I’m honestly not sure what to say about 2021 other than for us it epitomized Charles Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”.

The Worst: We’re still firmly locked in a Covid loop, despite being vaccinated and boosted around here. The new variant of Covid made us alter our Christmas plans and cancel our New Year’s plans and I don’t see any end in sight. Friends of ours have lost loved ones in 2021. Friends and family lost their jobs. Zach had a heart attack. Another friend was diagnosed with a brain tumor. The hits kept coming this year.

On the other hand:

The Best: Zach moved into the house and we’ve made huge progress on the property and the gardens. We built a garden shed by ourselves, from the ground up. We celebrated our first Christmas in the house together and it was as perfect as it could be, despite the Covid related cancellations. New – and better – jobs have been found. We managed to fit an actual vacation in between Covid waves. Zach has recovered from his heart attack better and faster than his doctors predicted. And our friend’s brain tumor turned out to be benign and surgically curable.

It truly has been a year of rollercoaster type ups and downs and while everything mostly turned out ok in the end, I’m glad to put a pin in it and move on to 2022. I have a slew of projects in the works and I’ll write more about those and some of my ideas for the blog in my first 2022 post.

In the meanwhile, here are some images to recap 2021:

And with that: Farewell to 2021. We’re kinda glad to see you go.