It's kinda fun to reflect back on 2020. And my first thought is that it's been a terrible year - and yes, it has had downs - but man overall there's been tons of blessings. And a reminder that no matter where you are - life still goes on and kids still grow. So here's some memorable moments of 2020!
We did a lot of Gymnastics. Me, Luke and Taryn had this fun routine of driving up to our gymnastics gym twice a week - on Tuesday it was Taryn and Luke. Friday was just Luke. We would stop for a coffee on the way and then on the way back we would stop at the grocery store and get popsicles or something to bring for the twins. It honestly seems like a lifetime ago. I loved those days. We stopped doing gymnastics after everything happened and It makes me feel a little sad for my kids. Especially Luke since he was hoping to compete this year. But those are some of the best memories - driving up to our gym, listening to music.
2. This is just one of my favorite pictures <3
3. We made these Valentine Day cookies to bring to our homeschool group. We made so many and they were so good! My kids love baking - I know they get that from me lol.
4. We got a little dusting of snow in March. I remember this was right when our state was shutting down so it was just kind of ironic. But always exciting for the kids.
5. We got a bird feeder and I cannot believe how many birds we got in our backyard. It kept us busy (and the dog) for a long time.
6. I started "Sunday Dinners". Every Sunday I made a special dinner, I set the table and we sit down as a family. We all pass the food around and everyone dishes themselves. And I made a special dessert. It's been a super fun tradition! I have even added some fun extras over time - such as cloth napkins. See our first Sunday dinner compared to Christmas dinner?
7. Before shut downs happened, I bought my girls and I matching Easter dresses! Sadly we didn't get to go to mass on Easter. But I still made them wear them on Easter and we walked down to the field by our church and took pictures! So fun! We will probably wear them again next year, too :D
8. Way back when Luke and Taryn were babies, I used to do naturally dyed Easter eggs! I haven't had a chance to do them since the twins and Jolie have been here. But this year I decided to give it a try again. They turned out beautifully. We also stained wooden eggs and put these pretty Catholic Saint wraps on them! Now we can use those eggs over and over again each year. One of my friends said people always get tons of Christmas decor to use every year so she wanted to do the same for Easter - since it's the biggest holiday we celebrate! So I am collecting some fun re usable Easter decorations to use year after year. The wooden eggs are perfect!
9. Luke, Tayrn and I got Memory Master this year for the 2nd year in a row! In classical conversations (our homeschool) they do 3 cycles of memory work. At the end of the year you can go for "memory master" but learning 24 weeks of facts in the subjects history, math, english, time line of the world, latin, geography and science! We will go for a 3 peat in 2021 and then we can say that we mastered all of the cycles!!
10. We did a LOT in our yard last summer, which included snake chasing (by Luke, not me) This is one of the biggest ones we found.
11. Ben built me 3 new garden beds this summer and a potato box. It was awesome, we had so much grow this summer. He always has so much fun building stuff which is good because I'm going to have him build more this year!
12. I finally got a Mary for my flower garden! I'm SO excited because in about 3 months i'm going to have about a million tulips growing all around Mary!
13. The kids finished school right before their birthdays. That is always our goal. See how happy they were to throw their math books up in the air!
14. Then, just like that, I had an 11 year old, a 9 year old and a 2 year old! Luke's birthday is May 23, Jolie's is May 24 and Taryn's is May 25. I usually let them choose their dinner and dessert. Luke wanted me to make Orange Chicken and Mint Cake. Taryn chose hotdogs and cake and ice cream. Jolie "chose" (by chose I mean the other kids picked LOL) pizza and berry pie! Birthday week is always the best week.
15. Jolie's birthday present was a bubble machine. We had a lot of fun with that over the summer!!
16. Oh yeah and 2020 was the year I became obsessed with house plants! I counted once and I think i have more than 35. LOL. They are so pretty I can't stop getting them. My friend told me that seeing all the plants in my house made her think of how much LIFE is going on <3 I loved that! I got most of them while I was waiting for outside to be ready to do gardening! What a great hobby!
