21 in 21 - Year End Review

An End of Year Review!

Back in January 2021 when I came up with this list I was very positive about it.  I'd tried to list things that could be achievable.  We'd had a year of the pandemic and there was hope on the horizon in the form of vaccines and an end to lockdowns and restrictions looked possible.

For a while there seemed to be a way out of the pandemic and then things changed, again.  With the discovery of the Omicron variant and the need for boosters it was clear the pandemic is not going to be over any time soon.

Throw in a spell in hospital and anxiety rearing its head I lost a lot of motivation for doing anything.  Truth be told I was probably depressed too.  Joining the club of all the other people struggling to cope with all that's been thrown at us.  I know that I'm in a fortunate position but the glass still wanted to remain half empty.

I've made comments on the list below as to how I did but overall it was a gigantic failure.  True there were a few successes but 2021 was definitely not a good year.  It doesn't make for great reading so feel free to skip it.

However, because of how badly it all went there will not be a 22 in 22 list.  There are definitely things I want to do in 2022 but I'm going back to one of the things on my 2020 list which was to be kind to myself.  Of course when I prepared the 2020 list the pandemic wasn't a thing.

I'm going to try and build better habits for both my physical and mental wellbeing but judging myself against targets isn't working for me right now.  One thing I do want to do is blog more regularly and if you've read my previous post you'll see I've committed to the Just Jot it January challenge.  Yes, despite feeling anxious and demotivated I can still rise to a challenge!

I'm also going to try very hard to get some normality back in our lives however scary that may seem.  2021 ended on a high with all the family together for Christmas so I'm going to try very hard to carry that feeling into the New Year and keep my glass half full.  Oops, I agreed to do a Dry January this year so it will have to be full with water but drinking more water is part of the improving my health plan!

I hope you'll follow me on this journey.

Thanks for getting this far, if you want the gory details of how 21 in 21 really went, read on.

1. Fill out weekly/daily planner. This should keep me on track with things I need to do. I did reasonably well with it last year but there’s always room for improvement. 

I did better with the daily planner than the weekly one but I was often going back and filling in several days worth of entries.  It did help though.

2. Pamper myself each week (e.g. take a relaxing bath, paint my nails etc.) Too often I just shower, dry my hair and go. This is what I meant by nourishing my body.

This was a monumental fail.  Probably because we weren't going out much or doing much that warranted making a lot of effort.  The anxiety and lack of motivation didn't help.

3. Weekly date night with Nick – set aside one evening to do something together e.g. watch a film, play a game. Hopefully later in the year we’ll be able to do things outside the house too.

And another fail.  I can probably count on one hand the number of times we had a "date" night.

4. Raise my average daily steps over the year to 6800. Yes I know everyone goes on about 10,000 steps a day but according to my Fitbit my average for 2020 was about 6300. I think increasing it by 500 steps a day is a realistic target.

Well according to my Fitbit my average daily steps over the year in 2021 was 5885. So another fail.

5. Complete a walk each week. Upping the step count is one thing but some weeks I haven’t got very far out of the house. That needs to change.

I definitely had good and bad spells of this but more bad than good - Fail.

6. Do a session on the exercise bike once a week. I have used it about twice since we acquired it from my daughter. As it’s unlikely that exercise classes will be running again any time soon, or that I’d want to join one even when they are, I need to take matters into my own hands – or legs!

I'm not even going to talk about this one - Fail

7. Read 12 books on my TBR pile. I’ve not added many books to this pile in 2020 so hopefully this will continue to reduce the pile.

I read 6 that were definitely on my TBR pile but I also bought more books which I then read.  There are still probably more books in the house now than there were at the start of the year - Fail

8. Complete my reading challenge (52 books for the year)

At last something completed!  I actually read 67 books!  Success!

9. Do the Friday’s Fave Five meme on my blog each week. I went for keeping a gratitude diary last year and it just didn’t happen, but I did manage to do this 43 weeks out of 52 and it does make me think about the good things in my life.

