weekend in the catskills.

we've been dreaming of these days for months and it turned out to be a happy weekend indeed. we filled our days with late sleeps and homemade cinnamon rolls, roaring fires and a stack of books. we walked in the woods and fed those parts of our souls that feast on open spaces and mountainscapes and fox tracks in the snow. we made way into town for coffee and a poke around the general store for handsewn moccasins. we brewed butterbeer and finished our harry potter movie marathon -- five months of reading the books together and then watching the movies, and that's a wrap! we shared stories from our studies abroad in college that had never before reached each other's ears. we studied maps and train tables and plotted travels for the summer. we made a pitstop at the phoenicia diner for biscuits & gravy and root vegetables roasted in a cast iron skillet. husband made sticky toffee pudding and i made a wish on twenty nine candles.

i can't think of a better start to a brand new year -- my first birthday as a married lady, my last birthday in my twenties -- than this breather of a weekend, tucked in the mountains, deep in the woods. these slow days nourished our bodies and spirits, and i paused in gratitude for my first twenty eight years and in hope for all that is to come.

i am grateful for what it is to be human and live in this world that is equal parts heartbreaking and lovely and odd, usually all at once. i am grateful for the beautiful soul that loves me fully and deeply and with daily grace. i am grateful for the gift of our marriage. i am grateful for friendship -- for the pure love of those who are not bound to me by blood and yet have chosen me as their tribe. i am grateful for family and support unending. i am grateful for the hard, sustained work that forges honest and true relationships -- the rolling up of sleeves and showing up again and again that says, you are worth it to me. i am grateful for my peace with god. i am grateful for roses and books and morning coffee and music and the smell of rosemary and the hush of snowfall -- the small, daily joys that add up to ever so much. i am grateful for our treehouse and our new york city. i am grateful to live in a country in which my voice is heard through casted votes and telephone calls and peaceful protests. i am grateful for walks in central park. i am grateful for memories of winter in paris -- my very own walden. i am grateful for my dreams of motherhood. i am grateful to possess a spirit of adventure and curiosity. i am grateful for a strong, healthy body that carries my soul wherever she wants to go. i am grateful for my struggles, or at least some of them, though of course i have to work quite a bit harder at gratitude for this one -- i only know that, again and again, i arrive at understanding of the ways my challenges grow me and shape me and sharpen my sense of what i want from this life. i am grateful for my sensitive soul that feels it all, every last ounce of what it is to be alive, so deeply -- for my ability to feel it all so deeply, while at times my greatest burden, has given me absolutely everything.

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welcome, welcome, twenty nine -- i am so excited to live my way into you.