Can We Plan?

This week we met our financial planners. This is done twice a year and this year more often as we are really taking control of our finances and so even more meetings. In these meetings we discuss with our two amazing financial planners our future. Our plans? Our wants? Our needs? Our predications of how things will be? The unexpected? Hard questions like what if one of us dies? Or was disabled? Fun questions like will we travel more? Want to buy a big boat one day? Will we have enough money? Will we be scrambling by? Will we sell our home and move into an apartment?  Keep the cottage? Retire or work part time?

To plan..to dream..to hope..to want. To be realistic too.(sometimes too realistic for my liking which is why I have (stupidly) avoided calculating every penny for years now!)

What came to mind all week during our meetings with them was a list of a few things in 2014 that I could never have planned for or have expected. Not a complete list just a short list while on my mind right now:

1-that our daughter would be in  two body braces for 2.5- 3 years 20 hrs a day

2-that my Mom would have a mild brain injury (concussion, post concussion syndrome, now second more sever concussion all of this lasting over a year now) that prevents her from most of life’s normal functioning one year after hitting her head and that this would define all our lives in so many ways

3-That I would succeed at the level I am in the role I took on at work a year ago

4-That I wold have a coauthored book being published  and on Amazon in March 2105

5-That I would be so proud of my husband in the way I am. He is such  role model of strength to so many people we know and our children especially in his journey of 2014

6-That a very close friend of ours ( husband of a Bff) would have had a major heart attack at the age of 42

7-That our life would be lived in 6 months increments fending off the dire possibility of major spinal surgery that would change Beauty’ all our lives forever and live x-ray to x-ray.

8-That Chase would be in advanced math, and science physics chemistry stream and have a higher grade point average even than most of his friends and many people in the school this semester!!! (and not on a stimulant drug for ADD that would help his marks in the least)

9-That so many of our lasting traditions that we have had for more than a decade would change with close  friends and we would see  our various groups of  friends so much less that we always have in general (due to so so many different reasons ( depending on which group of friends) That so much of this year has been spent alone in so many ways-the five of us –and more often even just the two of us. That we would be a solo as we are right now.

10-That Bear would want and be willing and  want to get up at 5am and go to kayak practice and swim laps and lift weights and go directly to school which starts at 7:50am. I never dreamed I would be bringing up the true Athlete of the Year!

11-That my company Lifeworks (only 1 day a week) would be taking the direction it is so different that my specialties and expertise in the past.

12-That both boys would have steady girlfriends!!!!

13- That with all of the above (both the good and the bad)……that I could still be ok and handle all these levels of change that so suddenly have slipped into our loves.. And that  my family too is ok. That we could still thrive.