New Year 2022/January

Finally ~ I can start blogging about the new year!

 

Since I was still recovering from my bronchitis episode and with omicron really starting to kick up, D, B and I just had a quiet evening at home on New Year's Eve. We ate steak and lobster, watched "Tick Tick Boom!" on Netflix and then watched the ball drop on TV...

Despite the fact I struggled with laryngitis most of January (my voice is back now - about 98% I'd say - it still cracks/is raspy every so often), experienced big time fatigue (and still do a bit) and had a number of friends and family members come down with Covid (which has been quite stressful), we had a pretty good January. I still don't know how Doug, Bri and I have escaped Covid so far, but I know there is a really good possibility we could get it - even being boosted and masking as much as we do.

It took me about a week into January to get all my Christmas stuff down. I had to do it slow but surely - my fatigue hindered me a lot from getting it down sooner. I was emotionally mixed between being ready to get rid of the Christmas decorations and missing the Christmas trees and twinkling lights at the same time.

  Mei was not happy the trees were gone...

January brought some very pretty sunrises...

Bri started a brand new semester of school in January - which meant all new classes, teachers and classmates. She is doing great though adjusting to it all. She has theater and drawing this semester and that makes her quite happy...

Bri drew this super cool drawing for her drawing class (she had to choose three reflective or transparent items to draw [she chose a mirror, glasses and eye shadow case] and incorporate several different line drawing techniques to draw them)....

 Honestly, I am so relieved Bri has adjusted to an extremely crowded high school so well (while wearing a mask!). I think about her spending over a year at home trying to learn virtually. Basically learning a lot of 9th grade on her own. Being so isolated from kids her own age. This girl has bounced back. I'm proud and very, very grateful.

 

Doug celebrated his birthday in January...

We had a nice dinner at our favorite Cuban restaurant, I bought Doug a very cool Star Wars picture from a company called "Frome" and Briana drew Doug a very sweet picture.

The company Doug works for received another huge round of funding and they announced it in January. It will help the company grow even more! Nasdaq then congratulated them in Times Square!

We had our "Mei Mei/gotcha day" anniversary in January. She joined our family 7 years ago and is such a happy, important part of our lives...

January also brought snow (January 16th). It snowed most of the day (and was very pretty), but it didn't stick in our neck of the woods...

About two weeks later, it snowed a little bit overnight and I woke up to a tiny trace of snow...

We also finally watched "The Eternals"...it definitely was a bit slow and long, and there was a lot of (almost too much) information packed into a two hour plus movie - but I didn't hate it. I actually did like it. I know some people really didn't...

Doug and Bri saw Spiderman 3 in a movie theater (Bri couldn't wait to see it anymore). I did not go because I still had a nice cough and didn't want to have some coughing fit in the theater. They went at a quiet time and had no one sitting around them. They felt quite comfortable there. It was their first movie in a theater outside the house in like two years.

And we are now into the month of February, and on February 1st, the CNY began (year of the tiger). I'll be blogging about that soon!

All About Christmas 2021

Yes ~ it's February and I'm just blogging about Christmas 2021. But, January was a bit of a catch up month for me (including blogging about my NYC trip) because December was pretty much just about celebrating the holiday season and dealing with being pretty dang sick.

So, let me do a Christmas recap now.

In very early November, Briana and I went to our favorite pottery painting studio for Bri to paint a new coffee mug for Doug (it has been her tradition for him since she was a preschooler). We didn't paint at the studio in 2020 because of Covid, but B drew an amazing digital picture and we placed it on a mug through Shutterfly instead. Since Covid cases were pretty low in early November 2021 (before the omicron surge), we felt comfortable going to paint.

She always comes up with a cool theme (Avengers, Star Wars, Tesla, etc), and her 2021 mug theme was Lego. While she painted her mug, I painted a cute little gnome for Christmas...

Doug loved his gift on Christmas morning...

The weekend after Thanksgiving, it was time for us to look for our live Christmas tree that sits in our family room. Doug was the one to spot our tree this year (at Pike's Nursery), and he found a really pretty one. It was really leaning over, so it was deceiving as to how pretty it really was. Once he propped it up, we realized it was perfect and "our" tree...

See how it was leaning (above)?

It was perfect when we got it set up at home.

I have a process to decorating my live tree. Lights and garland go on first...

Then I add all my ornaments...

