Welcome to 2020

Is it just me or did the last months of 2019 whip out of here like a birds heading south?

Maybe it's just me.

Thanksgiving

BOOM

Christmas Eve
Christmas Day
I should point out the day after Christmas all my decorations came down. 

BOOM BOOM BOOM

Then financial year end, New Years Eve.

a food blog I follow said the perfect New Years Eve food and wine pairing is takeout fried chicken and sparkling wine so that's what we had.

Now it's just a normal Friday.

So I know I said a couple blog posts ago that I was going to have some big news after Thanksgiving.
I didn't post right away because I need to process all of it.

All of you know I was adopted as a newborn by my parents who picked me up and took me home to Washington State.

I was born in Basin Wyoming May 1974.

I have always been curious about my biological parents but never pursued it.
Then a couple years ago I did a 23 & me dna test.

Nothing really hit close to me. Not that I knew.
I mean what good is a dna test if you can't identify where the relatives come from because you don't know them.

So I did another one this past summer. My Heritage DNA and that one hit closer.
I connected with a first cousin. Nancy. She's my hero in all the ups and downs of this journey. Family members message me and welcome me and try to explain the connection and Nancy is always there to straighten it all out.

I sat on it for a while (about a month or so) then decided, what the hell, shoot her an email and see what comes back.

I got two emails back in the same night 4 hours apart but I didn't see either of them till the next morning.

When I was at work.
Alone.
No one awake to call.
Just me at my desk freaking out. 

I had connected with my biological mothers first cousin.
Then whammo I was emailing my biological mother.
Sadly at the same time I was emailing her we discovered her brother had just passed away.

Then after weeks of messaging back and forth D and I made the decision to return to Basin for Thanksgiving to meet her and some of the family.

Turns out, it's a big extended family.
I met cousins.
I met aunts, an uncle, family friends. Steva's foster children and their families. 
It was fun.
It was overwhelming at times.
It was such an experience.

South Big Horn County Hospital where I was born

My mom and dad took a photo outside the hospital the day I was born and I was trying to recreate it but I think the trees in their photo are gone.

We're heading back again in June to meet more of the extended family.
I don't have any half-siblings.
She has a dairy cow named Sugar.

Big Horn River 

It's hard to explain all the emotions you feel when something like this comes along.
All your life you wonder where you get certain things from and then you see it.

I'm so glad I went.

I'm so grateful for the life she gave me and grateful to my parents who adopted me.
I'm grateful for the extended family I have met and look forward to meeting more in the future.

We stayed at the Historic Greybull Hotel and it's the cutest place I've ever stayed. They had this little curio shelf on the wall that the owner places items he finds left behind in rooms.

Lil'D the dragon decided he liked it in the hotel and so I left him there in the cabinet.

So now it's January.
I'm running a KAL in the America's Knitting Ravelry group if any of you want to swing in and join us.

We're all knitting patterns from designer Espace Tricot
I have cast on their Twistmas Hat, Aise, and Turtle Dove

I'll keep you posted on progress. It doesn't help that I am also knitting the Grab n' Go shawl by Brome Fields 

Hope you all had a great end of 2019 and an excellent beginning to 2020 

Happy New Year!