Happy Halloween 2023

My dearest friends and family, Happy Halloween 2023!

Indiana Jones is a character that has been engrained in me since childhood and I absolutely love him. Our favorite explorer with a slight fear of snakes, often gets dragged into situations he didn’t necessarily ask for but finds treasures along the way. And that’s exactly how my year felt!

First off, the biggest change is that I chose to leave Academy Mortgage in August. Things in the mortgage world are not going great right now, and it just felt like the right time for me to branch off and figure something else out. I honestly thought I’d work there forever, and it wasn’t a decision that came lightly. I miss my coworkers a lot.

I decided to go back to my roots and become a virtual assistant and have had a blast doing that the last couple of months. I have a couple of clients that live all over the place and have different careers and needs and my days are never the same. I love being able to set my own schedule and feel a little more in control of how my days go.

This last year I’ve been crocheting as much as my fingers will let me, and Jessica and I have sat at many farmers markets selling our crafts which has been such a fun learning experience. Along with that, I’ve started to learn how to bake bread and hope to learn how to make some fancier desserts this next year.

Travel in 2023 was amazing as my mom and I finally got to take a Disney Cruise and absolutely fell in love with it. We were lucky enough to be gone for two weeks in May while we took our cruise, and spent another week at Walt Disney World afterwards. You’ll see us sailing with Disney much more, I’m sure of it.

In early October, I got to cross a couple of things off my bucket list as we finally visited Tennessee so that I could experience Dollywood! That’s right, Dolly Parton’s theme park in Pidgeon Forge TN has been on my list since I was about 16. I remember seeing a Travel Channel special about it and have been fascinated ever since. I couldn’t wait to try their famous Cinnamon Bread and it absolutely did not disappoint (it’s worth the trip out there in my opinion). It was everything I wanted it to be and I think we both fell in love with Tennessee in general. We also got to stay at an amazing boutique hotel I’d found called Ancient Lore Village in Knoxville that looks like something out of Middle Earth with it’s little dwellings built up into the mountains. It was incredible. During that trip, I also got to visit a Buccees for the first time and wish we had one closer to us. It was an experience in itself and I absolutely loved it.

We have some huge travel plans for 2024 that I can’t wait to share with you.

So although my year didn’t go as planned, I decided to take it on as an adventure and see what comes of it. Sometimes, those unplanned spontaneous adventures lead us to the greatest treasures.

Thank you for all of your love and support this year.

Let’s buckle up for 2024.

Love, Tawni