What's to Come

I must confess, I have found it hard to be consistently excited about baby Connor’s pending arrival. Don’t get me wrong, I am extremely excited and overjoyed at the thought of holding him and beginning a new phase in my life. It’s just that, life is happening. I am 4 weeks from completing my MBA which I have been pouring myself into for the past 18 months. Needless to say, over the past couple of months, I have encountered some of the highest stress I have ever dealt with. However, over the past couple of weeks I have been able to get a glimpse of things to come.
For those of you who know Kristin and me well, you know we love to travel. It is something that we both love to do, have always done and intend to keep doing long after Connor has joined us. We were both fortunate enough to grow up in families that traveled. In June, we took our first vacation of the summer. We stayed a week at Disney World in a cabin at Fort Wilderness. Shocking isn’t it…the Petersen’s went to Disney. We had a great time. We didn’t overexert ourselves and spent a lot of time resting and relaxing. However, I was able to see Disney in a different way on this trip. I no longer view it as a place to cram in as many rollercoaster and thrill rides as possible. Rather, I now see it as a place with so much to offer families. I am very excited about taking Connor to Disney (he will only be 2 or 3 months on his first trip). It was on this trip that I was able to allow myself to begin getting very excited. However, it wasn’t until this past week that things got really exciting.
Last week, we spent the week in Cashiers, NC. Most people don’t know anything about Cashiers (I didn’t until I started dating Kristin), but it is a great little mountain town in South West North Carolina. One trip to Cashiers is all it takes to fall in love, especially if you grew up in the hustle and bustle of South Florida. I have now been vacationing in Cashiers every summer since Kristin and I married. Every year I find more and more to fall in love with. This time, it was the playground. Not for me, although I wish I was small enough to take a ride down that slide, but for Connor. For the first time, I was able to envision what it was going to be like in 2, 3, 10 years when we take Connor to Cashiers and go hiking, river rafting, and playing in that playground. I would be lying if I didn’t get a little choked up. I realized that while it is good that I take my school and work seriously, they too will pass. The time spent with and memories formed with my family are the things that I should be focused on. In three months I will officially begin the greatest adventure I can think of. It may have taken 6 months and 2 vacations, but I can finally feel myself getting excited about where that adventure is going to take me.