The new year has officially started and I for one, was not ready to say goodbye to 2013. The past year was the busiest, happiest, most productive year of my life. My father in law always says that the three biggest life transitions are getting your first big person job, getting married, and moving into your first real home. In the past 12 months, River and I crossed all three off of our bucket lists. Buffalo had been our home since we graduated high school, River and I both graduated from UB. After graduation I became an infant teacher at a job that I loved with people that grew to become my closest life friends. River pursued his dream of becoming an accountant at grad school while still living his athletic dream of playing d1 baseball. In the midst of all this, we were planning what would be the happiest day of our lives, our wedding (7/6/13). Once the fairytale day was behind us, we quickly turned all our gears towards making the move from our 4 bedroom house in a buffalo suburb to a one bedroom apartment in Manhattan. River had been offered a staff accountant position at a firm in midtown that fit him (almost) better than his pitchers mitt. This move was the biggest gamble of all for me. I was in love with my job and my husband and was somehow planning to uproot all of this to move to the biggest city in the country, almost blindly. I didn't have a job lined up and until we showed up at the door, we hadn't even seen our apartment. This was needless to say the hardest thing I've ever done. By the time we unpacked our last box, River started his job and I was officially an unemployed housewife living in NYC. Pretty cool right? not so much. I spent the next month looking for jobs in my field of interest all while trying to adjust to my new environment. Having my brother and sister in law in the city was a blessing and they made the transition much easier for me. Eventually I learned to embrace my "down time" and began to fall in love with the city more every day. Everything was falling into place, all was as it should be. Until it wasn't. The past month I've added another major twist into my life. One summer day in 2008 changed my life forever when I got the phone call that I was diagnosed with crohn's disease, a condition i knew absolutely nothing about. Since that day i have been dealing with the struggle of my condition everyday. Those who know me understand how much it impacts me on a daily basis, and for those who don't, i take it with me everywhere i go. I feel like i am never alone, i always have this "shadow" following me that i need to be prepared to face at any time. May 2012 was the lowest point of my disease and i finally made the step to have 9 inches of my small intestine removed in hopes to give me 5-10 years of disease free living. In May 2013 i celebrated my first "clean" colonoscopy in over 5 years, the feeling was amazing. As per usual, once my life all came together in New York City, my disease had to poke me just to remind me it was still there. The past month I have hit a fast downward spiral in which my health has deteriorated from perfectly healthy to not being able to leave my bed on a daily basis. I have decided to write this blog as a form of therapy for myself to help me deal with the devastating news that not only is my crohn's back 18 months after abdominal surgery, but to share my story about how i won't let it bring me down. My new years resolution is to embrace my disease instead of fearing it. I want to share my struggles as well as my triumphs with those around me.