; but then i got to thinking about how much i have learned, especially more recently, about myself, about my husband and about our marriage.