Turn, turn, turn

By accident, I read some of my old posts this morning, just clicked on something I couldn't remember writing and was suddenly lost for 20 minutes in the past. It's funny because I don't often read old posts, I should do it more often.

Reading things from earlier this year made me realise how much my life has changed, how much the kids have changed, how much I have changed.

At the beginning of the year, we'd just finished a beach holiday, Lil was starting school and the year lay out fresh ahead of us. Little did I know where the year would end!

We're living in the Middle East. Lil is onto her second school. Goose started big school. We've got a life here – a home, friends, a routine. Bloody hell, we're going to Austria at the end of the week. It's all pretty sweet.

I look at the girls and they have grown up years in the past four months. They're so much more worldly and mature. I know my mum will see a huge change in them when she visits at Christmas.

The past few months have changed me a great deal. My view of the world is so much broader. I'm more happy to throw caution to the wind. I feel like I've packed a huge amount of life into a really short amount of time. I've learnt that you can stop time slipping through your fingers if you want to. That there's so much life to live out there if you look. I've realised that I'm more of an optimist than I thought I was, I can be cynical but most of the time I think that things will be OK and I trust people.

I've learnt that opening yourself up and throwing yourself in the deep end is scary, exhausting and the best thing that you can ever do.

This is one of my all-time favourite photos that I took in January.
We were so ready for big things this year.  I'm so glad we took the risk.