17. Here's our Pentecost Celebration! I'm telling you - the Sunday dinners were one of the best things we did!
18. Raspberry Picking! I planted some raspberry starts last summer that I got from someone at our church. So last year they only made like 1 raspberry. This year we got quite a few. And that was a big thing to get up and run out every day to see if there was some more. Cant wait for next summer - we will probably get lots!
18. We got a venus fly trap and got a video of it eating a fly LOL. It was very amusing.
19. We thought we were funny and had some fun mask ideas LOL.
20. We finally got down to Klamath Falls to see my grandma - she turned 100 in Jan. (and is now almost 101), my parents and my other grandparents. Can't wait to see all of them again.
21. Our beloved cat Pickle passed away this summer. And we were all so sad. After we had to put him down we took the kids to get ice cream to lift everyones spirits. I still really miss him.
22. So after a while, the kids convinced us that we should get a kitten. And so we did. Her name is Shadow.
This is Luke and Taryn coming with me to pick her up.
23. We had so much garden harvest!! I'm sure I could post thousands of pictures of my garden harvest. We got about a zucchini a day all summer. I remember Rory saying at dinner, aw man, zucchini again? lol. We grew lots of greens, tomatoes and potatoes. One of my favorite things was that I grew 7 pumpkins - enough to have one for everyone. Although, we forgot to carve them haha. And I took that silly picture of myself in front of all my plants.
24. I never passed up and opportunity to hang out with friends since it was few and far in-between. This is Haley, Liza and I after a little oily get together! We seriously could have stayed all night and talked!
25. I got Ben an american flag to put up on our house, finally! He liked it! We put it up on 4th of July. I snapped one of me and Jolie in front of it! I think it was our favorite 4th of July ever this year!
26. More Shadow pictures. As you can see this cat doesn't lack any attention.
27. My friend gave me the idea to make a compost garden in my yard. She has land in the country where she has a gigantic garden and does a CSA. So I made a smaller compost garden in my yard!! It produced so many cucumbers, beans, potatoes, carrots, and snap peas! Cant wait to do it all again next year!
28. Rory always got such a big kick our of harvesting all the stuff. She was probably my best harvester :)
29. Hanging out with friends again - this time with our dino masks lol. They always say laughter is the best medicine :)
30. There were these wild blackberries at the park by our house. The park is close, but the blackberries are like two baseball fields away. So we would bike and walk there and pick and eat blackberries. Then we would make the trek back home and we were always tired and sweaty! But it was a fun memory from the summer!
31. When some of the flowers in our yard started blooming!
32. Taryn became quite the lemonade maker this year. She would usually make it in the afternoon. She made a glass for everyone. But I always had her put my glass in the fridge. Then when I would make dinner that evening, I added vodka and enjoyed it LOL.
33. Snuck away for a fun day at the beach!!!
34. Like on the hottest day of the year LOL we went to this local nature reserve and walked through it all. Then when we were walking back to the car, the tire on the stroller went flat. I text Ben the tire was flat and then put my phone back into my purse. When we got back to the car he pulled into the spot next to us and i was like what are you doing? He was like you said the car tire was flat! I was like OHHH sorry i meant the stroller LOL. oops!
35. We celebrated our 12th Wedding anniversary!! And our priest gave us a blessing! And super thankful that a friend managed to snag these pictures! Since our anniversary was on Sunday - we had hamburgers for Sunday dinner - just like what we had at our wedding!
36. We went flower picking near our house. I love the summer because there's so many fresh flowers to pick for inside your house! We made our house really pretty with all our flowers! Then we got ice cream!
37. We snuck away to the beach again! This time we were supposed to meet our homeschool community. But we went to the wrong beach and walked too far to turn around and go to another one. So we sat down and played. It was a really fun trip!
38. Rory learned to ride her bike with out training wheels!! So far she's the earliest bike rider at 4.5!! She is a very determined soul.
