Dear 2016,
Here are some of your:
Travel highlights:
- A trip to Southern France with Family.
- Long weekends with Mum and Dad.
- Hiking and Skiing in Blue Mountain with Family.
- Visit Family in New Jersey.
- Spend time in New York with my sweet friend Dani.
- Spend time with dear friends in Manchester, Sheffield, and London.
Personal highlights:
- Spend as much time as we could with friends and family.
- 5-year wedding anniversary.
- Guns N ‘ Roses Concert with my brother.
- Fulfilling our auntie and uncle duties with aplomb, if not that, then definitely with gusto.
- Read 17 books and 5 children books.
- Did not give up on the blog and kept chipping away at it.
- Continued beading with the best group of girls I could wish for.
- Stuart, our Norfolk Pine Tree is still growing beautifully and now has a happy partner in Ernie, a kumquat fellow.
- My work in software development went full steam ahead and it was a very work full year.
- Became a bit of a hamster and had days in which I would walk around our condo in order to get to 10000 steps.
- Went back to Yoga at the end of the year and spent a lot of time trying new things for my health such as Accupuncture, Osteopathy, and smoothing fruits and vegetables.
- Kept my Etsy shop and added a couple of prints.
- Made our condo a home which we love. But that deserves its own post which I hope to cover soon.
- Excellent coffees at home.
Toronto highlights:
- Walks. One especially beautiful during fall time organized by Nature Conservancy Of Canada, an organization we are supporting.
- Hosting dinners in our nest and making it more our own one month at a time.
- Family and Friend’s visits from overseas get us outside of our city comfort zones.
- Canadian Opera Company subscription with two performance already checked off: Ariodante and Norma. Four remain to be seen.
- Beautiful concerts with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, starting the year with an emotional Mozart Requiem and ending with a soulful and funny Jann Arden.
- Good food at Rose and Sons, Smoked and Cracked, Café Belong brunch, Lee Namjang, Stockyards and a new favorite Marigold.
- Mama Earth Organics weekly food deliveries.
2016 was very much a full year with lots of work. A year I felt I learned and became more confident in my technical abilities. Reaching that point where you know that not knowing is ok. I never knew anything in this field but with dedication and work all the unknown becomes familiar and you can get on with the work. I still enjoying the learning curves and the problem solving aspects of it. It was also a year of family time, we were lucky to see family here locally but as well visitors and through our traveling. During this year we confirmed that buying our condo/flat was one of the best decisions we made and we were happy not to push ourselves above our means to buy a (town)house. I fell short in taking care of my hobbies, but I spent a lot of time focusing on health improvements also some of the artistic dimension was filled with the beading creations. An extremely rewarding occupation.
Thank you 2016 and here is wishing a blissful 2017 to all.