Christmas Newsletter 2020

This year has been a wild ride and full of craziness. It was hard to plan anything so we played everything by ear.

January:

We returned home from FL so we could pay taxes and deal with any issues at home. It was cold and we missed Florida’s warmth.

February:

We went to Myrtle Beach to the SCCEC conference. This was my last year as a board member and Child and Adolescent Network Coordinator. We had planned to leave from Myrtle Beach and head to Florida but Covid numbers were increasing and we were unsure of what the future would hold. So, we headed back home instead and we are glad we made that decision.

March:

We spent the month in self-quarantine, only going grocery shopping every other week. We wore masks and gloves when we went shopping.

April:

April brought an unexpected event. My parent’s neighbor contacted us to tell us that a tornado hit my parents’ house and damaged the roof. So, we headed immediately to Florida and had to deal with that. It took a lot of time and energy to get estimates, especially when some companies never showed up!

May:

We found a great roofer who put a new roof on my parents’ house at a reasonable price. We did some other minor repairs before heading back home so I could teach my Furman course.

I was able to finalize probating my parents’ estate and Don and I bought my parent’s house from the estate.

June and July:

My Furman course that I usually teach every July in person, became an online course over June and July. This was very challenging, but my students handled it well. We ran a summer program with real children who were taught by my students on Zoom. It was nice not to have to drive to work but it was very mentally exhausting to teach this way.

We were also supposed to go to Minnesota for my annual knitting retreat but that was canceled due to Covid. I was so disappointed but the organizers set up a Discord app channel so we could talk regularly and then zoom meetings were set up every week so we could meet online. That was a really nice thing to do.

August – September:

We did some things around our house that we have put off for many years. We kept saying that eventually, we would get around to it. Since we were stuck at home, we figured it was time to get around to it. After getting things done, we felt good about the progress we had made.

October:

We returned to Florida as new homeowners. We are now officially Snowbirds and will probably stay here until March or April.

November:

We worked on the house and started making it our own place. It is fun to look and make plans at some work we want to do. I planted some new plants and did some weeding. We spent some time at the beach too which was wonderful.

December:

Our daughter Dyanna and her husband Earl came down to visit for a week. We celebrated her birthday and Christmas early before they had to return back to South Carolina. Unfortunately, a cold spell hit and they couldn’t go to the beach much. On the day we went to the beach, it was still too cool to go swimming. After they left, we had a few nice days where we could enjoy the beach and go swimming. We will have a quiet Christmas here and just enjoy the beautiful weather.

It’s been a tough year worrying about catching the virus but we made lots of progress on things we put off. Don worked a lot on his postal collection and I got a lot of knitting done.

May you have a blessed Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Photo by Rodion Kutsaev on Unsplash