New Years Eve, Walker Style

It was the end of September when I first noticed "Happy New Year" merchandise starting to appear in stores. David and I joked that people were going to celebrate the New Year with a significant increase in enthusiasm after such a rough year. (2020 has often become synonymous with "awful" and is sometimes simply used in context as the explanation for difficulty. "It makes sense, you know... 2020." or "Our car broke down. #2020". It's almost hilarious, and humor is sometimes a coping mechanism. I have to admit, even though our year has looked different than what it normally might look like, we have been blessed to have a really great year. We've been blessed and we've been happy. But, we were still excited to celebrate the coming of a new year. My mom was laughing all day about a video we watched where the main lady keeps saying "2021 will fix it!" 

We don't expect that everything will be better on January 1, 2021 - but we do look forward to the future with optimism and hope. 

And we love any excuse to throw a party. (If by "throw a party", you mean "realize that you have children and you should probably do something for new years, so 5 minutes prior take a sharpie marker and some extra paper plates and pull off a few activities to make the night feel festive." I'm not a big party planner, but I hope my kids will remember my efforts to make their childhood fun and filled with simple, special memories. 

We made cotton candy, played Risk Jr., played the wii, drank rootbeer floats, made goals, and talked about the new year - then watched an old year of the ball dropping to celebrate! 

After the kids were in bed, we played a massive game of Carcassone with every expansion that we own. It took us three hours. Then, because tensions were heated and we weren't ready to go to bed, we decided to play a speed round and played another round with all of the expansions but as fast as we possibly could and we did the whole thing in only one hour! It was the best. Laughing as we ran to and from the counter, grabbing pieces over top of each other. Racing to finish the most cities. 

And then everyone went to bed by 11:30. We'd stayed up until 2 almost every night that week, so everyone was pooped. David and I stayed up and read our books on the couch until the fireworks started going off outside and we happily welcomed the new year. 

Walker - Post Christmas

Immediately after leaving the Peaden Home, we drove straight to Morgan to continue our celebrations. We weren't able to see them at Thanksgiving or earlier in December because we were being so careful not to risk getting the Peaden's sick - so we were SO ready to see everyone and celebrate together. We spent the whole week hanging out. It was reminiscent of our college days when we'd take the two-week college break to come and visit family and just stay the whole time. After a year of being socially distant from almost everyone, it felt crazy to have so many people around for so long. But everyone had been really careful prior to Christmas and thankfully, no one ended up being sick. (Covid is tricky, because you can be sick and not know you're sick. And even if you're asymptomatic you can still get other people sick. Holidays are a concern because if big groups gather, it can accelerate the spread. However, I'm writing this post after the fact - so I can report that none of us got sick from being together and I'm grateful that is the case.) 

Austin's cotton candy machine was a big hit with the kids AND the adults. Of course, Kid pancakes had to be on the menu (the kids love making "kid pancakes" with Grandpa). 

Games with my siblings. 

Lucy loves Rugby like Lydia loved dogs at her age. Rugby is bigger than she is but she's not afraid of him and she's happy to rough and tumble with him. He's such a good dog and although he likes to play with her, he's never actually rough. 

I'm surprised I don't have pictures of Lydia and Rugby, because she's the one who really adores him. 

My dad and his retirement chain. We are counting down the weeks!

My dad volunteered to take Lydia driving. She was thrilled. I remember getting to drive on my Grandpa Walker's ranch. Lydia just went around the church parking lot. 

I love this Lucy-girl. 

My dad and brother Matthew have been learning how to make cheese. They made their own cheese press and have their own cheese aging station in the basement. It's funny, but they are actually really good at it! One of these days I'm going to make them get a YouTube channel going. 

More hanging out. 

Juniper and Lucy are only two months apart and look like little twinners hanging out. We love them together. 

David being the kid-hero and Caleb and Sadie, thick as thieves. 

For Christmas, my dad got a FORGE. He's been blacksmithing his heart out and he let Caleb come out and make a little piece of metal with him. Caleb has been talking about making a knife like grandpa's ever since. 

The babies hanging out in my mom's bed watching baby songs on her projector. 

(plus a house I loved when I saw it on our drive)

We went on a hike up East Canyon. My dad brought hot chocolate and a little flame stove. We hiked, we drank hot chocolate. We made snow angels. I even convinced the kids to play one round of "freeze tag" with me. This was definitely a highlight of our week. 

We ended our week with the Walker's with a New Years Eve celebration, then packed up and went home the very next day. But I'll post New Years Eve in another post. The best week to end the year!