For my December Daily Story #11 (yes, I've been going out of order. It's okay, really. These are stories, not days. I know, it's December Daily. There December Stories - daily)...I decided to capture 20 of my favorite things in 2020.
It's been a year hasn't it? An unprecedented year in my life time. A very hard year in so many ways.
Yet.
There has been some really good stuff, too!
I simply do not want to walk into 2021 without recalling those good things about 2020. Favorite's. A shift in perspective.
When I look back on 2020, rather than pandemic, toilet paper shortage, isolation, lockdowns, businesses going under...you get the drift, I'd rather see the good. Personally, using clearer vision, I would rather look on 2020 as the year of...
1. Documenting 31 Sunrises in July. I started the month of July capturing a sunrise each morning and by the 4th day I'd decided to keep going the rest of the month. I created a mini-album of my 31 Sunrises, posted the sunrises on Instagram (@suebug63), and enjoyed every minute of loss of sleep to catch the sun coming up.
2. Completing a #100dayproject. A heady endeavor to say the least. Beginning in April and ending in July I wrote one personal story every day using a one word journal prompt. One word. One story. 100 days. It was an amazing creative outlet and I told 100 small stories about me.
3. Swimming since the end of July, 3- 4x each week. When the aquatic center opened back up post-pandemic and after months of renovation, they returned to business by reservation only. Swimmers reserve lanes for lap swimming and every week I reserved a lane for 3 or 4 swim times. Thus, by the end of the year I will have been swimming for almost a half of a year. This has been a favorite of mine and one of the best things that has happened to me in 2020.
4. Book club. I have been hosting a book club in my home since July of 2019 and even during a pandemic we continued meeting on Zoom until we could come back together again in my home. It is one of my favorite days of the month because I get to re-connect with like-minded, amazing women. And - well - books!
5. John graduated from Savannah Technical College. Even more exciting he received all his Welding certifications which will open doors to launch his career.
6. Reading aloud every morning with Jeff. In 2018 when we were going through a rough patch we began reading aloud the Bible, praying together, and reading a spiritual formation book together. Even as we climbed out of the valley and are near the mountain top we continue to read aloud together every weekday morning.
7. Read 80 books. While this is far less than I have read in recent years I am still happy with my reading life. Although there have been a few slow months that I struggled to read. I am not even sure why, now.
8. Created 105 scrapbooking pages (at least - that is how many I posted on my blog).
9. Began Fostering Compassion. Along with our small group we began supporting a fostering family with meals (and things as needed).
10. Prepare a meal a week to those in need. During the pandemic and beyond God opened doors for us to provide at least one meal to someone in need. It became a ministry to me and I was so blessed by serving in this way, especially as we were not going to church and serving on campus.
11. Hiking in to 4 waterfalls in 4 days. In November 2020, Jeff and I took a week off during our birthdays and headed to north Georgia. We stayed at Unicoi State Park and made that our home base. Each day we heading out to hike in to visit a waterfall. We ended up visiting 4 waterfalls in 4 days. Glorious!
12. 52 Tacos. We had Taco Tuesday every week and never tired of our homemade tacos. In fact, when Jeff is tucking me into the truck in the morning before I head to work I remind him what to take out of the freezer to thaw for dinner. As soon as I say hamburger, he dreamily exclaims, "Tacos!"
13. Saturday morning breakfasts with Jeff - and Saturday date nights - with Jeff. Unless Jeff has to work, without fail we get up fairly early on Saturday mornings and go out for breakfast. Since we've started swimming on Saturday mornings, too, breakfasts are a little later, though. Then, in the evening we have a date night. During the pandemic it was often pick up dinner and a movie at home.
14. Belgian Flax Linen sheets. I'm not kidding. Like mattresses and pillows, sheets have been the bane of our sleeping hours. However, I splurged this past fall and purchased Belgian Flax Linen sheets from Pottery Barn. I will never return to any other sheets. These sheets are almost a cover weight yet they keep you cool and we don't sweat! These are the sheets I purchased.
15. Adopting Athena. In July, we visited PetSmart for the first time and walked out with Athena, a 1 year old tabby who'd had a hard first year of life. One of the best, and most favorite things we could have ever done all year.
16. Seeing Hamilton. On Disney+. We had tickets to see Hamilton on March 20th, 2020. Then, the pandemic hit and everything was canceled. It seemed life was canceled. Then, brilliance happened. Disney+ brought Hamilton to the little screen. We still have tickets to see Hamilton in person but we loved every minute of our at home viewing - more than once.
17. The second bookshelf finished! I have had a finished bookshelf in the living room for many, many, many, many (you get the drift) years. And, a second bookshelf unfinished in the garage. However, in this year of a pandemic Jeff finished that bookshelf!!!
18. No one in our family has been sick. When I normally get sick at least once a year with the flu or a respiratory infection that last weeks and are usually 3x worse than anyone in my family. But, I nor my family have been sick at all this year - during a pandemic!
19. No loss of life in the fire. Jeff's jobsite pretty much burned to the ground in February but with 100's on the jobsite, nobody was hurt. When the fire raged, Jeff was instrumental in guiding the fire chief through the intricacies of the building.
20. Cleaned out our attic. If anyone has an attic abyss you know what cleaning it out, organizing it, purging would mean. This was a tremendously difficult endeavor because we also had to go through boxes of Jeff's mom's things, too. We have still a bit of work on the attic but it's 80% better and a huge project.
Digitally, for this 2-page, 6 x 8 (this is the size of the album I am using for my December Daily), I used Sahlin Designs digital kit(s). Kits because I grabbed pieces from multiple kits, although much of the pages were created using her Favorite Things kit. But, she makes these amazing Number - kits really - where she compiles, like, 10 or so variations of numbers, 1-31, all December Daily-ish and perfect for creating a December Daily album. However, I used several of her number kits for numbering those 20 favorite things.