Best of 2022

Goodbye 2022. It was truly the most wonderfully boring year and I say that with love. Something accidentally shifted for me and this was the year that I really just embraced contentment. 

I used to want to be so important and I wanted to be the best at my job and inspire envy with every birthday party I threw and and make every holiday Pinterest-worthy. I think I wanted to be famous. Not like in a TV or actor kind of way. I just wanted people to know my name and feel some kind of worth from it. I think it's probably the result of getting older and being so drowned by motherhood and bill paying and remembering to move things from the washer over to the dryer in a timely manner, that eventually it all just falls away. This is the year that I realized that I really do just enjoy a good book, nice weather, and cheap but decent tasting wine. 

2022 was good enough, and letting that be good enough. It was enjoying the comfortable companionship I have with my husband. We're not the important people I used to aspire to be, but we can quietly enjoy each other's company and after a long day at work, the nicest thing is to just be together. I'm not a pinterest mom and I let Duke have more screen time than I should admit, but ugly cookies that we bake together taste just as good as the fancy pictures I see online. 

Appreciating contentment and being good enough came accidentally this year, but I'm so glad. Maybe I'm worn out and too tired to try harder, but I'm not sorry about that. I like being good enough. 

Winter

NYE 2021 was wonderfully bananas. We went out with some family and sang karaoke and drank too much so I spent the first day of 2022 hungover, napping, and eating Chinese food. Honestly, not the worst start though. We watched a lot of TV and I woke up on day 2 feeling pretty good. 

At the end of January, Ryan flew out to Vail to go skiing, so I took the opportunity to paint a few rooms without his conference. It turned out fine - better than fine - because it looked nice and I realized the difference I can make in a weekend, thus beginning my total house makeover. Lol, just kidding. I painted several rooms, before hanging it up once the weather got nice. Now I think of projects in terms of years. I'll get the bedroom and upstairs bathroom this year. Maybe paint the ceilings in 2024. Etc etc. 

In February, we attempted to escape the cold to Florida for a week. It rained and was cold there too, which seems unlucky, but Duke was still interested in playing in the pool, despite the 55 degree weather, so if he enjoyed himself, I call that a win. We went to Disney, which we checked off our list of life experiences that I have no desire to repeat. 

Spring

Spring felt long this year. It snowed and stayed cold for a long time, and since we took our vacation early in the year, there was no escaping the moooonths of gray. We sucked it up, bundled up, and spent as much time outside as we could bear, and then leaned right into the last bits of cozy season at home. 

We did kindergarten round up with Duke and he got to ride a real school bus. Disappointing though because we don't actually let him ride the bus. Ryan and I do pick-up/drop-off every day and he is still mad about it. 

There was one random weekend that the weather turned up to 80 degrees and we took off straight to the beach. It only lasted a couple days before going back to cold and gray, but it was the most wonderful peek into summertime. 

Summer

Ah summer. The best three months of the year. I kicked it off with a new car (well, new to me) and I'll just tell you that there is nothing nicer than driving with the top down and ABBA blasting on a warm afternoon. I created a whole playlist for this car and boy did we bop. I'm not really a car namer, but this baby is called the Beach Buggy and we let her live up to her name. 

Mostly we spent the summer at the beach or reading on the deck, as we do, but somewhere in the middle of July, we went on a weeklong camping trip with Ryan's brother and his wife in the upper peninsula. The forced unplugging (no service in BFE) and camping right on Lake Huron is just the break I needed from reality. 

Other nice things - seeing Boyz II Men at the Cherry Festival and drinking so many cherry flavored beverages under the beer tent. Also seeing Sheryl Crow there the week before. Taking Duke to Michigan's Adventure which I'd argue after having been to both in the same year, outranks Disney by 10,000%. 

Fall

Fall was deliciously slow. Once I recovered from my annual grief over the end of summer, we did all the things we always do. Went to a pumpkin patch. Ate donuts. Bought cider. You know. 

It's always a big season for Duke, but this year was even bigger. He turned six and started kindergarten. We signed him up for soccer, which was a little bit of a bust because just a few weeks in, he broke his arm. Unsurprisingly, he was Spiderman for Halloween and this Peter Parker had an injured web slinger.

Thanks to his huge cast and I'm still blaming daylight savings, he formally gave up sleeping and I think I'm realizing this as I write it, we're going on three months of him back to his old (terrible) sleeping habits. The cast is off, but he is still waking up in the middle of the night and we're all suffering. I was thinking a couple days ago about how 6 has felt like a really hard parenting age and I bet the poor sleep we're all experiencing right now has something to do with it. 

Christmas 

Christmas is a whole season, right? It feels like it, but also, it goes so fast. I couldn't get into the spirit this year and never really did, but we still had a nice December. 

After an incredibly busy year, things slowed down at work and I took some time off, which is so nice. I'm in the last few days of a week of vacation right now and I'm hopeful that come Tuesday, I'll feel so refreshed and ready to start again. 

A few days before Christmas, we got hammered with snow, which felt so very timely and nice. Duke and I stayed home, baking and puzzling and waiting for Santa. 

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Without any context, these were other nice things that, looking at the pictures, make me think of very happy days. 

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Honestly, I don't have any big hopes or dreams for 2023. I'd love another coasting year, if I'm honest. Another year of just enjoying good enough. I'll ask for an earlier spring, a hotter summer, and for pumpkin spice lattes and fall hype to hold off until October, but I'll pretty much accept whatever lands in my lap. 

I guess I don't have any goals that are hard this year. I'd like to inject more fun in my life, so here's my resolutions for 2023 -

Cook my way through a new cookbook. 

Find and binge good books, TV shows and podcasts. 

Appreciate and enjoy (aka do not complain) every season I'm in. 

Happy New Year, you guys. Here's to a good year with plenty to celebrate, more Fridays than Mondays and just enough hard things to make us enjoy the easy.