Since we are not currently needing to quarantine we made our way out to one of our favorite playgrounds.
It’s extra sweet because this playground was closed for a very long time and it’s a good one.
We did some more preschool at home.
We started doing home preschool with Cannon back when he was quarantined from school in the fall. He loved doing it so much that he asked me to move Emmy’s school time from when he was in school to the morning so he can do it with us.
So far January has been snowy and a little quarantiney.
We have been spending more time inside than I would like (Big goals to spend even more time outside this year) But I am not too worried about it too much as we spend much more time outside in the spring/summer/fall.
We did some home preschool and some experiments from Kiwi Co.
We shoveled snow….
And made snow angels.
We played
Oh and built snowmen.
So I guess we did spend some time outside. Still looking forward to mornings with coffee on the deck, meals outside and sunny weekends in the mountains.
I will admit that winter is my least favorite season (excluding Christmas, but since that is done for the year here we are). It’s easy for me to pine for spring and summer and not appreciate what winter has to offer so it’s best to create a winter bucket list of things to do so that I have activities to look forward to.
For clarity I will define “winter” as January through early March.
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What is something you love to do in the winter?
We have had bucket lists for last:
summer 2021 summer 2019 fall 2019 fall 2021 winter2021 Christmas 2021 and spring 2021
I thought this month might be my least favorite of my monthly book shelves but this one has become one of my favorites so far!
I loved finding a bunch of books about snow or polar animals. A few we already owned but most were found at the library.
Penguin and Pinecone A friendship story
I’m a Narwhal (Little Golden Book)
We added a third shelf to start off this year because we are loving this so much.
**I own some of these books but also check many out from our local library, it would be very expensive to add all of these titles to your collection in one year. We are building ours with a few new favorites each year.
Shelves – Banners – Shelfie Sign – Kids Custom Chairs – Wire Basket
Pillows are from Target and Yeti plush is many years old.
Monthly Book Nooks:
January – Arctic Animals/Snow
February – Love/Valentines Day
March – St. Patricks Day/Rainbow
April – Easter
May – Spring
June – Mexico/Beach/Ocean
July – Camping/summer
August – Back to School
September – Fall/Harvest
I am so excited for a fresh year and some new family goals. Last year we made our big goal of 1000 hours outside:
Our goal this year is to be outside more this year than last year. Our total for 2021 was 1190 so our goal is at least 1200 hours for 2022. This will be a challenge because Cannon will start school full time in August so being outside will need to be very intentional.
Another goal is camp and explore our local area. We are planning on spending more of our vacation time abroad this year so our camping time will be weekends more close to home.
Last year we spent 55 nights in our camper! I would be happy if we make it above 30 nights this year.
As mentioned above we also want to travel abroad this year. We have had trips postponed since 2020 and we are really really hoping we can start showing these kids the world again.
Our last goal is to just slow down, enjoy the mundane times, and stress less.
It’s been a bit of an adjustment getting used to being back home, back to a routine and dealing with reality. Christmas is still up around the house plus all of the stuff from our trip. There is so. much. laundry. I am just trying to tackle little things when I can and still give the kids time to play as well.
I was getting rid of this years gingerbread house and Emmy needed a picture of it.
We got a little more snow and the kids were so excited to get outside and play since we hadn’t had any snow this season.
They were just as excited to come in and warm up with snacks after.
We had spent the previous day at our neighborhood sledding hill but sadly one of the other families that was there became ill with COVID the next day. We spoke to our doctor and she felt that this counted as an exposure and we would need to quarantine until we get a negative PCR test.
We are bummed that Cannon can’t go back to school and we can’t see friends or family but we will make the best of it.
One of our big goals for 2021 was to spend 1000 hours outside:
It felt a little daunting but so much research shows how important being outside is for kids (everyone really). We made it our mission to make it happen and loosely tracked our hours outside in a simple spreadsheet. Let me know if you want the template, I will be happy to share!
This is what our spreadsheet looked like for 2021. The times outside are in hours and always just an approximation. Our total could be much less or more but the idea was just to spend more time outside.
You can see from the spreadsheet that some days we spent 0 hours outside and others it was all day. Also you can see that our hours total were much more in the summer than in the winter. May had the most hours outside and January had the least.
We tried to get out no matter the weather but it is much easier in the summer when we can enjoy meals outside and enjoy the freedom of summer.
We logged approximately 1189 hours outside this year and I am very proud of us.
One of our goals for 2022 is to beat last year and be outside at least 1200 hours.
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What are some of your goals for 2022?
What a year 2021 was…. So many good things and so much worry and disappointment. Just like in 2020 the best times were when we are together and I love that the most.
