Another year in the books, and as usual, I have no idea where the last one went. It’s not news at this point the unanticipated changes in my little world in 2024. It’s been a busy last 6 months or so. I don’t know if the busyness makes time feel faster than it otherwise would or if you just don’t notice it passing until it’s gone. Either way, here we are. I’d like to think the next couple of months will be a bit more quiet, but each day seems to add something to the calendar.
We did enjoy our holidays in the new place. As I mentioned back in October, fall and Halloween in particular, didn’t see much in terms of decorating. We just didn’t have the time for it then. After Halloween, we were able to have some friends over to the house and have successfully hosted two holiday events now. Once spring rolls around, we’ll hopefully get even more family and friends out to spend time with us here.
Rookie, as we hoped, was all healed up by Thanksgiving from his shoulder injury and has, thankfully, stayed well since then. The rehab exercises and cold laser really made a big difference in his recovery. I keep saying that I need to be diligent about having him do his exercises still to protect his little old shoulder for him, but it’s hard to remember when he’s been feeling so good. We have gotten back out to nature more often, now that he can hike again, and he’s been having lots of romps in the yard to collect his sticks and chew them, especially since Justin was home for the last two and a half weeks of 2024.
For Thanksgiving, we had about 20 family members from both sides of our family over for an early dinner. My brother-in-law apparently went home and commented on how great it was because of all of the space for so many guests and that he hopes Thanksgiving is here is every year, which is the plan. The multiple ovens worked out great, as we knew they would.
It was fun decorating the new place for the first time. We have boxes of Christmas decorations, and I added a few new things as well. My friend’s family drove by going to see their family on Christmas Eve and told me that they loved our lights. We hope to add more next year, as we ran out of the lights we used on our old house. There are just so many more bushes to wrap in lights here! I’m just glad that we were able to figure out how to get the ones we had up given our lack of outlets on the front half of this house. I’m also in love with the tree we got this year. It’s big, beautiful and still has most of its needles. Justin’s brother said it needs more ornaments. Since his visit, I have purchased several (perhaps too many?) more while antiquing with my mom and sister the other day.
We hadn’t planned on hosting anything Christmas, but we ended up offering to have my family over for a late Christmas lunch because my mom seemed extra stressed recently. I didn’t want her to feel pressured to cook for everyone on Christmas day. It was smaller and more quiet than Thanksgiving, nice in its own way. It also left Christmas day open for all of us to just relax if that’s what our individual households chose to do. (We certainly did, and it was lovely!) I hope Justin also felt more justified in putting up all of those Christmas lights since he did make a comment before we went out to hang them that we weren’t going to have anyone by during the holidays to see them.
Now that we’re into 2025, I’ll have to start thinking of boxing Christmas back up again. That always makes me a little bit sad since those decorations are only out for such a small part of the year. That’s also partially what makes them special, I suppose. Inside will be easy, whenever I choose to do that. Outside… the extreme cold we’re set to have in the next couple of weeks may mean those get a few extra weeks compared to how long we’d usually leave them out. We’ll see. It depends partially on the weather and partially on those other things that keep sneaking into our upcoming plans.
Aside from needing to get Christmas trees and lights and stockings, etc. back into storage, I am excited for this upcoming year, more so than I was this time last year. (I was feeling pretty pessimistic about 2024 at the end of 2023, for reasons I can’t specifically recall now.) I don’t really know what’s different. The world as a whole has plenty of issues still. For now, I’m just trying to focus on my immediate circle and the things I can control. The new house finally feels more like home to me, and I’m looking forward to our first full year here with more friends and family and just becoming more comfortable with each passing day, each box unpacked out in the garage and each small project that gets started and ultimately completed.
I hope that my upbeat feeling is right and that 2025 brings good health, good vibes and general joy to everyone I know and love. I look forward to looking back at the places we’ll see and the things we’ll accomplish in this upcoming year and just seeing where it is we end up another year from now.
“Don’t live the same year 75 times and call it a life.” ~ Robin Sharma
