2013 in review — January: There is sunshine after the gray

2013 was such an amazing year for me — crazy, busy, wonderful, but I didn't really have enough time make it a priority to keep up with my little record-keeping here. So I've decided to sit myself down and write a few posts about what happened last year.

In January, I spent a week in Germany visiting my parents. It was seriously the darkest, grayest week of my life. And I'm not talking about my mood -- I had a great time and did lots of fun stuff with my folks. But, during the entire week I was there, I never saw the sun. It just barely comes up over the horizon that time of year anyway, but in January 2013, new records were broken and even at high noon everything felt dim. This was pretty much the color palette of my visit there:

So when I came back to California, and within days saw this growing on the side of the street, I was very, very relieved.

Poppies are one of my favorites. They remind me of my Mom's garden in the summer, we always had some grow around the pond. And it is one of the most amazing things to see how those beautiful, large, vibrant petals emerge from the small, green, fuzzy bud of the flower. They are all crinkled up for a while, like tissue paper that was stuffed in a box. I think it's amazing how nature figures these things out.

The rest of January was pretty uneventful. Stay tuned for February!