I've been having a hard time saying goodbye to 2018. With each new year, I put on the pressure to make this one better than the next. But I don't see how I could possibly top 2018! I hiked and camped and baked and biked. I visited exotic places like Morocco and Cuba. I volunteered and helped improve so many lives. And I made leaps and bounds in my career field. Through the horrible moments and some of the best days of my life, I don't want to let 2018 go.
So I'm sharing a summary of the year to have to look back on.
We started the year off with a good combination of lots of rest and lots of adventure. Tom and I rang in the new year with snow tubing, game nights, and some good sleep. And I took a girls trip with my little sister to Tampa.
The month that loves to be loved. This was a really busy month with dental school and starting to fabricate my first denture in the clinic. Plus, Tom and I did a rainy Valentine's Day getaway to Philadelphia...the city where we first met and fell in love.
This was the busiest month with the best milestones. In clinic, I delivered my first denture and started doing much more complex patient procedures. We also made our annual pilgrimage out West. This year, we visited California, Arizona, and Nevada on a Southwest Road Trip. We found out where the neon lights go to die with a day spent in Las Vegas. We hiked our way through Death Valley National Park, camped in Joshua Tree National Park, and spent St. Patty's Day amongst the desert greens in Saguaro National Park. We biked Palm Springs and found an oasis in the desert. March was literally picture perfect.
Started the month off with celebrating Easter in the most unconvential place...New Orleans. Tom and I met up in the Big Easy and spent a long weekend getting a glimpse of Mardi Gras. The rest of the month was focused on all things dental school with definite highlights including weekend volunteering and kicking off the last year of dental school.
Not going to lie, May was a rough month for me that centered solely around school. I felt behind and tired and stressed out the entire month, but it was also nice to be moving forward with dental school including weeks like this one and marking a full year of treating patients.
A highlight of the month was marking my 29th birthday with a quick weekend trip to Martha's Vineyard. We marveled at the Aquinnah Cliffs, strolled through rows of gingerbread cottages, biked to the cutest lighthouse, and hiked to a secluded beach. And at the end of the month, I left on a dental mission trip to volunteer in the Dominican Republic. Oh, and please let's not forget being surprised with a new car!
Focusing on serving others through a dental mission trip was the best possible way to spend my "summer break" from dental school and the most rewarding experience of 2018. Tom also moved to Virginia this month, making our long distance marriage much more manageable.
In August, I passed the first portion of my licensing exam to become a dentist and celebrated with a weekend touring Tennessee waterfall country. Despite spending the rest of the month literally drowning in school work, Tom and I managed to carve out some time for ourselves traveling through Havana Cuba as an early 5 year anniversary gift.
We soaked up every last drop of summer including family visits home and a laid back Labor Day on the water. Thanks to a hurricane, I was actually wishing for more time at the dental school in order to finish up cases before trading in my practice models, saying goodbye to DXTTR, and finishing up my last month at the dental school before heading off on my clinical rotations.
Always a favorite month for me and this one was especially the case because the husband and I officially moved in together, calling Virginia our new home.
Soaked up the last nice days of Fall and did a family photo shoot in the sunflower fields before shipping off to an away rotation for dental school.
As always, the last month of the year was my busiest month of the year and so representative of how crazy 2018 was. Weekdays were spent finishing up the semester on a clinical rotation away from home while weekends were spent visiting families for the holidays. Finally, we ended the year on the best note possible with a trip to Morocco and Portugal. Our last days of 2018 including riding camels through the Sahara desert and chasing the trolleys in Lisbon Portugal.
So with a year like this one, who would want to see it come to an end? Everyday may not have been a perfect easy day, but the good moments that I strived so hard for far outweighed the bad.
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