Our (German) Watchword

 

I happened upon this word when I was reading Marmee by Sarah Miller. This is a wonderful imagining of the Little Women story from Marmee's point of view. Marmee has always been my most favorite of the Little Women characters (though I really do love them all!) and if I am being honest it's really wild to me to think that I did not choose "Marmee" for my mama name back when Grace was a newborn. 

In this book, Marmee spends a lot of time working with, and supporting, the Hummel family. One of the things she does is help Mrs. Hummel learn to speak English, and in turn Mrs. Hummel teaches Marmee to speak German. During one of their visits the word geborgenheit was taught. To be sure that I was reading this word correctly I consulted Google Translate. Between the explanation in the story and the  the definition that Google shared (picture above) I knew that I needed to propose this word as our watchword for the year when we gathered on New Year's Eve to choose our word and set our intentions for 2026. Dave and the girls loved it and agreed that it was the perfect choice! It is out hope that geborgenheit will be in abundance for all of humanity this year. xo 

On New Year's Eve

Emma spent the majority of her New Year's Eve getting the deck cleared and gathering the bits of our pulverized Bird Buddy collected. Once she had the branches cut down and piled she called me to come see how much she had cleared. It was then that I decided to take a closer look at the damage that had occurred as a result of the wind taking the tree down. Seeing the chicken coop brought tears to my eyes. It's truly incredible that none of the hens were hurt or injured with how much damage the coop sustained. The goal now, in addition to continued clean up is to get the coop repaired so that we can bring the hens home from the Miele's house. We are so incredibly grateful to them for taking our small flock in. 

Art by Jennifer Vallez pretty much sums up how I felt out this year (outside of this house that is). 

It wouldn't be New Year's Eve if we did not have Chinese food for dinner, review the goals we had set for the year that was ending (we did pretty good!) and set out intentions/goals for the coming year. Here's to hoping that the chaos of 2025 stays in 2025 and that with the arrival of 2026 compassion, kindness and a just world for all arrive with it. xo 

Our Hopes for 2025

 

Our Hopes For 2024

 

Our Hopes And Watchword

 

Our Hopes and Dreams for 2022

 

Our Hopes And Dreams For 2019

As is our tradition on New Year's Eve, we looked back at our hopes and dreams for the year that was ending and then shared our hopes and dreams for the coming year. We realized that we didn't make many o four hopes and dreams from 2018 happen, but gracious, we are super hopeful that we can make at least a few of the ones we have for this year a reality! Some of them will definitely be easier than others but hopefully we can make them all come true! 

We also chose our watchword for the year. This year our watchword is "gentleness". Now, those who know us well will most likely be surprised that this is our word since we are a pretty gentle family as it is. However, over the last half of 2018 it became increasingly evident that we all needed to be much more gentle in how we treat ourselves and how we respond to each other. We have done a lot of talking about those two topics in the last few months, and so, when it came time to choose our family word for the year gentleness just felt right.

We hope that your twenty-nineteen is off to a great start! May this be a year of gentleness for all of us! xo

Our Intentions And Watchword

Our intentions have been named and our watchword has been chosen (hope). After all, in the words of First Lady Michelle Obama: "What else do you have if you don't have hope? What can you give your kids if you can't give them hope?"  In a year that feels so very uncertain, hope seemed like a very fitting watchword for our family. We wish you a 2017 full of love, joy, peace, compassion and hope. xo

Our Intentions And A Watchword

Our intentions have been set and our watchword has been chosen (compassion). 2016 is shaping up to be a wonderful year! xo

Our Hopes For 2015

Along with these hopes for the new year our watchword this year is connection. Connection not only with each other (which is already very strong) but also with our extended family, our friends and our community. xo