A New Year Opens Up

The New Year got off to a spectacular start for me! My family and I rode the train up to San Francisco and walked out to near the Ferry Building along with several hundred of our best friends to wait along the waterfront for the fireworks. Not without a couple detours though; we stopped at Happy Donuts for our last food of 2016, a favorite stop of ours, and then we walked over to Townsend so that my father could take a picture of Docker. It was pretty chilly, but as long as we were moving it was quite nice. Lots of people were wearing headgear — one I particularly noticed a couple of were little bunches of fiber optics along a headband with colors shooting through them.

One of my sister’s friends showed up right as we were nearing midnight, and we all toasted with raspberry-lime mocktail in the darkness. The fireworks started up right on schedule, and they were some of the most fantastic fireworks I’ve seen lately! They just kept going and going. There were a lot of ones that look kind of like gold glitter or a gold waterfall, and some that looked like big smiley faces. There were some towards the end that stayed right near the boat but were pretty densely shot off in tight spirals, those were interesting. But mostly, my mother and sister were cuddled close to me through the whole show. Mmmm.

My sister and I just dropped our parents off at the airport a couple hours ago, which has given me some time to reflect. We played a lot of games while they were here — double and triple solitaire, Loaded Questions, and one called Postcards from America especially. Card games are a perennial favorite with my family, but Postcards from America was a game I just found at a yard sale a few months ago. It was a great game for us, just about the right pace, and it involves traveling around to a lot of cities, national parks, and other landmarks around the United States and Canada, which is great since we did a lot of domestic travel while my sister and I were growing up so we can reminisce a lot while playing.

I was pretty sad to see my parents go, but I’m really looking forward to 2017. I did a lot of growing in 2016, some of it pretty painful, but it’s gotten me to an amazing place right now. At the end of 2016 I was only just beginning to plan for this California adventure. Now it’s fully realized, but there is so much more to do. So many opportunities, so many possibilities. Let’s make this an amazing year!

Auspicious beginnings!