Last Month of the Year!

December = the last month of the year = the end of 2020! Generally it means the holiday season and Christmastime, of which I am excited about, but more importantly I am looking forward to the new year. Oh yes! There will be plenty of champagne popping and bazookas at this year’s New Year’s Eve at the Miller’s, in stark contrast to the extremely late takeout dinner in the Detroit airport hotel of New Year’s Eve 2019…hopefully.

But in all seriousness, this holiday season is going to look different than any holiday season in the past for me. I’ve never not spent Christmas with one or the other side of the family. This means that we have to come up with traditions, festivities, and merry making all on our own. It’s so different this year, not being able to celebrate the holiday season with friends and family. This is normally a season filled with Christmas parties, gift exchanges, sweets, song and dance galore.

We are still trying our best to feel connected to those we care about. I have set up a socially-distanced, no-contact holiday cookie (or treat) exchange for our friends here for next weekend. So far, we have about six different households participating and I’m looking forward to still having a holiday cookie platter to enjoy as we approach Christmas, looking forward to our friend’s creations, and mainly looking forward to having an excuse to say “hello” to one another from afar. It’s been ages since I have caught up or even just seen so many of our friends. We have two different kinds of cookies that I want to make for the exchange next weekend; neither of which I have made before.

But this weekend we are looking at a forecast of sunny skies and slightly warmer weather so that should mean a run, a walk, some playground jaunts and the like. We have reservations for an outdoor wine tasting at Novelty Hill on Sunday with Sarah and Lottie and those two are coming over for our resurrected Friday night happy hour/takeout. I’ll have a boatload of laundry to do since our dryer has been broken for a week now but at least we are getting a brand new one delivered and installed tomorrow for us.

I’ve got most of my Christmas shopping done. Another stark contrast to the past few years where the holiday season has just sprung up on me completely unprepared. This has also meant general shopping for yours truly (clothes, skin care, a new photo printer, etc). We have our tree up and have started a nightly advent calendar filled with chocolate from Trader Joe’s for all of $1. I never knew they had these at TJs but Reese is all about it. We have one for each of us but somehow Reese ends up getting all three chocolates every night. Thankfully they are tiny. I’m trying to become a morning person, as Reese continues to wake up most mornings at 5:30 am. And we have continued our morning walks to school, which have been wonderful lately with the sunny weather we have been having. Although that girl is certainly getting more difficult to push up our big hill.

And in other positive updates, my ID was returned to me by a kind soul in the mail this week. Thank goodness because the last thing I wanted to do was make a vision appointment with the current status of things. I received my pay raise and it’s the highest it’s ever been (shockingly). And I’m most likely making the playoffs for Fantasy Football which is shocking since I started out 0-4. This is in large part thanks to stellar games lately by Metcalf, Cousins and Michael Thomas’ return. We’ve cleaned up the backyard quite a bit and broke out our patio heater. And after my mom indicated that she was going to start a Fitnessblender program, I decided I would do it myself as well and have kickstarted a new four week program that I’m actually looking forward to doing.

I definitely feel like things are starting to look up around here and am really trying to stay positive and motivated. Wasn’t so much that way even a week ago so let’s rally to the end of the year.

Chelsea