Happy New Year!
Happy New Year and a belated Merry Christmas! I hope you’ve been enjoying this holiday season. It’s been nearly 10 days of parties and visits for us, and I am exhausted! We continue with a few more celebrations as Miss Lady turns 7 tomorrow!
We awoke this morning to a beautiful blanket of fluffy white snow, the perfect fresh start to a new year. For me, 2017 was a rough year, and 2018 was a massive improvement on the year before, even with the setbacks we experienced. Scott had an easier time than me through 2018, but struggled more through 2018, yet at the end of the year we were heading in a very positive direction. Our prayer for 2019 is that we can keep our forward momentum going and keep moving in a positive direction with our family, home, and homestead.
Throughout 2018, I spent a lot of time carefully watching our progression through the year. I did my best to keep track of all that we did, but once morning sickness set in, it was difficult for me to be able to spend any time tracking our progress here on the blog. First it was the nausea and exhaustion. Then it was time for harvesting and preserving from our garden. After that was completed, we were getting into the rhythm of the “regular” school year, and what do you know, third trimester exhaustion and the holiday season were suddenly upon us. And then there were all of the other things that I was busy working on as we prepared for the winter, the holidays, and a new baby. Scott worked on fixing up a lard/cider press, pressing cider, and making hard cider. Then there was hunting season which proved unfruitful for us this year. After that, he began to set to work on winterizing things around the homestead. He and the boys worked on a few changes to the chicken tractor for the winter months, they boarded up some of the garage doors, and more recently, started cleaning out the garage and the laboratory. As for me, in the last couple of months, I did my best to help get things ready for the winter. I put a dog door into the entry way of the basement for Poppy, and I helped gather chicken keeping supplies. Miss Lady wants to share a room with the baby when he comes, so I worked on fixing up her room to accommodate for another person to share her room. Our bathroom floor needed to be replaced in summer because of some damage beneath the toilet, and I had begun, but not finished working on “remodeling” the bathroom. Once canning season was finally over, I finished fixing up the bathroom! Of course, there were holiday preparations as well. I was utterly exhausted though, and only had enough energy for about 3/4 of my plans. Thankfully, I started early enough that I wasn’t trying to scramble at the last minute to finish everything.
I am hoping to write a few posts sometime soon about how our year went and what our goals for the coming year are, but we’ll see what time permits for! In the meantime, I’m busily crocheting my evenings away on a blanket for Scott that is going to be a late Christmas present, and getting our family back into a routine after the busy holiday season.
Scott heads back to work tomorrow after an extended holiday break, from which he’s been trying to fit in time cleaning up our garage and organizing the laboratory in the house, as well as sneaking in as much genealogy time as possible.
As for the kids, they’ve been busy playing games they got for Christmas, enjoying the recent snow falls, and watching Christmas movies. It will probably be a slow ramp-up through the week back to “normal life,” and hopefully by next week, we’ll be back on track!
I pray you had a wonderful holiday season! Let me know what your favorite parts were in the comments!
Love~Danielle
