Twenty Years...and counting

Sorry for the "epic post", but it's been an...epic life.

Today Joerg and I celebrate twenty years of wedded bliss and family adventures.  I was recently challenged by an older, wiser, and long-married mentor (thanks Mom) to see if I could remember something special from each of those twenty years.  Since I can barely remember what I'm supposed to be doing twenty minutes from now, I had to cheat and refer back to photos to get the timeline right.

So, here we go.

Year one: a transatlantic move for one of us, a cross-country move for the other, get married, buy a house and move again, have Baby #1.  Not bad for the first year.

Three years of adjusting to Vermont, married life, and parenting flew by like a shot.  The adventures begin.  From checking out the scenery from the (frozen) water, learning about Vermont's sugaring history, introducing Patrick to trains, raking leaves, getting Patrick his first suit (of many), teaching Patrick to fish, and working together to make our house a home, it was a busy first few years.  We even managed a trip to Rome after Joerg joined Mentor Graphics.

Then Baby #2.

Two more years of living life; hunting for hot air balloons, being cute, going for bike rides, visiting museums, trying out soccer, and traveling.  What an adventure!

We interrupt your leisurely stroll through life to...build a house!  This one event took up most of 2007.  Right in the middle of everything, Patrick went off to first grade!

Four more years of school, cuteness, visiting with family and friends, climbing mountains, and diving in the sea.  There were guitars to play, friends to hang out with, and homework.  Joerg and I had a once-in-a-lifetime cruise in Tahiti and an adventure to Indonesia.  And we even had a crazy flood that caused a lot of damage in Vermont (and elsewhere) and surrounded our house with water - but the basement stayed bone dry.  Many were not so fortunate.

In 2012 we went on a fantastic dive vacation (to San Andres Colombia) where Patrick received his open water dive certification.  In the fall we began a new adventure with the acquisition of our motorcycle licenses.  This would set up our next few years; dive in the early spring (late winter) and go on a motorcycle adventure during the summer.

2013 - San Andres (again) for diving and Germany and France for motorcycle riding, and a special birthday, of course.

2014 -San Andres for diving and Montana for our motorcycle adventure.  Funny, it turns out we must really like to travel on two wheels.  Even our dive vacations include two-wheel transport.

2015 - Cozumel for diving, local motorcycle trips, and Patrick continues his volunteering with Outreach for Earth Stewardship which sometimes involved getting into character.

2016 - Back to Cozumel for more diving, and taking our motorcycle adventure directly from home to the northern-most tip of Newfoundland with whale-watching and icebergs in August!

2017 was a different kind of year.  For 17 years we had a good run; health, employment, growing our real estate business, keeping the kids alive, and building as much adventure into each year as we could.  A heart attack and open-heart surgery kicked 2017 into a new and unexpected level of adventure - one we would surely prefer not to repeat.  However, it didn't slow us down for very long.  By the summer, we were packing our bags headed to Scotland and Northern Ireland for the next motorcycle adventure.

In 2018 we had an opportunity to go to Germany for a family reunion which we combined with a city tour of Berlin.  And in the summer we took our motorcycle adventure south into the Appalachian Mountains.  Earlier in the year, we learned that Patrick had decided to pursue his commercial pilot's license after high school so a stop in the Adirondacks for a little seaplane ride seemed like a perfect wrap up to our adventures.

 

That brings us to 2019.   After Baby #1 graduated from high school we loaded a bunch of motorcycles, riding gear, and camping equipment into a trailer and went on a month-long journey west to Montana.  Beartooth Highway, St. Joseph Pass, grandparents, Yellowstone, and Glacier National Park.  What a trip.

 

Life has been filled with ups (usually involving a mountain) and downs (usually to about 100 feet below sea level).  It has been quite a ride, and I'm so glad that this adventure isn't over yet.

Thanks for joining me on my trip down Memory Lane as I reflect on the last twenty years.  Now, it's time to look forward; more adventures and perhaps another twenty years...or more.