In a marked departure from the past few whirlwind years, 2017 was not filled with a slew of firsts and life milestones. Instead, it was a year of second-time-throughs and building upon past experience.
On one hand, it's reassuring to not feel like a complete rookie. On the other, it's easy to fall into bad habits and days that thoughtlessly bleed into each other.
Anyway, as this post is woefully delinquent, I'll cut to the chase. Some proverbial highlights from the past year:
1. A Place To Call Our Own. It feels good to build toward something long term, rather than making a monthly expense payment. We are very lucky and grateful to live where we live.
2. Travel Bug Stayed Strong. Oakland (house warming in Temescal); Las Vegas (Traci watching the Backstreet Boys); Anaheim (BWT Finals, where UCI lost for the third time in four trips since 2008); Phoenix (Spring Training 2017, Dodgers autograph success!); Crater Lake and Bend, OR (where our car was sideswiped overnight); Temecula (friendly wine servers winning over certain members of our party); San Francisco (Edge/softball wedding); Seattle and Whidbey Island (law school wedding); Ensenada (birthday celebration); Joshua Tree (Mom's birthday); Santa Barbara (quality wine); and Sonoma (capstone wine tasting trip).
3. A Return To Costa Rica. This trip gets its own paragraph. Long on Traci's bucket list, I was really excited to go back to one of my favorite countries. The trip itself was awesome, but the journey back, not so much. We'll always have being stranded for 23 hours at a closed down Houston Hobby Airport in the middle of Hurricane Harvey as a memento of our second year of marriage.
[January 2019 EDIT: BLOGGER FAIL]... Just noticed this never got officially published. Half-written draft just hung around in the unpublished posts section for an entire year. Oh well, on to the next...
