2020 was… quite a year. Like everyone else, we shut down our lives in March and are just now returning to something that looks a lot more like “normal” as we knew it. Between a national lock down, online teaching, and trying to keep my family safe, my mental health took a dive and I made the executive decision to restart my Zoloft, with my doctor’s approval. I also had to start blood pressure meds, but hopefully that will be a short-term situation.

With so much downtime, I tried to maintain some creative outlets, and I did manage to make some cakes, some costumes, and even homemade sushi! Lately, I’ve been experimenting with cake pops. I made them for the first time during the birthday week extravaganza in April, but I made more last week for my custodial staff and am in the process of creating another batch with dietary restrictions in mind at the moment (I have people who can’t do coconut and cinnamon). Thankfully they freeze well.

Covid took a toll, though. One of my dearest friends lost her husband just before Christmas, and we’ve been trying our best to keep her spirits up, give her goals and things to look forward to, and plan outings and adventures. So, we went to the zoo with Granny and Monkey, we repainted and made some improvements on her place, redecorated, and cleaned out, mourned, processed, cleaned, and redecorated some more. Our next adventure is going to be Colorado! I’ve never been, so Aunt Robin, Aunt Dot, Monkey, and I will be taking a road trip up there later this week, and we’re staying for a month. We’ll be back home in mid-July, and the hubby is staying home to hold down the fort. I’m excited and nervous about traveling with a 4 year old, packing and repacking, planning, and trying to prepare for every contingency, but I’m looking forward to our time. We’ll be scattering ashes next week, then spend the rest of the trip healing, resting, and recovering.

I’ll try my best to post about our adventures regularly, and I have some fun stuff planned that will hopefully get some laughs, but in the meantime, here’s all of the stuff I’ve been up to in the past year and a half! (Apparently my phone wants to upload them in no particular order, so I’ll go back and add captions and rearrange later.)