And a Happy New Year!

Can you believe we are saying goodbye to 2022 already?

It’s been a decent year overall. Some ups, some downs, but mostly good. If you have had a worse year, then I hope your next year is better!

It has been nice to have some downtime over the past few days. I went to SC to visit my family: everybody but my brother was there (and Louie, he had to work.) It was a nice time. I drove all the way to SC and back by myself, which nobody seemed to think I would be able to do, but I did manage.

I’m thinking back on the year: there were a lot of good times! Visiting Norway, Austin, New Orleans, and more, playing with the Beach Boys, seeing Augustin Hadelich play (and I get to do that again this spring), playing some good chamber music with friends, reading so many books, almost buying a house (we close soon!), seeing family, seeing friends, seeing many concerts and some plays, taking a canoe trip on the Mississippi…it’s been a fun year.

Looking ahead to 2023: the plans are to move, to fix up the new house and decorate, buy a few new things, repurpose what we already own to make the house our home. Travel wise we are planning a trip to New Mexico and Colorado in the summer. I’ve got some concerts on the books already, but we’ll see what the year brings in that regard. Work wise, I really need to find a better balance so I don’t feel so burned out all the time.

I’ll share some pictures of the week in South Carolina with captions: enjoy!

Family Christmas Brunch. Carrie and I were a day late so we missed some things, but we did a nice celebration anyway.

My nephew Luca and I. I asked him to come closer for a picture and he said “I’m in the picture.”

Luca does enjoy posing though! This was a new toy of his.

We went to Musgrove Mill State Historic Site. Athena picked up some ice there.

Getting organized for a family picture at the Waterfall

We switched out photographers and included my sister Carrie’s boyfriend Brian instead of me.

We made dinner one night for my parents’ wedding anniversary. It was hard to just get my mom to sit down and relax!

Luca helped by making Mom read books over and over to him. Yes, he did wear that rainbow sweater the whole time.

All the men got the same shirt. Louie has one as well.

Ringing the bell at Presbyterian College.

Tonight we are having dinner with Louie’s family and then likely heading home before midnight. Louie is in the middle of a very intense period at work where he has to teach every morning for 12 days, so we opted not to do anything more social and instead just see family and relax. I have been packing today, collecting boxes, and choosing paint colors. I can’t believe we are buying a house soon!

If you are reading this and the holidays are hard for you, I hope you are hanging in there! While things are going okay for me, of course nothing is ever as good as it seems online, and things are always more difficult in the moment than they seem looking back at it. I know the year had some difficult moments such as health concerns for me and for family members, as well as the major stress of getting COVID while in a foreign country…but looking back it all seems okay. Funny how that works, hmm?