thankful

 on this thanksgiving day i found myself looking back over a year with much to be grateful for.  we finished up our last four months of living on st. maarten, an experience of a lifetime i will always be grateful for.  crystal clear, blue, warm, salty waters lapping up on soft, white sandy beaches, french bakeries, cuisine, and culture on one side and remnants of dutch settlement on the other, and caribbean island life all around.  st. maarten is not a place i would want to live forever, but it was a treasured time in our lives at the beginning of this medical school journey that michael has taken us on. 

i am so thankful that he is leading us on this adventure we're on together.  we have traveled and lived in places we never thought we would have and all along i have had the fortune of staying home to care for our little family.  thank you michael for making this dream a reality.  i am so grateful to you for all your hard work, dedication, and persistence. 

ezra is the sunshine of my days and i look forward to each morning that he says, "it's morning time!  let's get up into the morning!" and we go off to play together, ride bikes, explore, create, and make mischief.  so many moments of our days are filled with the love and laughter that he brings and i'm so happy to be able to take it all in day by day - to have the time to watch him grow.  

we spent a month living back home in california with our extended family, whom we are all so grateful for, before heading off on a new adventure for michael to begin his clinical rotations in miami.  our family's love and support for us three and all the little and big things they do to keep us close no matter how far apart we are, make us better parents ourselves and remind us that family is always first and foremost important.

we've lived the last five months in key biscayne and have grown from our experiences moving once again to a new place where we've never been.  in each of these places we've lived this year, we've made new friends along the way and held on to the old.

i'm so grateful for these new friendships and the ones that are everlasting no matter how far away you move or how long it's been since you last spoke - the connection is so strong.  i'm thankful for this blog to keep all the memories and precious moments of our days logged and for the friends i've made in this little online community in the process.  thank you for reading and taking the time to say hi!

as we're about to finish this leg of the journey in miami and head back to california to start a new adventure in a new town, a new home, a new hospital for michael, new friends and experiences, and the joy of welcoming a new member to our family, i am grateful for these changes that help us continue to grow.