January was quiet and cold but we still had some fun. Cannon spent most of the month doing online school but got to return in person at the end of the month. A highlight of the month was visiting the ice castles, I am so bummed they aren’t open this year.
February was looking up we got to go camping and enjoy Colorado Springs. We visited some new to us places in Colorado. We also started our adventure Wednesdays. Cannon had Wednesdays off of school so we made it our mission to go do something exciting like going to a new playground further from home or a hike.
March was one of my favorite months! We started adding some favorites back into our life like swimming at our local pool. We also got to go camping in Canyon City and it was so pretty. We celebrated St. Patricks Day and one year since we started this pandemic. We had the most fun on our spring break trip to Southern Utah, such a beautiful part of the world and lots of nights in the camper. We all loved it.
April was amazing because the weather started to warm up and we got to celebrate Easter with family.
We also got to celebrate Emerald turning three by taking a trip to Dinosaur Colorado and Rifle falls. We also made a special trip to the aquarium and had a small family party.
Cannon played another season of soccer.
We got to camp a lot in May including camping with friends and a trip to the Great Sand Dunes National Park.
Cannon finished his second year of preschool and we celebrated with an amazing trip to Ouray, Silverton and Telluride. This trip really was a dream and an amazing way to kick off summer!
In June we went to Steamboat Springs, visited the pool a lot and celebrated Cannon turning 5!
We celebrated the 4th of July in Aspen, this was another amazing trip! The Maroon Bells are truly stunning.
We also got to camp amongst some Mountain Goats near Breckenridge.
In August we made a quick camping trip up to Leadville and went hiking in Frisco.
Much too quickly it was time to get ready to go back to school. I will readily admit that I don’t love my kids being away at school but I do see how much they love it and grow. Summer for these years I have them will forever be my favorite.
Over Labor Day we took a long weekend to explore Gunnison, Crested Butte and The Black Canyon on the Gunnison National Park. This was another surprisingly awesome trip. I think this campsite was one of Cannon’s favorites!
We squeezed in another camping trip to Twin Lakes and Aspen in mid September so we could enjoy the fall colors.
A big highlight of the year was our big trip to Disneyland to kick off Halloween time and celebrate my birthday.
Cannon played his third season of soccer and Emmy got to play in her first season. Emmy was a little timid at first and wanted Cory out on the field with her but by the end she had made some friends and was excited to play.
We had so much fun celebrating and dressing up for Halloween.
We got to enjoy a very dry fall, lots of time outside and a trip to a ghost town in the mountains.
Christmas was so amazing we got to do so much more than we were able to in 2020. This year we celebrated early on December 18th so we could go out of town on our last big adventure of the year.
Our Christmas Cactus trip exploring New Mexico, Arizona and California was the best way to finish off an amazing year.
Looking back I can’t believe we were so lucky to have such amazing adventures together. While there have been stressful times and lots of things missed out on because of COVID, we were together and we made the best of it.
I am just so grateful. I am not sure we can top it in 2022 but we are going to try, and probably get back on a plane for the first time since 2019 🙂
2019 babies, the last time we were on a plane flying home from Germany.
We woke up on our fifteenth day of our trip excited to get home! It had snowed the day before but we were hopeful for dry roads.
The drive is about seven hours without any stops or slowdowns. It obviously took us longer.
Luckily the kids are amazing in the car and didn’t really complain at all.
There were some icy bits that were stressful but we made through just fine.
There was lots of coffee stops.
We had a wonderful adventure but we are so so happy to be home.
This post could have also been titled a somewhat unfortunate day in Albuquerque. Again we would have liked to have gone home early but it was still snowing and we wanted to wait for clear roads. Originally we were excited for a day in Albuquerque because there were places we loved that we wanted to show the kids.
Unfortunately we missed in our planning that everything is closed on New Years Day. We really wanted to take the kids to see Botanic gardens that has a magical children’s garden. The zoo and aquarium are really good too but they were all closed. All the museums and the tram up the mountains were closed as well. We were super bummed, between the fire, snow and everything being closed it was not the way we wanted our trip to end.
We tried to rally but were mostly killing time until we could drive home. It was cold and there was some snow/rain mix but we went to a playground anyway.
I am always impressed by these kids resilience and how they always find the fun.
We also made our way down to Old Town.
My parents gave me some money for Christmas so I could buy something to remember our trip. I really wanted to get a Turquoise ring and had been looking for most of our trip. I finally found the perfect one while in Albuquerque.
We brought back pizza to have in our hotel room and worked a little on packing up to head home the next day.
We now want to return to Albuquerque to visit what we missed and probably go to the Balloon Fiesta.