Today’s Think Kit prompt: Give us the 30,000 foot view. Or, hone in on a few highlights. Let’s bring last year to life before moving on to what’s ahead.

I keep reading posts about people being happy to leave 2015 in the past, but 2015 was a pretty great year for me!

In February, I took my first trip to wine country: Sonoma, California. From the moment I arrived, I knew that Sonoma was going to steal a spot as one of my favorite places. The wine, the scenery, the square…need I say more? I fell in love with Gloria Ferrar…so much so that I went through four bottles of their sparkling wine on my last night there, resulting in the worst flight of my life the next morning.

YS Falls in Jamaica

Spring and summer of 2015 brought all the excitement as we watched so many of our great friends get married. We’ve really mastered the art of being professional wedding guests. I was a bridesmaid in two weddings, hosted two bridal showers, made memories at bachelorette parties and thoroughly enjoyed the open bars all in the name of love. We traveled to Jamaica, Florida and Nashville to see our friends get hitched and we snuck in some adventures along the way.

After a crazy “wedding season,” we decided we weren’t done traveling quite yet. I took a trip out to Denver to visit my sister and brother-in-law and meet my new nephew as I became a first-time aunt. Two weeks later, we made a trek out to Scottsdale/Tempe for Arizona State University homecoming weekend to reunite with my sorority sisters and other friends I haven’t seen in ten years. I introduced Ryan to a part of my life he had only heard about but never witnessed.

We hosted our first Thanksgiving at our house, made new friends (and lost some), grew our business, worked through some bumps in the road, ate some spectacular meals, spent quality time with our friends and family, watched our friends have babies, stayed out way too late at times, watched a ton of Golden Girls, read great books, expanded our knowledge of gardening and canning, saw great concerts, put up our first Christmas tree and started planning for 2016. We started 2015 and ended it at the same place (the Hyatt downtown) with three resolutions: cooking dinner at home 6 nights per week, no drama and ditching the abrasive alarm clock for a vibrating Garmin watch alarm.

Cheers to a great 2015 and an even better 2016!