The Year in Review

Happy Christmas to all our friends and family, and family that is our friends! What a year 2007 has been. We started off the year as empty nesters celebrating our 25^th anniversary in January. Quite an accomplishment in today's world, I sit here and smugly think, all the while smiling at how relatively easy Albert has made it for us to achieve this. :)

We had the wind knocked out of our sails shortly thereafter when Albert's sister, Muriel, was tragically and suddenly taken from us. Equally shocking to us, about the same time, we learned that Brandi's marriage had ended.

February we celebrated Albert's Dad's 80^th birthday and his 12^th anniversary (actually, it might even have been his 13^th) as a cancer survivor.

In March, after a few years of talking about it, we started the countdown to our trip across Canada on the Goldwing.

In June, the Ziemer family had its first ever family-only reunion to celebrate Dad and Mom's 60^th anniversary. This kind of made our 25 years pale in comparison, but gives a great example to follow.

July 16^th we embarked on our journey with great excitement and even disbelief that it was actually happening. The trip was fantastic and we wouldn't hesitate to do it again on the bike. We are little disappointed that we didn't get over to Newfoundland, but 6 and a half weeks just wasn't long enough. Ten weeks would have been better, I think. As most of you know, I blogged along the way and if you are sitting on a winter's day with nothing to do, you can check it out at elzee.blogspot.com

September was turbulent as we settled back into real life. There were lots of changes taking place at my work and there were issues arising in Jed's home.

In October we moved Jed back to our house. We are in the midst of making plans to set up a basement suite for him to live in. This will allow him to have some independence, yet still receive the support and supervision he needs. While the home he had been in for 15 months didn't meet his needs, we are thankful that it allowed us to be gone for the summer without too much worry. We learned and grew through the experience and we thank God for the good things that did come of it.

This fall, I took a watercolour art class and will continue with another one in January. Albert is exercising his brain with guitar lessons this year.

Zedd (Ken) and Jade are doing well. Jade went to art school with me. It was fun doing girl-stuff together.

Brandi came home from Vancouver for a short visit for Christmas. It was so good to see her. It was the first time we've spent time with her since last Christmas, with the exception of seeing her at Bernie and Stacey's wedding in May. That weekend we got to meet Kore. He seems like a really nice guy, but as parents it's taking some time for us to accept the situation. But God is good and life carries on.

Well, this is starting to sound like a therapy session so it's probably a good thing the year is coming to an end. We look forward to 2008 and anticipate good things in store. It is our hope that God will bless each of you in a very personal and meaningful way in the coming year.