A New Year quickly approaches

As we come to the end of 2021 and look forward to a new year, I can't help but reflect on the past year.  2021 had it's fair share of ups and downs, but overall we end the year full of gratitude.  While I will always remember this as the year that we had to say goodbye to Maddie, I hope that I will also remember all of the wonderful moments we had together throughout the year.  We really did make a lot of great memories in the final year of her life.  I am thankful for every minute and know what a blessing it was to have her with us for so many years.  Not a day goes by that I don't miss her presence in my daily life.  The holidays have brought back many memories and I have definitely experienced some sadness from her not being here to celebrate with us this year. 

We started the year 9 months into a pandemic and in the midst of a surge of infections.  I know that many people thought that 2021 was going to be so much better than 2020 had been, and in many ways it was, but ultimately it had its own set of challenges and many people continued to struggle.  This year brought us a Covid vaccine and hope for normalizing life a bit more, but as we all know, we're still working to get through another surge and I'm pretty sure Covid will be part of our lives for a long time to come.  We'll just need to do our best to help protect each other and find ways to live our lives in this new reality.  After all, we only get one chance at this life.

We visited several  new State Parks this year (although I don't have the number off the top of my head) and will continue to add State Park visits to our travels until we eventually visit them all.  I have really enjoyed exploring all of these new spots and finding more beautiful areas in our State.  We are so lucky to live in such a beautiful State.

We completed the North Country Trail's Hike 100 challenge (my 6th year and Peaches' 4th) and the Chief Noonday Chapter's hike the counties challenge by hiking all 119 miles in the three counties (Calhoun, Kalamazoo, and Barry) covered by the chapter.  This year Vanessa joined us for all of our hikes on the NCT and we're all looking forward to starting the challenge again in 2022.  Our long-term goal is to hike the NCT from the Michigan/Ohio border all the way to the Mackinac Bridge.  We'll be starting our 2022 hike at the Ohio border and heading North through Hillsdale county with many new, unique miles for us.  It should be another great year on the trail.

This year we also officially finished visiting all of Michigan's 83 counties and we found a geocache in each of them.  I also completed a 366 day geocaching streak and, once I got there, I decided to keep going until I reached 400 days.  I'm now on streak day 392!   It was a great year of geocaching because I was able to challenge myself, find some new areas to explore, and reach some fun goals.  I look forward to another year of geocaching and finding new ways to challenge myself.  The unique and interesting spots I have found because of geocaching are a big part of the fun.  And there are so many different cache types...like the fairly rare web cam cache we found this year.  Can't wait to see what we find next year!

Earlier this year, we took a break from fostering so I could focus on making the most of every day with Maddie, but I am happy to be back fostering again.  Ruby is such a sweet little girl and she's been a pleasure to have with us.  She's keeping Peaches busy and keeping me active too.  She's got more energy than I'm used to having in the house, but she also settles down nicely every evening.  She was scheduled for her spay surgery next week, but started a heat cycle yesterday, so her surgery has now been delayed until after she is out of heat.  I don't know how much longer that means she'll be with us at this point, but I'm pretty confident that she'll find a home quickly once her spay is complete.  For now we'll just continue to enjoy having her here with us.

As is the case every year between Christmas and New Year, I have had the week off from work.  I made the decision to stay home to work on some projects around the house this week instead of traveling North.  I'm missing my annual trip to Copper Harbor to ring in the New Year, but there's nothing wrong with a quiet week at home.  I haven't gotten as much done as I had hoped, but we've enjoyed snuggles and mid-day walks and just being together.  

Ruby loves to be a lap dog and get all of the snuggles she can.  Peaches also believes she is a lap dog and takes advantage of an empty lap as much as I'll let her.  This is what a lot of our week looked like.

While it has been a quiet week at home, we were excited to get out for a little year-end geocaching adventure with Vanessa today.  We walked a portion of the Lansing Riverwalk, picked up some caches, and enjoyed lunch in REO town.  It was a nice way to spend some time today and I'm glad we were able to get out for a bit...somehow I didn't take one picture of the fun, though.

For tonight, we have plans for a quiet New Year's Eve celebration at home with some snacks and a very important football game (Go Blue!).  I've never been one to go out on New Year's Eve, but I try to make it special, even if I'll be in my pajamas early.  The snacks for the game have been prepped and the girls helped with my prep work by watching to make sure nothing fell on the floor.  On the menu are some holiday favorites: bacon wrapped pineapple, bacon wrapped, goat cheese stuffed dates, Fritos with one of my favorite warm chili cheese dips, and Ruffles with Quality Dairy chip dip.  As a reward for their good work "helping me," the girls got a few pieces of pineapple and a half a date each.  They'll probably each get a little bacon later as an extra treat.  It is a holiday, after all.

2022 promises to bring us many new adventures and I'm hoping for some trips out of State to do some exploring.  While I love Michigan, I'm really feeling the need to travel and explore some new areas again.  I have a long list of places I want to visit and it's been far too long since we've taken a good long road trip.  I don't know exactly where our travels will take us yet, but I know that we'll have fun no matter where we go!

There will be some pretty big changes this year as well.  Some time later in the year, we will welcome a new four-legged family member.  I've been waiting a long time to add a puppy to the family, and have said for years that we'd get one after Maddie was gone.  So if all goes well, an adorable little GSP will enter our lives in 2022 and have many years of adventures with me.  

The even bigger news involves Nicol as she and Tyler will be welcoming a baby this Spring and I will become a grandmother for the first time.  We are all so excited to meet this tiny human and watch him/her grow (they aren't finding out what they are having...so exciting!).  I know that Nicol is going to be a great mom and I am happy beyond words for her.  What a wonderful thing it is for a parent to watch their own child start a family of their own...especially since Nicol has wanted to have kids for as long as I can remember!  This little baby will be so very loved.  

As we end another crazy year, I look forward to seeing what 2022 has to offer.  Farewell 2021 and Welcome 2022!  Thanks to all of you for following along on our journey for another year.  We appreciate you and wish you all a happy, healthy, and prosperous year ahead.