One year ago: we lived in a different house, a different state.  Now it seems like a different world.  So many years come to an end, and I am amazed [disgruntled] at how little has changed in my life.  This year I am amazed [loving] all the change.

We talk alot about our adventures here on the Kid Project. Climbing. Skiing. Camping. Road tripping.  But I’ve never really shared perhaps the biggest Erickson family adventure to have happened in our little family.  We moved.  Not a huge move, but huge enough.  We left behind the state I was born in, my dear family, a world we knew like the back of our hands and friends we’d gladly give those same hands for…and we moved to Utah.  To a house I’d never even seen [yes, we bought it and only my husband had actually seen it in person], to a state with no relatives and at the time no real friends.

What did we hope to find? Our family.  OUR family.  A love and enjoyment of our Creator again, of life again.  And a love and enjoyment of being parents, of being married, of our kids as people. We hoped to find our passion for the outdoors again and a few adventures along the way.  We didn’t expect circumstances to be perfect.  We didn’t even want them to be.  But we wanted to know we were actually LIVING our lives, not being lived by them.  Do you know what I mean?

It is the difference between controlling, directing and edging your ski versus riding the ‘rear’ in terror.  It is like skillfully leading a horse around the ring versus closing your eyes and hoping it doesn’t start to move to fast.  We’d become numb.  Everything was routine. And where routine set in too heavily, our hearts began to die.

So here is to a year of change- of the good kind- and a year to come that holds so many mysteries. And I like it like that- the mystery.  We hope you’ll be a part of it, all of us figuring out this journey together.