Welcome 2011

I can’t remember a time when I was so looking forward to the end of a year and looking to the future with so much anticipation. It’s as though I have been promised that 2011 will bring better days than 2010 did. I admit it. Two Thousand Ten was certainly not my favorite year.

Two Thousand Eleven what will you bring?

My beautiful baby girl will turn 18 on January 16, 2011 at precisely 10:08pm. My heart swells with pride at the very thought of Katherine. She is incredibly beautiful from the outside in. She is kind and loving and remarkably intelligent. It is a privilege to be her mother.

April will bring a 25th wedding anniversary and a 50 year old husband! It is absolutely inconceivable to me that twenty five years ago I married that 25 year old boy. Wynn Stark is compassionate, kind, and the source of my strength. He has spent the last 25 years of his life being my rock, my confidant and my most trusted friend.

May 18th will sneak up on us soon enough. This date will mark the end of Katherine’s high school career. Four years dedicated to academic excellence have her looking at a promising future at Grand Canyon University. She made it look easy, but I know how much time and effort she put in to her high school days. Her efforts paid off with a scholarship from GCU.

Jes should be pretty excited when June rolls around…. He will get his driver’s permit and hopefully one of those two VW bugs in our backyard will be in driving condition. He & his dad have a lot to do before the calendar says it's June!

Then comes August. Wynn & I plan on celebrating our 25th with the “other” Starks in Alaska. If life goes as planned, we'll be celebrating in true Stark fashion with a weeklong fishing expedition alongside Wade & Karin in Valdez, Alaska. Ocean fishing with Karin Stark is pure joy and Valdez is breathtakingly beautiful. Valdez holds the kind of beauty that seeps into your soul and calms your every nerve. The ocean and mountain views are so spectacular that I am certain if there really is a place called heaven it must look like Valdez.

October 31, 2011 will be a bit more frightening than any year before; Jes will be 16 and driving, I’m sure. John Edward Stark turning sixteen, Wow! That doesn’t even sound possible to me. Jes. Jesse. John Edward Stark. My son. He would want you to think of him as an awesome skater, and that he is. He could care less if you knew how incredibly smart he really is. A’s. Yes, the only letter on his report card. As a matter of fact, he could care less what you thought of his style, his choice of music or anything else he does. Jes is a free spirit - a very handsome free spirit, who definitely knows who he is and he’s not going to be what you want him to be. I absolutely love that about him.

I know that there will be a lot of surprises in 2011, some will be wonderful and some not so much. There is absolutely no way to guess what 2011 has in store for us. Today, I am grateful for the excited anticipation that is filling my stomach. Right now, I feel like it’s a present waiting to be unwrapped.