Mei Mei loves when the tree goes up...

View of my mantle and tree...

Christmas decorations around the house...

Our China-themed tree...

Briana's tree in her room...

Upstairs sitting room tree (in our master bedroom)...

Our Christmas lights outside (this is Doug's work)...

When Briana got sick right after Thanksgiving, I was very worried I would catch what she had. So, I worked as hard as I could getting the house decorated in case that happened. The end of November and first week of December I was decorating like crazy. As soon as Briana started getting over her sickness, I started coming down with mine.

We went to the "World of Illumination" drive-thru light/music display again, just like we did in 2020. We went on a Thursday evening, and at the time, I felt fine. It was fun to see all the lights again...

When we got home, I felt like I had some congestion. I thought maybe I was imagining it. I wasn't.

I woke up the next morning and I knew I was sick. I luckily had shopped very early and I had most of my presents purchased. I started wrapping gifts like mad on that Friday. It took me several hours. The only gifts I didn't get to were Doug's. By Friday night, I was done. And things went very downhill after that. I visited urgent care about 5 days after that and was diagnosed with every "itis" known to man.

Briana and I had plans with our friends Amy and Mary and Valerie and Imerie on that Sunday after I first got sick. But I couldn't make it - I felt so sick. So, the ladies took Bri along without me (thanks girls!) and I was so happy she had such a fun day with her friends. (I was super, super sad I couldn't go.)

They visited the Ponce City Market. Amy rented an "igloo" where they ate lunch and exchanged gifts and then they went ice skating. Here are some of the wonderful pictures they sent me...

The girls are so grown up now - it's bittersweet. I love seeing them flourish and grow but I miss the little girls they were at the same time...

 

I was sick for about two weeks. I spent most of it laying in my bed. I was so grateful to have a Christmas tree in my room to look at while I was trying to recover...

 

My upstairs tree has three settings ~ white lights, colored lights and both. I would switch it up often.

I would wake up in the mornings to this rainbow prism on my wall...

I hoped it was a sign that there was a light at the end of my illness.

One person that enjoyed me being sick was this one...

She spent a lot of time with me while I was sick.

While I was sick, I didn't have much of an attention span. I was coughing so much. I couldn't really even concentrate watching TV. I did manage to watch Hawkeye each week - the episodes were only about 45 minutes...

After a week and a half of being sick, I was finally feeling up to watching a full movie, "Christmas Vacation," with Doug and Bri...

I lost my voice and I was still pretty fatigued, but we managed to bake Christmas cookies a couple of days before Christmas...

I also finally took a nice picture of Briana in front of our Christmas tree...

Finally, Christmas Eve rolled around (and I did finally manage to get Doug's gifts wrapped). We had a quiet day. Doug and I watched a movie. We had a nice dinner of honeybaked ham, potato salad and chocolate pie. We put all of our gifts under the tree and it was time to go to sleep...

Christmas morning was really nice (and I was feeling a bit better but still had laryngitis) and we all exchanged gifts...

Doug and Bri made me two amazing gifts ~ wine bottles with white lights and cut wine bottles with fake succulents in them. Wine is kind of a theme with me - heh...

I mentioned in an earlier post that Briana received the jacket she admired in NY. She got a lot of nice gifts that morning, but her other big gift was a TV set for her bedroom...

She is loving it!

And one gift I gave Doug was this Lego set he really wanted...

We got ready to head to my parents' house to spend the afternoon/evening with my side of the family...

  I am pretty sure this was the first time I had put on makeup since I had gotten sick.

We had a nice time at my parents' place with my sister and her family... 

My parents got her this adorable pic for her room...

Because I was sick, we had to postpone a Christmas get together with our friends - the M family. We had already missed seeing them at Christmastime in 2020 because of the pandemic, so I wasn't going to miss 2021! So two days after Christmas, we got to spend the day with them and have a delicious belated Christmas lunch.

Briana and Chani...

Like with Mary and Imerie, seeing Briana and Chani together all grown up is so bittersweet. Friends since they were babies...

And that is my Christmas 2021 recap. Even though I was really sick and had some very, very difficult days during December, I still felt surprisingly festive when I was feeling good/better. Maybe because I managed to get my decorations up and most of my presents wrapped before I got sick. And I managed to feel better just in time for Christmas Day.

Thanks for reading about Christmas in February! Hopefully I can keep up better in 2022!