Happy new year!

Time for our annual family photo. 

And a grid of them all since we started after grant was born (minus 2020) 

 Happy new year to you! 

Well, that was exciting.

The calendar flipped to November and then I had the busiest 6 weeks I have had in two years. I have done ALL the Things, plus all the doctors appointments, one school party, one orchestra concert, one college visit that I didn’t even take photos of! 

I made new stockings.

We decorated cookies (I did the same with Sam’s class, so nice to be back after two long years). 

We got to see the nutcracker in person. 

And santa. 

We decorated the family tree. 

The not twins got vaccinations. 

More nutcracker (blogger refuses to load these in any order).

We went to Christmas traditions. 

We took elf themed Christmas cards. 

Sam placed third in the spelling bee (not allowed to attend). 

I made and raffled a quilt for charity. 

I worked really hard to get my Instagram follower count over 2000. (700 new additions in the last month). 

The leaves finally changed. 

Sam had a solo in the fifth grade musical (allowed to attend!) 

I grew my turkey collection . 

I continued the pie making adventures. 

We are a turkey (alone again, my dad was in the hospital). 

We added a fireplace to the living room (it’s awesome). 

And now I’m going to mostly sit on my ass for a few days. We have tickets to lights tomorrow and of course there’s a Christmas to pull off (complete with ham). 

I think you really cannot even express how exhausting it is to still be in a pandemic two years later. Everything is sort of ridiculous. You can’t just go to the store and buy a hot wheel or candy bars for the stockings, Bc the stores are completely empty. Even little tasks still take hours. And I swear the news is never endingly bad all the time. Now there is the omicron varient and we are back to doom news. I had imagined vaccinations would’ve meant relief, but really, it’s minimal. I am epically burnt out from the sheer amount of planning it takes to pull off holidays (and sometimes even just groceries still) in this environment. School has gone better than I expected, even with no masks, at least this far. We’ve certainly had our share of colds, but covid neg every time. The kids are so happy to be back at all the things. But I am really feeling it myself now. Hopefully there is eventually some end.