I know that somehow it's already the middle of February (whaaaat?), so the year may not feel so new anymore, but because my birthday is in February the year always starts here for me.
This photo sums up the year: crazy, fun and together. (BTW: you can't tell here but more than one child was on the verge of tears from being hungry and/or freezing in this photo. Way to pull it together to get the shot, kids!)
This year was FULL. Full of driving the kids to and from school in a city 30 minutes away, all four kids playing soccer in three different cities, school projects and their inevitable drama, driving lessons, filling out college applications, getting meals on the table and laundry folded (again and again and – again?) all while working an office job as well as doing photography sessions and Isis working a demanding job made for full days and weeks that just whizzed by.
This was also the year of The Great Sewer Backup of 2015. Getting the phone call at work that, "Um, there seems to be a leak? In the bathroom?" turned into sewage flooding our downstairs bathroom/hallway/kitchen and needing to remove the bottom three feet of drywall of our walls and take out all the flooring in the entire downstairs...the flooring we had just put in exactly a year prior. The fridge was in the dining room and we would go on a scavenger hunt to find what box held the kitchen items on a nightly basis. We added a couple of workmen to our family for a few weeks there. I think we saw them more than our kids! Even though things were topsy turvy there for a while, everyone had the best attitude. Our life is crazy, but it is great.
Watching Isis and the girls break into spontaneous song and dance in our kitchen last night after our smoke detector started chirping, you'd never know this room used to be in a shambles. And even when it was, things were still pretty darn great. We are luckier than most people on the planet, and better still, we know it.
I'm excited to see what this year holds. We're excited for more home improvement projects. We have launched a year-long family service project that we are all super inspired by. And we have some things on the calendar to look forward to.
I know I've promised this to myself before, but I'm looking forward to keeping this space more up to date with what what's going on here at Christie Spencer Photography and at home, both for any readers who may have stuck around through this blog drought and for myself, as a record of this life that is speeding by. I have so many sessions from last year that never made the blog, as well as some other photography-related topics that have been on my mind. I also want this space to reflect more of the whole picture around here. I'm excited to share more from our regular life, from DIY house projects to organizing and memory keeping to other things I'm passionate about.
I hope you'll stay tuned! I think 2016 is going to be amazing. : )