Wow!! The last time I did my year in review blog post, I had to cover two years (2019 and 2020) at the same time. I don't remember why I missed doing a year in review, but from what I read in my last post, I vowed to not miss anymore year in review blog posts....... oops! It's January 16, 2024 and if I had kept my promise, I would now be doing only the 2023 year in review posts, but I didn't keep my promise and I now have three years to cover, 2021, 2022, and 2023. There are reasons why I missed doing the 2021 and 2022 year in review posts. In 2021 I somehow lost most of the photos I had taken from 2021 and I just didn't have the heart to do those year in review posts,. In 2022, I was going to do my year in review posts, but I had an old laptop and the effort I would have had to go through to find, get, and move pictures to here was so tedious and difficult, and if you know me well, technology and I do not get along, and so I gave up and didn't do those posts. Well, my children were not happy with me for skipping those two years and have been on my case to do it. So, without further ado, I will make my attempts at covering three years at once. Be warned, it will probably be a bit weird and confusing because we did move from Bountiful to Layton in the middle of 2021. This will be a bit of a challenge because I have to try and remember what we were doing in 2021 and 2022.  Lets begin with January 2021 shall we?

                                                      JANUARY 2021

Sugar Dust being her weird self.  We were still living in Bountiful at this time and had ZERO plans of moving anywhere!!  As far as I was concerned, I was never EVER going to move again.

Many, many years ago, my grandma did a lot of ceramic painting.  She painted a really nice nativity set for my mom and one for her.  

YC and his Bubby

Sugar Gliders are so ADORABLE!!  I do miss Bubby though, he is the chubby one on the right, sadly he passed away of old age sometime in 2022

When she passed away, I inherited her set.  Unfortunately in her old age, she had dropped quite a few of the pieces and they had been broken, then haphazardly glued back together.  

I was saddened by this because I had always loved my mom's set and wanted a really nice set of my own.  So, with my Christmas money in hand, I searched out a local Ceramic shop and was very pleased to find that they had a ceramic nativity set for sale.  

It wasn't the same as my grandma's or my mom's, but I was quite excited nonetheless!!  I had a lot of fun picking out my color schemes and decided to paint the saddle cloths on the camels to match the clothing of the wise men.  I painted slowly and carefully because I wanted to make sure they were beautiful and lifelike. I didn't want them to look cartoony or simple.  When my grandma had painted her set, she added jewels and such to her wise men and so I followed suit and did the same for mine. I am quite pleased with the way they all turned out.  So, as you can see, for the month of January 2021 I was able to paint two wise men and one camel.  As I recall it took me several months to get them all painted.  So, look forward to seeing more pictures of the nativity set as I complete my years in review!

Little bundles of cute and snuggly fluff.

JANUARY 2022
Welcome to January 2022, by this time, we had moved from Bountiful to Layton and were pretty much unpacked and settled into our new house.

YC has a mating pair of Sugar Gliders and they had their first little baby!!  She is so CUTE!!

January 2022 was unseasonably warm, and I found that if I bundled up, I could work outside.  The house we moved to came with an acre of property and I was very excited to get outside and start getting it under control.  Whilst I was outside working away, I apparently got stabbed in the arm by a tree branch.  I do remember that it wasn't a pleasant experience.  By the way, stay tuned because I have lots of injuries and epic bruises to share, including a dog bite!! But we'll get to that sometime in 2023!

She's so CUTE!! We named her Gizmo!

My new domain!!  The wood you see behind the playhouse is what remains of an old wooden fence that had been there and Richard and I took down.

This shows just how unseasonably warm it was.  It was the middle of JANUARY and there were flowers growing!!

Yes, those are Dandelions growing in the middle of January!!

Such cute little things!!

At the beginning of December 2021, we got a phone call or email from someone, I don't remember who, asking us if we could host an exchange student because it wasn't working out with his original host family.  We talked about it with the kids and decided that it might be fun to have an exchange student, and so right before Christmas, Facundo came to stay with us for the rest of the school year.  His birthday was in January and so we had a fun birthday celebration for him.

JANUARY 2023

And now we have made it to January 2023!!

 

Jimmy decided he likes the long hair look and he let me French braid his hair.

Jacen's hair was getting a bit on the long side as well and he too humored me and let me French braid his hair.  

Sugar Dust being her adorable self.

January 2023 was COMPLETELY different from January 2022. That whole side ditch was completely full of water and it kept flooding into what I call the back 40.

Nathan bought me these awesome electric feet warming boots.  They keep my feet nice and toasty warm!!

My little Leche girl.  May she rest in peace.  It's actually quite hard for me to see this picture and write this little blurb because it was just yesterday that she was hit and killed by a car.  I am completely heartbroken.  She was such a sweet and loving little kitty and always wanted pets, loves, and attention.  I am going to miss her.  The story of how we got her is yet to come, so there will be more pictures of her as we go along this journey.  It will be bittersweet.

Well, that's it for today, we've covered three January's in one go.  Stay tuned for tomorrow where we go on a journey through February 2021, 2022, and 2023