Goodbye 2022

Goodbye 2022. Hopefully 2023 will be less crazy and difficult, but I’m not exactly holding my breath. What I will do is resolve to face its challenges with faith and courage, come what may.

As I write this post, I’m drinking coffee and looking out the window. A week ago we had a blizzard with at least 15 inches of snow which the wind blew into snow-nadoes. Over the last week the temperatures warmed into the mid-40s and melted most of our snow. We usually get a thaw every January which melts some of the snow into puddles and then re-freezes it into ice that makes our steep driveway treacherous. The annual thaw is usually not THIS warm, and doesn’t melt THIS much snow, but Michigan’s weather tends to be unpredictable from hour to hour, day to day, and year to year so I shrug. I’m thankful that the warmer temps will ease our propane usage and lessen heating costs. Hopefully, enough of the snowmelt will run off that our driveway will not get icy when the temps turn cold again.

How will you spend New Year’s Eve?

Traditionally, we have homemade pizza on New Year’s Eve so once we’ve emptied the pot of coffee–we have a “house rule” that we can’t get busy until we’ve drunk all the coffee–I plan to go to the kitchen and begin making it. EJ went to the store yesterday and bought fixin’s for the pizza as well as a variety of potato chips, which is also a traditional New Year’s Eve food.

Every New Year’s Eve, we settle down with our pizza and chips to watch a long epic movie–usually Lord of the Rings–which we finish watching on New Year’s Day. However, lately I’ve been listening to audiobooks while I crochet so I have something to listen to while my hands are busy. We just finished listening to LOTR. I had planned to listen to The Hobbit but I couldn’t find a narrator I liked so instead we have begun listening to Orson Scott Card’s Ender Wiggins books instead, which are another favorite. We decided we’d continue with the audiobooks tonight.

That’s it. That’s our New Year’s Eve celebration.

The world is full of craziness, drama, challenges, heartache, and sorrow. We value a home filled with love, peace, quiet, and simple beauty.

We are Hobbits who enjoy our quiet life on top of our hill.