I enthusiastically rang in 2016 thinking that 2015 wasn’t all that bad.

I can be so blissfully ignorant!

2015 was not our year, and from the blogs I’ve read this year, it wasn’t a lot of people’s year.  2015 was rough for a lot of us, and my family did not escape the challenges of 2015:

• Things with my parents got worse
• My sister-in-law went through a divorce
• My cousin was in a terrible car accident and was not expected to ever wake up out of his coma
• My friend’s nephew died at the age of 13
• My good friend lost her fight against cancer 9 days after her 35th birthday

But on the flip side, certain good things came of those bad things:

• I finally realized that my parents are not the types of people I really care to interact with unless I have to
• My sister-in-law and her husband decided to try to work out their problems and are still going strong
• My cousin, miraculously, woke up out of his coma and, despite the expectations of multiple physicians, he is almost 100% recovered
• My friend’s family brought so much awareness of childhood leukemia to hundreds of complete strangers with their outreach projects in Sam’s name
• My good friend is finally done living in fear of cancer – and this has brought her husband a lot of peace

When you add the good things above to the list of GREAT things that happened in 2015 (happy healthy kids, a solid marriage, a truly fantastic summer, a full year of fitness, travel, school for both boys, so much fun time with Hottie’s parents, the most beautiful autumn in years, a (so far) mild winter, Christmas eve dinner for Hottie’s family, the excitement of Santa coming to our house, the most relaxed holiday season of our married life), I understand how I could forget about how hard the past year was for us.

I’ve been told by my mom my entire life that I’m a pessimist, and I never believed her.  I always said that I was a realist – I took the good with the bad.  But maybe I am an optimist after all.  Maybe I do see the glass as half full.  Maybe I do always search for the silver lining.  Maybe I am, truly, just one of those happy people.

I have high hopes for 2016.  Looking at the “bad” list from 2015, it wouldn’t take much for 2016 to exceed my expectations.  But looking at the “good” and “great” lists from 2015 – 2016 has big shoes to fill.

She’ll fill them!