Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!
2019 was an exceptionally busy, traveling, wonderful year for the Rozmyn household.
We started out the year by taking my grandmother to Hawaii for the very first time, along with my mother in law and my husband’s godfather. February saw us snowed in for a week during the Pacific Northwest Snowpocolypse, where we ate seven meals with our neighbors over five days, and we celebrated the kiddo’s 4th birthday party late once the snow cleared.
We then headed to Arizona at the end of April to visit family, and sent off our close friends and neighbors the following month as they moved out of state.
Late spring and summer were spent at home in the northwest, traveling locally (getting stuck waiting for a ferry off Orcas Island for sixteen hours on Memorial Day), harvesting a growing garden (the husband and kiddo built me two new raised beds for Mother’s Day), and the husband working to replace our decaying back fence.
June saw my name and story published in The New York Times – seeing my name in Sunday print in such a major publication was surreal and amazing (and then again in Forbes a month later!) Tread Lightly, Retire Early is a passion project and one I’m so glad to continue to grow in my spare time.
Our old dog had surgery in July to amputate two toes, and she’s acting like a middle aged puppy again, going on long walks through the trails behind our house.
I headed to DC for my very first FinCon and brought home, in the kiddo’s words, “a big, big golden trophy” for winning Best FIRE Blog 2019. A little while after that, the kiddo opened his very own bank account, which he was very excited about.
November 13th saw our tenth wedding anniversary, which feels pretty incredible and special. One of the best parts of getting married so young is getting to celebrate those big milestones sooner. We’re headed to Iceland for a big trip to celebrate later this weekend, but we still went out for a date night to celebrate the actual day.
The rest of the year has since been a whirlwind in the best possible way, sneaking in a weekend in Portland just before a trip down to Austin the week of Thanksgiving to visit those old neighbors of ours and meet their new baby.
We picked out a Living Christmas Tree for the first time this year and will be planting it in our backyard after the holidays are over. I celebrated my 32nd birthday with a group of friends up in Bellingham, and it was a wonderful weekend filled with deep conversations and too late nights. My heart is full, and I am so thankful for all the wonderful people who are part of this life with us. Merry Christmas, happy holidays, and we wish you a wonderful 2020.
PS – I will be taking off the rest of the week from the blog for the holiday season, so there will be no Wednesday roundup for Friday’s Frugal Five this week or next (but a post scheduled for next Monday). Enjoy the quiet, dark days that round out the end of this year and this decade. I hope you have a wonderful holiday season, and if not, I wish for the best possible outcome of what is a tough time of year for many. See you all next week.
Lots of love to you all.
Angela