Oh no!  I only managed 30 FFF posts this year - Fail.

10. Blog at least once per week. (This means an original post not jumping on the back of a meme.)

Guess what?  Another Fail - in September I didn't blog at all, not even a meme!

11. Take a photo each week and blog about it. I managed 38 photos last year so room for improvement.

This was going really well until August - and then it ground to a halt. - Fail

12. Complete the A – Z blogging challenge.

Yay - another success!

13. Try out a new recipe or do a bake each month. This didn’t go too well in 2020 but I’m looking into a baking subscription my DIL uses where they send you a kit each month to do a bake. Yes that might sound like cheating but my challenge my rules lol.

Didn't set up the subscription, did very little baking although I did make a banana loaf recently and made gingerbread dinosaurs with the older Grandsons but yep it's still a fail!

14. Lose 12 pounds. Last year my target was to maintain my weight and I more or less did that, although a few pounds crept on at the end of the year. This year I’ve decided I need to be a few pounds lighter at least. (Despite #13 on the list lol)

Ha I maintained my weight.  Oops another fail.

15. Buy a new car. This should be a certainty. We live just outside the London wide area which, from October 2021, will be known as the ULEZ (ultra low emission zone) and our car, which is fairly old and has a diesel engine, will not meet the emission targets being set. This means that every time we enter the zone we would have to pay a fee. No sense in that so we’ll be looking to change our car for one that meets the new requirements before October.

Yay! another success. (Mainly because we couldn't afford not to.)

16. Visit/see Noah & Miles as much as possible. Visits were very limited in 2020 and we’ve only seen Miles once! We have to do better this year, pandemic permitting.

Well we did see more of them this year but still not as much as I would like.  Will this pandemic ever end?  I'm going to count this one as a success though.

17. Visit the beach. I’m sure we can get there at least once in 2021 even during a pandemic!

Fail!

18. Have a weekend away with Hubby. Of course a week or two would be even better but again this will be pandemic permitting.

Well we had a night away that was a present to us - success right?

19. Make a plan of what needs to be done in/bought for the house and put into action. This will need to be done with Hubby and needs to be Covid safe to do.

Well we've got a few jobs done so I'm counting this as success.

20. Garden projects: Make a list of things to do/buy, prioritise and action.

Fail.

21. Be positive! Typically I’m a glass half empty sort of person but I’ve decided I need to try and be more positive about things. 2020 was a horrible year but we came through it relatively unscathed, in a new house and with 3 more grandchildren. Not easy to quantify this one but hopefully it will help overall with all the other things on the list!

Hard to quantify this one.  I've definitely felt up and down this year.  Bouts of illness didn't help and then just when we thought we were beating this virus it gave us Omicron!  

Friday's Fave Five & other things! 6/8/21

Lots of catching up to do here.

Firstly I missed posting my photo of the week last week which would have been this one:

Not a great photo but it has 4 of the 6 grandchildren in it and their parents, plus hubby in the background.  I took loads but it's nigh on impossible to get four little ones all looking the right way, let alone smiling.  This was probably the best of a bad lot.  

Matt and Amy had arrived late on the Tuesday (27th) and this was taken on the Wednesday.  They stayed until last Sunday (1st) and we managed to get all the grandkids together briefly on the Saturday but I didn't even attempt to get a group photo.

The main reason they were down at this time was to attend a wedding on the Thursday (29th).  On that day Nick and I had all of the little ones in this photo during the day, except Rory who was at nursery.  We then collected Rory from nursery and after feeding them we handed Rory and Vinny over to two of our lovely nieces to put to bed while we brought Noah and Miles back here to do the same.

Noah is very good at going to bed and, even though he's not as used to us as his other grandparents he didn't make a peep.  Miles was a bit more challenging but eventually gave in.

 I didn't dare try and put him down in the cot!

As you can imagine hosting them and having the others visiting didn't leave much time for blogging!

This week started very differently and this is my photo of the week:

This is a screen shot of the NHS app on my phone.

