Done

 I'm going to print this last year of blogs into a book, and now seems as good a time as any to draw a line and declare the festivities over.  We are firmly back in our house with a few boxes and the usual array of minor diy tasks that comprise the always-there list.  We have our traditional Crotch Lake canoe trip to look forward to with the Cressmans in a couple of weeks before getting ready for back to school.  And so I think it is safe to say that life has come full circle and returned to normal.    

But before moving on too quickly from the year that has just been, here are some final thoughts.  It's almost impossible to make sense of what we have done in one short year.  It's why I want to print the blog. If I scroll through the photos on my phone and land at random, there I find a whole adventure, one of hundreds, but one that hasn't popped into my head in months.  I just did it, Lago Grey in Torres del Paine, a picture of an iridescent blue iceberg, floating against a backdrop of brooding clouds and mossy rock. I'm transported back to that windy day of heavy showers and bright sun, the kids holding great chunks of glacial ice, who knows how old, and feelings of being in awe of nature and very far away from here.   

I wonder how Felicity and Toby will remember this year.  More than that I wonder how it will fit into the tapestry of their young loves, alongside school and friends and sports and play, the magic of Christmas, the love of family, the security of home.  We will probably never know.  Our experiences, and the people who we share those with, are us.  But our "us" is an alchemy with unpredictable outcomes.  What we can say is that we planned to do it, we did it, and we've done it.  It sure was a big, interesting thing to do!