New Year, New Outlook, New Path, New Hope

Happy New Year everyone!! I truly hope everyone I know and love had a great Christmas season and brought in the new year with a smile on their face and a heart full of love and hope!

Chris and I were really blessed to be able to bring in the new year at a beautiful cottage in Lake of Bays in Muskoka. We were having a young adult's retreat there from January 2-4th, but the family who owned and were letting our group use their cottage are really generous and allowed Chris and I to come up early and have the place all to ourselves for a few days before everyone else came up. I worked on the 31st, but as soon as I was done in the afternoon, we quickly packed up and were on our way. We dropped Franklin off at a great new doggy hotel we found in Orillia and then made it up to the cottage by nightfall. By the time the clock struck midnight, we had already unpacked and enjoyed some time in the outdoor hot tub looking at the stars and reflecting on the past year.

I love New Year's day and always have. I actually find it to be the most peaceful and relaxing holiday of the year. Everything is closed, I never have to work, and I always get to spend the day doing exactly what I want to do. This year was definitely no exception. I woke up and watched the sun rise over the lake (absolutley beautiful), then had a fabulous day of reading, watching movies, hot tubing and hiking. I spent a lot of time really thinking over the past year - what I loved and what I didn't love so much, and what I look forward to experiencing this year. 2008 was a huge transition year for both Chris and I : we moved (again), I changed stores, we met new friends, and both grew a lot in many different ways. 2009 is going to be a big "eventful" year for us - I already know that things I've been wanting and needing in my life are finally going to come to fruition this year. One of those things is actually going to happen less than 2 months from now (but I'll write more about that in another post).

I was really in need of some time away from it all and time to read and reflect. 4 days off spent at that cottage was just what the doctor ordered and I feel a renewed sense of self, purpose and hope going into 2009.

I am really, truly thankful for being able to start the new year in such a peaceful, relaxing and beautiful way. I really love the outdoors and spending time in nature, so it could not have been more suiting to my personality than to start the year off in the quiet of Muskoka in the winter.

So here's to the start of 2009 - may your year be full of love and gratitude, and may we all reach the end of it being able to say we were our best selves and lived our potential.