Winters can be tough around this area sometimes. 2019 has not started the way I anticipated and I’m still trying to keep the faith that it will get better, everything always gets better as long as you remain optimistic, right? Just hard to see in the moment.

A few weeks into the year while my husband and son were at a 4H conference, a guy backed into my car, taking out the whole driver’s side headlight. Two days later we got hit hard with a snowstorm dropping about 5 inches within in a few hours and my husband had a accident and rolled our truck. We have two other vehicles, both of which had crappy tires and one wasn’t wanting to start.

Meanwhile my brother had lent me one of his cars, and then the clutch went out. We got new tires for both of our others cars, my brother got the one running good and when my husband went to put the tires on, realized it had barrings going out on the front end. My car got fixed and now we are arguing with the insurance company about the value of our truck. We don’t have accidents frequently and it has been a huge headache dealing with this, it’s so nice to know that we pay all this money month after month for years to not get the help we deserve.

And if that’s not discouraging enough, the lack of work has proved to be stressful as well. My husbands job is 100% outdoors and when we get day after day of blizzards, it makes it real difficult to be able to get any work done. My job at a B&B slows through the winter. It can be stressful and you try and plan for it as much as possible, sometimes it runs smoothly and sometimes it’s like how this year has started.

However, life is what you make it, right? You can choose to be defeated or you can continue on with these lessons learned, getting stronger each day. I have had worse times and it’s thanks to those times to make me the strong person I am today. Also, having three amazing, wonderful, active children help keep my mind occupied. If it weren’t for my amazing children I would probably hide in my house during each hard time. I don’t want them to learn that every time life gets hard you hide out, I want them to face their struggles and come out even stronger.