A New Year

A New Year


2020-01-05

It is familiarity with life that makes time speed quickly. When every day is a step into the unknown, as for children, the days are long with the gathering of experience. – George Gissing

I’m calling shenanigans on Mr. Gissing. Sorry, George. This whole year was an interesting combination of both the familiar and steps into the unknown. I’m not entirely sure what happened, but I blinked and 2019 started and ended. Clichés are kind of annoying, the bane of all good writing, but most especially when they start happening to you.

I started my new blog and new more consistent posting schedule just about one year ago. It’s been quite a year. Here are some fun highlights that you may or may not know about that happened this year. Then I’ll get to the pictures and let you happily get back to your regular programming on this lovely January 4th.

  • We tasted our first ever home-raised beef
  • In March, Neil and I stopped eating plants as a major component of our diet. We have been “Carnivores” for 10 months now and love it so much we might never go back. Essentially we only eat meat, eggs, and dairy. We haven’t been 100% absolutely strict but an honest estimate of our eating habits puts us at about 85-90% nothing that didn’t come from an animal. On one hand it’s amazing that we live on a hobby farm and can raise some of our meat. On the other I have a huge garden, a substantial orchard, and a very green thumb. I love growing plants, just not eating them anymore. So it’s been a year of redefining some key components of the very core of my being. You know, fun stuff.
  • We got back into raising goats! Should have our first babies (and goat milk) around March-ish
  • I tanned rabbit pelts for the first time (post about that later)
  • Garyn started basketball
  • I saw my sisters dance in as professional a capacity as you can get
  • My mom got diagnosed with cancer
  • Neil is now the Bishop of our ward (something akin to the priest of a parish. Minus the celibacy. Obviously.)
  • Corra started playing the guitar. Playing being open to very broad interpretation.
  • Layna can whistle now
  • Layna is the established Boss of Tatanka
  • Naomi did not, in fact, quit violin
  • We got to take Neil’s little brother to his first ever toe splashing in the Atlantic ocean
  • Our rabbitry got decimated because we built it for foxes, not pit bulls
  • I planted roses and they are beautiful
  • We officially have a teenager in the house
  • Naomi can trot and canter on a horse again after a long spell of recovery due to being thrown and having a horse run away with her
  • Garyn applied for a highschool program
  • Layna did speech therapy at a Down Syndrome achievement center
  • We have a shed now
  • I grew real actual garlic for the first time ever
  • Neil has been clean shaven for more than a day

And other stuff like that. It was a good year. An intense year. I took a breath at the beginning and then found myself sighing at the end. And I imagine 2020 will be exactly the same and completely different all at the same time.

New Years
New Years
New Years

Layna made sure I was properly fancied up for the evening’s festivities with her own nail polish collection that is probably her most well loved Christmas present. Corra is not one to be left out of fancy.

New Years

We are a game loving and playing family. New Year’s Eve day we played Naomi’s new Harry Potter board game to pass the time…it’s surprisingly fun.

New Years
New Years
New Years
New Years
New Years
New Years

One of our few New Year’s traditions is DIY nachos for dinner…the other main one is The Flour Game. Naomi had the misfortune of half sneezing in the middle of retrieving the coin with her teeth and got flour in her eyes. Turns out that is really painful. She recovered and once again, fun was had by all.

New Years
New Years
New Years

Not the best pictures but after the flour game, we settled in to binge watch a season of our favorite show.

New Years
New Years

The treasure at the end of the kids annual treasure hunt that they do on Christmas morning, was bags of their favorite candies and a movie marathon. Each kid chose a movie and we watched them back to back on New Year’s day. Even starting at 1 in the afternoon…that was really, really long. I might not do that again. Ever.

P.s. For the reccord, latex quick-dry peel-off nail polish with a My Little Pony theme is my favorite discovery of 2019. Hands down. (Ha, see what I did there?)