2020 in Review, and Looking Forward to 2021

 What a year, am I right? I was just looking at this post and  thinking about how I felt at this time last year. Overwhelmed and hoping things would slow down? ha, well slow down they did in some ways. But in most ways just got even crazier. I did okay with my goals this year. I kind of did most of them. One reason I don't often make goals is that I'm not great at following through ha. But I'm going to try to reach these goals this year. 

Anyways, 2020 has been a year of so much change for us! Here are some highlights.

+ In January Adele turned 4.

+ In February Esther had her big surgery. In hindsight, I am so grateful we got this done in February! We were originally going to schedule it in March after our trip, but they had an opening in February so she got it done then. I can't imagine what would have happened or when she would have been able to have it had we waited, and probably had to deal with a bunch of COVID restrictions had we waited. Such a blessing we had it then, the surgery was successful with an easy recovery and she's had no issues since. 

+ In March, Esther turned 6. Another thing I'm glad we got to have before everything was cancelled. We also had our Oregon Trip, the world turned upside down, school was cancelled and Leland started working from home, and amidst all that, on March 24th, we welcomed Julian to our family.

+ In May, Israel turned two.

+ In June, I turned 27.

+In July, I found out I was pregnant, and Baby Boy turned 1. 

+ In August, we announced the pregnancy, and Leland turned 32. We also started our second formal year of homeschool. 

+ In September, Julian officially became our son.

+ In October, we experienced my favorite day of the year, when Julian was sealed to us. 

+ Wrapping up the year, we celebrated the holidays, our 8th wedding anniversary, and ended the year with one (and a half? two?) more children than we started with. 

So much change in 2020! I hope in most ways things will go back to normal in 2021. In 2021, we will likely have Baby Boy leaving us, a new baby joining us, all the kids getting older, and hopefully, just a bit of the slow down and rest that I'm hoping for, given our track record, probably not though. 😅 We also have a Texas trip to look forward to, and maybe one other fun trip, hopefully! If 2020 has taught me anything it's that your plans can be flipped in an instant, and probably to not count on anything ha. That sounds bad, but I think 2020 has made us all more adaptable. Who knows what crazy or hard things lie ahead in 2021, but here are my goals for the year. 

For 2021, my goals are along the same lines as last year, but a little easier maybe?

1. Quiet Morning Each Day 

I've been trying to wake up before the kids, around 6:30 and have 20-30 minutes of quiet scripture study/meditation/pondering/journaling time to begin the day. I have had numerous promptings to begin this and just in the past few months I've finally followed through. It has made a big difference in my mental health and my parenting. I hope to continue this but I will probably need to tweak it a bit when the baby is born and I am not getting much sleep. 

2. Less Social Media

Social media is about the only screen time  I have (not counting ebooks). I rarely watch tv or movies. With having a new baby and breastfeeding round the clock, I know it will be easy to fall into looking at my phone all the time. I plan to limit social media to a few times a week, post each week on the blog (gotta put all those baby photos somewhere!) and to have at least one breastfeeding session each day where my phone is completely put away. 

3. 1000 hours outside

I think I did pretty well with getting outside everyday in 2020. There have probably been about 15 days where we haven't. (most of those since I got pregnant and tired!) This year I want to complete the 1000 hours outside challenge. It equates to about 3.5 hours a day, which is a lot! But a lot of those hours are used in the late spring and early summer when we can spend all day outside. It will be a challenge for sure but outdoor play is one of the things I'm most passionate about, so I think we can do it!