This is 2020!

What a whirlwind the past year has been!  Finding out we were unexpectedly expecting on April Fools Day 2019 rocked our world, but we quickly got on board with the excitement of adding another daughter to our caravan.  We made many emotional and financial preparations for her arrival.  We went full term with a healthy pregnancy, only to lose her to knots in the umbilical cord 34 days before her birthday, which shook our world to its very core.  I would like to say that having your world turned upside down twice in one year lands you back on your feet, but unfortunately, that is not the case.  We lost Cheyenne right before Halloween.  The rest of  October and November are a total blur, I know that many days I felt like a kid again, when I got what seemed like excessive kudos for things like getting out of bed – bonus points for getting dressed!  December likely would have been a blur as well, but we knew we couldn’t manage Christmas at home – we had started remodeling our basement right before Cheyenne died, our house was a mess, our decorations were all in storage and we just couldn’t do it.  We pulled the kids out of school a week before Christmas break and surprised them with a trip to Disneyland and then flew to Northern CA to spend the actual holiday with my mom.  I don’t know how we managed to pull off that surprise, but it was awesome and a great way to try and put our pieces back together.

Without going into too much detail, as part of losing our daughter, we also lost the church home we had had for the past 8 years.  God closed that door clearly and firmly.  When your world is rocked as ours had been, you either draw closer to or farther from the Creator of the Universe.  In our case, we didn’t understand why this tragedy had happened, but we trusted God more than ever and knew the only way through this valley was to draw nearer to Him.  The first Sunday after our loss, we were back in the hospital.  The next Sunday, we knew we wanted to be in church, but weren’t sure where to go.  We had sensed a possible church change for some time before this and had a list of about three churches, each with legitimate pros and cons.  There was one church that was the front-runner, but we still weren’t sure.  I was scrolling Facebook and an ad for this church came up in my feed (I have no idea if it was an ad or if a friend posted or how in the world this showed up) and it said that they were having a Great Wolf Lodge giveaway for a new family that weekend.  In the past we might have been a little judgey about why this church is giving away a vacation package, but I showed it to John and he just laughed and said, “That settles it.  That’s where we are going this weekend, probably would have gone there anyway.”  So, we went, we of course won the trip, and we have not missed a single Sunday since.  We serve on the Guest Services team, and if I were to go into all of the blessings that have come from this life change, I would have to start a new blog.  Sometimes it feels like God is showing off – which is too cool!

Back to 2019, as 2019 came to a close, the world around me was abuzz with anticipation for 2020.  New Year!  New opportunities!  The same as it is every year.  I did not want it to be 2020.  Cheyenne’s whole existence was in 2019 and moving into a new year without her felt like too much.  I didn’t want to go.  Begrudgingly, I knew that I had a husband and kids and a dog and a house and a job and that 2020 meant getting serious about putting the pieces back together and figuring out what our new normal would look like.  John and I found a grief center in our town that was amazing.  He and I attended a couple of monthly meetings and made some new friends, who helped us navigate a journey we never wanted to travel.  I joined a 6-week grief workshop and started back at work.  The workshop ended the end of February and I felt like I might be able to breathe again.  The first week of March, not only did I turn 40, but some of my coworkers were in town and we actually worked together with a client on a big project, in adult clothes, with hair and makeup done, which was a refreshing change from my typical routine of working from home and running my kids around all day.  March was setting up to be one of my busiest work months ever!  My kids always have a random Tuesday off in March and I made sure to take that Monday and Tuesday off so we could go on our Great Wolf Lodge getaway.  We went, and between the package we got from the church and the upgrades from the very wonderful woman that checked us in, we had the best overnight stay imaginable.  We literally did everything that place has to offer, and it cost us almost nothing!  We got home late Tuesday night and I let the kids sleep in on Wednesday.  Levi was up and John took him to school on time, I took Trista mid-morning on Wednesday, then they went on Thursday and Thursday night the schools closed down for the remainder of the school year.

Work for me was great in March, but challenging to manage two full-time working parents and the addition of full-time school at home for the kids, but we made it happen.  April brought my workload to a halt and John’s company cut 20% of the workforce, including John.

So here we are, in a world we don’t recognize.  One that is seeing drastic changes almost daily.  It is hard for us to speak to how this pandemic has affected us, since our pandemic started months ago.  We are thankful for Cheyenne, we miss her daily, but not only did preparing for her put us in a solid financial position to weather the storm, she taught us that life is short and uncertain, live big and love big while you can.  Take chances, you have no idea what tomorrow will bring.  It is harder for us to fear what is going on around us, when God has been faithful to carry us through our worst nightmare.  We are stronger for it. 

John found a blog of a married couple who are full-timers in their RV, their blog name is ‘Today is Someday’ and that is where we find ourselves.  We have always fantasized about homeschooling and traveling for a time.  We are amazed that everything has come together to enable us to pursue this dream and spend time together as a family.  We are homeschooling this next year and planning to spend as much time in our RV as we can.  Here is more of our journey…