39. Ben fixed the big bike and we had some biking adventures at the end of summer around the neighborhood. What a good workout LOL
40. I subscribed to this Catholic box with activities for saint days and this was one of the first ones we did. Celebrated Mary's birthday!
41. I mean 2020 couldn't have gotten weirder - we had massive fires all over our state. Including the one we could see behind our house on the hill!! It was pretty scary but never got close enough for us to leave. The air quality was AWFUL for a couple weeks. Thank goodness that's over!
42. Last summer Ben built the deck and finally we got around to painting it!
43. Somewhere in there we started school! Luke is 6th grade, Taryn 4th, and the twins started their first year of classical conversations!
44. During the end of September and October basically all i did was can LOL
45. A friend let us pick apples and pears at her orchard and wow we got so many and I canned so much LOL
45. These are the pumpkins we grew! I felt so proud!
46. More saint day activities! Saint Michael and Saint Francis.
47. Part of our homeschool this year has been nature walks. And since Ben has been working from home - we go during his lunch break so he can come! Best ever!
48. We learned the tin whistle during the first 6 weeks of our homeschool community. I actually really enjoy playing it at home and so Luke and Taryn learned some songs at home. Since we are studying american history this year we learned some patriotic songs. and they also played some christmas songs! Rory enjoyed playing, too!
49. Made a new tradition with my childhood best friend. We meet and get coffee or lunch then go to the goodwill bins. It's super fun lol.
50. Rory did her very first presentation at our homeschool co op!
51. Luke got rollerblades for Christmas last year, so Taryn and the twins have been wanting rollerskaes and roller blades since. They finally got some. They rode around in the house but we will probably get more practice outside as the weather gets better!
52. In the middle of October we got our family pictures taken by one of my good friends! They turned out sooooo good!
53. I keep looking at Luke and thinking to myself man, he's getting old. He wears almost the same size shoe as me and he's getting super tall. I like this picture of him and Ben.
54. Halloween! We still went out trick or treating this year. There wasn't very many people out so the kids got tons of candy and we made it way further on our route than we normally do. Luke was a snow commander. Taryn was a cat. Rory was a unicorn. Alex was a reindeer. Jolie wore a princess dress. Also Jolie didn't want her picture taken.
55. Alex and Rory turned 5!!!
56. Luke, Taryn and I crocheted. I made Rory and Alex scarves and Luke and Taryn started making themselves scarves but we haven't finished yet. We sure enjoy it!
57. Thanksgiving! We stayed home and it was the first time I got to make my family thanksgiving dinner! It was actually so fun for me to cook all that food. It turned out so good.
58. I had such a fun time decorating our table for the season. i was especially pleased with my advent stuff :)
59. Saint Lucy's feast day (and sunday dinner). We didn't do the typical rolls in the morning so i made cinnamon rolls for after dinner dessert! See the Saint Lucy crowns we made from our catholic family crate box?
60.Luke and Tayrn spent all afternoon making a cat house for shadow. She likes it so much that Taryn is adding more to it right now!
61. Our 2020 Christmas Tree! We picked it up at our favorite lot the day after thanksgiving and it's lasted pretty well! it's so pretty!
62. Christmas!!! We went to mass on Christmas Eve and our priest took this picture of us. When we got home from mass we had champagne and apple cider and toasted. Then we ate pizza. which is all part of our Christmas eve (and Easter Vigil) tradition. Then in the morning we woke up and opened presents and had cinnamon rolls and bacon. We had a really nice Christmas day and then later I made tamales for Christmas dinner!
63. Christmas cookies! Since our parents sent all the presents for us to open christmas morning, we decided to do the 12 days of Christmas with the kids - spreading out our gifts to the kids over 12 days. Some of them were just family gifts like this day - we got them christmas cookie cutters so we could make cookies!
64. I can't help but think that we had such a really great year this year. So much family fun. The kids said they loved this year. Ben has been working from home almost all year which has been amazing to have him home in so many ways. My business has done better than ever before and I'm just feeling super blessed this year. Here we are one more time this year!!
Great year!!!