Ups and Downs of 2014

It is December 31 2014 and I am sitting at the kitchen table with my youngest daughter and my husband talking about our favorite things we did in 2014.  We travel a lot as a family so putting together a list of where we went during the year brought back some fun memories.  My daughter reminded me that we started 2014 with a Caribbean cruise to St Thomas and other Eastern ports of call with the entire family.  It was lots of fun. We took this great food tour of Nassau, Bahamas. I wrote about it on my Stone Soup Blog for Food and Nutrition Magazine. It was a three hour walking tour with stops at local restaurants and historic places of interest.  I highly recommend it when you travel there.  After we got back I hosted three bridal shower teas for friends and family whose children were getting married in the spring and summer of 2014.  These turned out to be quite fun, although, I have to admit by the time the third shower came around I was catering the food rather than cooking it.  My friends and daughters helped with the arrangements. I owe a huge thank you to everyone. I could not have done it alone.  Weddings bring out the joy in everyone.

 By the spring my youngest daughter graduated college and we were off to her graduation in Washington, DC.  I came to DC early so that I could attend the special events honor students get invited to at the end of the year for doing a job well done.  I went to an Order of the Engineer Ceremony where students are presented with a ring to remind the newly minted engineers of their ethical responsibility.  It was a lovely.  I also attended an honors open house located on the top floor of the 1957 E building the Elliot School of Public Affairs.  It offers a beautiful view of Washington DC and they served drinks, hors d'oeuvres and cake! The graduation present for my daughter and her friends was a trip to Brazil to see the opening ceremonies of the 2014 World Cup, soccer, for those not in the know.  This came about because my daughter's Brazilian friend invited their crowd to come and stay and by that I mean the friends said to him " how about we go to your house to stay while we visit the World Cup in Brazil".  Who could say no to that invitation?  Anyway, another marvelous thing we did at graduation was plan a luncheon so that all the parents in and out of Washington DC could meet one another.  It was a model UN with many different languages and good food. This lunch offered parents a chance to be included in their college students lives and to celebrate a job well done.  I would do it again in a minute.

In May and June we attended weddings, danced and reconnected with family and friends in Ann Arbor, Michigan and Chicago, Illinois.  Then the rains came and flights got delayed my husband and I headed off to Montreal, Canada to reconnect and celebrate our thirty third wedding anniversary where we honeymooned.  Some of my girls flew to DC to celebrate the 4th of July with friends  while others went back to work and school. Our visit to Canada included Montreal and Quebec City. We heard great jazz at the Montreal Jazz Festival and enjoyed the festivities at the 450th Anniversary of the discovery of Quebec City. In late July, the kids went to Colorado for hiking in Boulder and we joined them for the weekend.  That was lot's of fun.  I forgot how hard it is to hike in the mountains and how out of shape I am.

In mid July and August, the girls and I took a road trip to Pennsylvania to visit my brother and his wife.  We then moved on to New Jersey to visit with an aunt, who turned 89 years in November.  After that we went to New York City to visit my nephew who moved there last year, we were on our way to pick up my oldest, who was moving from Washington DC back to Cleveland.

 By August, my daughter mentioned she never saw Niagara Falls, so we planned a quick get away to see Niagara Falls and take a ride on the Maid of the Mist, the boat that goes under the falls.  I forgot how wonderful and fun that was and decided to not let so much time go by before we go there again.
Labor Day weekend brought one last road trip with the girls to Dartmouth College. My husband flew up to Boston and took the Dartmouth Bus from Boston to meet us.  We were supposed to have lunch with  cousins in Boston but that didn't happen. The rest of September I wrote about in the previous posting with the sudden passing of my father in law.  We had one more trip to NYC for work and then finally, we went on a family cruise in early December.

Unfortunately, we end this year with a very sad event, my brother passed away suddenly from a heart attack after coming home from the Thanksgiving holiday weekend.  Although we had a wonderful Thanksgiving as an extended family with brothers and cousins, we had a very sad and traumatic end.  It is still too painful to think about it now, but aside from this very great loss of my beloved brother, and my father in law the year 2014 was an up and down year.