We finish off another exciting year in the Patel Household. The first half of 2009 was spent in Cleveland, OH and the second half, back home in South Carolina. The kids graduated from 5th grade and 1st grade respectively. Akshay earned a black belt in Tae Kwon Do and Ashu a brown belt!
Ashok completed his long haul training of residency and fellowship and is now in practice in South Carolina. This is a dream come true and we could not be more proud of him. It took many long years, hard work and determination to get to this point. Much emotion and financial adjustments were made through out the years – but now that we are at this point, we know it was worth. He is doing what he always wanted to do! We thank God for getting us here and pray for continued belief in ourselves to achieve even more in the years ahead.
We ended 2009 with a much-needed visit to India. We attended two family weddings and met with lots of relatives and friends. Our only regret (well may be mostly mine) is that I did not do enough shopping. As any trip to India is, it was exhausting but worth it to see family.
On our flight back home, we outlined our plans as a family and individually for 2010 and now we start the New Year into achieving those plans! May 2010 bring us love, happiness and good health. May it bring those things to our friends and family as well.