It’s time for End of the Year Recaps. Join me today as we review over 2018 and share the good, the bad and the funny. Tomorrow will be Friday Favorites with your favorite blog posts and Instagram photos (determined by most clicks and likes) on my Instagram account @bobbi_rol. Both posts will be a link-up for you to share your own thoughts, memories and top posts of 2018.

Today – 2018 Recap (Part 1): 2018 in 12 Photos (hashtag #2018in12photos)

Tomorrow – 2018 Recap (Part 2): Top Posts and Photos of 2018 & Link-up

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I love End of the Year recap posts but the photo year in review is my favorite! Years ago, Dwija over at House Unseen hosted the link-up, but she has kindly passed the baton to me. So let’s get to it!

(Note: I cheated on several of these by making the “one” photo into one collage instead. Feel free to do the same if needed.)

The beginning of the year started out with a desire to deepen my spiritual life and spend more time reading Scripture. Blessed Is She was a huge help with that!

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Bella and I have continued our tradition of taking a number of girls’ road trip to Disneyland throughout the year. We’ve been blessed to have my mom and my sister join us for most of these trips. Our last one with the four of us was in February. Little did I know then, it would be the last Disneyland trip I would take with my mom.

Disneyland with my mom then and now.

That weekend will forever be etched in my heart.

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March was dominated by Lent and preparing for Easter.

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April was a celebration of the Easter season and enjoying fun times during Easter breaks. Bella and I took a quick trip to Disneyland and the boys and I joined the Read Aloud Revival. It has become an anticipated part of our evening ritual.

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May was definitely our busiest month of the year with so many big family events. John-Paul made his First Communion, Bella made her Confirmation (my sister was her sponsor) and my brother got married. I also attended my first Blessed Is She regional retreat and it was spiritually life changing. I was able to attend the retreat with my mom, which was an added blessing, and the following day we celebrated Mothers’ Day together. In fact, with all these family events, I was able to spend almost every weekend with my parents as we traveled the 400 miles back and forth. It was as if God was giving us our last precious moments together before we had to carry a heavy cross.

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In June, all our plans changed when we found out my mom’s cancer aggressively returned. We decided to have a family reunion to celebrate my mom’s 70th birthday and to support her as she prepared to start her cancer treatment.

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For the last four years, cancer has been an unwelcome thief in our family. However, in July, we received welcome news that Brian was cancer free for the fourth year in a row. That was a benchmark diagnosis and Brian can now reduce the frequency of his testing. My heart was overjoyed to hear the news.

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August was the beginning of the new school year. (Remember as kids when school didn’t start until September?!) We now have kids in 2nd, 3rd, 5th grade and a junior in high school. I went back in full swing as a room mom and library volunteer. My parents also celebrated 50 years of marriage. They had to cancel their anniversary plans and instead spent the day with my mom getting chemo, but they were just happy to be together. They are a living testament of loving each other for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health. I love them so much!

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Photo Credit of the group photo: Blessed is She and Lexy Popa Photography

In September, I attended the Blessed Is She team retreat in Arizona and it was one of the highlights of my year. I still pinch myself when I consider how blessed I am to be a part of this sisterhood and ministry!

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In October, I enjoyed my favorite season – autumn! There was plenty of pumpkin spice and Halloween fun. Although my days were busy, I made a greater effort to spend time in prayer, including weekly Holy Hours. At first I was worried I wouldn’t be able to occupy myself in prayer for an hour, but I’m learning to love this time to quiet myself and be with Our Lord.

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For over a decade, we have been going to Disneyland as a family during Thanksgiving week. I came across this photo collage I made two years ago. It was funny to see the kids looking so young!

This year, I thought about canceling our trip since my mom was sick and we were unable to spend Thanksgiving with my parents (for the first time in my life), but my mom encouraged me to go anyway and make memories with the kids and to send her lots of photos.

So we did. 🙂

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Christmas holds so many memories and family traditions. I have to be honest, it was a season of fun and laughter, mixed with moments of tears and worry as my mom’s health became worse. I knew the best way to make her happy was to give her grandchildren lots of simple fun and happy memories… and to send her lots of photos.

It’s been such a bittersweet year, but despite the hard moments, there have also been many, many happy ones and for that I am truly thankful. I hope you have a blessed New Year filled with many happy memories to temper the rough spots.

Thanks for sharing some memories with me. I look forward to seeing your own memories so link up below! If you aren’t a blogger feel free to share your favorite memory of 2018 in the comments, on Facebook, or on Instagram using #2018in12photos.

Have a very blessed 2019!!!

PS – You can follow RoL on Bloglovin, Feedly or another news feed. If you are a social media fan like me, we can stay in touch through Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, GoodReads, Letterboxd, or Spotify, 😉

Are you ready to link up?? Here are the rules.

1. Create a post with a photo to represent each month of the year. (As you can tell from my post, cheating is allowed.)

2. Add a link back here so others can play along.

3. If you want to use the graphic, right click and save the image to your computer or copy the html into your blog’s html/text page.

<img class=”aligncenter size-full wp-image-11110″ src=”https://revolutionoflove.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/1_logo_2018_year_end.jpg” alt=”” width=”640″ height=”640″ />

4. Link up below. Make sure you’re sending us to your actual post, and not to your general blog address.

The link up will be active until January 31, 2019. Have fun! 🙂