This year brought about tons of adventure for our family. We took trips to Wolf Run State Park (to camp), South Myrtle Beach, Oshkosh, Lake James, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. And nearly all with a 1–2-year-old. Whew! We had a ton of pictures and memories that were made on these trips that we will never forget. One thing that I can note — we go hard. As an example, we flew Alan to Toledo, spent 3 nights at Oshkosh, flew back to Toledo, then drove to Lake James for a week of vacation where we rented a Ski Doo. We go hard, we took a 1-year-old to Europe and survived in record-setting heat. We certainly enjoyed all these adventures, but they are way more work than the previous sets of adventures due to keeping a child happy.
It has been a real joy to see Alan grow up and learn how to use words to express himself. He went from practically 0 words at the beginning of the year to well over 100 at the time of writing. He’s running around his grandparent’s home and generally quite a happy kid. I can’t wait to see how he develops even more dramatically over the upcoming year! I am confident that there will be many great family memories to come.