Unfortunately someone at the wedding tested positive for Covid.  This meant Matt and Amy had to get tested and unfortunately Amy tested positive.  She had been feeling unwell but hoped it was just a bad cold.  Noah hadn't been well while they were here and was constantly telling us he was "snotty"!

This meant Nick and I had to go for PCR tests plus Rebecca & Vicky.  Fortunately we all tested negative but rules are still that you have to isolate for 10 days from last contact with an infected person.

Michael & Liz and their boys were already on a plane to New York!  They had tested before they left and tested again when they arrived and again were negative.

So it seemed that Amy was the only one unfortunate to have been infected.  She's also the only one who's only had 1 vaccination - her second jab was booked for this week.

But then Miles became unwell and ended up in hospital for 2 nights.

They were concerned about his SATs levels which were dropping too low when he was asleep so initially they gave him oxygen through a nose cannula but then switched to a mask near his face.

He also tested positive for Covid but thankfully he improved enough that by the end of this afternoon he was allowed home.  He was clearly happy about that!  

Hopefully he'll continue to improve in the peace and quiet of home where he and Mummy can get some rest.

As you can see it's been a busy week or so and a worrying last few days.  On top of which I obviously caught the bug that the little ones had and had a rotten cough since Monday and felt quite unwell.  If I hadn't had a PCR and 3 lateral flow tests all come back negative I might be more concerned but I did feel a bit better today so hopefully over the worst.

But despite all this drama there are still things to be thankful for and on Fridays we join in at Susanne's blog Living to Tell the Story to share them.

Here are mine:

1)  That Miles and Amy are home and hopefully will continue to improve.

2)  Our NHS being there when we need it, even with the pandemic.

3)  That none of the rest of us caught Covid.

4)  Michael and Liz made it to Vermont to see her family after a very long time - first time they have met Vinny.

Jet lag obviously caught up with Rory today:

5)  Online shopping - we made it through to our delivery this morning although we were getting low on milk but of course we can't just pop out to the shop.

Hubby and I had very different priorities on what we needed to get through the isolation period though:

Nick's choice, a dozen bottles of wine.

My choice, chocolate!

5 more days to go!

Have a good weekend all!

21 in 21 - Weekly Photo #29 - w/c 19/7/21

Despite it being very hot this week I did manage to get out for a walk on Wednesday evening.  It was just after 9 pm but it was still light enough.  The moon was already visible though:

Not quite a full moon but nearly.

21 in 21 - Weekly photo #28 - w/c 12/7/21

Another few from the lake this week taken on my evening walk:

Good to see how well the cygnets are doing.  The heron was a bit camera shy.

21 in 21 - Weekly photo #27 - w/c 5/7/21

I took these last week when I was out for a walk one evening in the park.  There was suddenly a flurry of parakeets across the park and they landed in this tree nearby.  Hard to spot all of them because they blend in so well with the tree!  (And my phone camera is not great when zooming in.)

21 in 21 - Weekly Photo #26 - w/c 28/6/21

 

Bit of a cheat this week - but I did photograph the photograph! (Although not very well.)

Rory's recent photo shoot at nursery - a lovely birthday gift for me.  Too cute.

 

21 in 21 - Weekly Photo #25 - w/c 21/6/21

One from my birthday last week.  4 of my favourite little people.

21 in 21 - Weekly Photo #24 - w/c 14/6/21

This is why I haven't been here.  Unfortunately by the beginning of last week a cyst I'd had for a while became infected.  My GP put me on antibiotics last Monday (14th June) but by Thursday not only was there no improvement, things were actually worse.

A referral to the hospital followed and I was admitted, spending 5 nights there to enable IV antibiotics to be given.

I came home on Tuesday with oral antibiotics to hopefully clear the infection completely. 

The antibiotics are Linezolid.  Unfortunately I cannot take pennicillen or the usual alternative erythromycin.  Yep I'm special!

 

21 in 21 - Weekly photo #23 - w/c 7/6/21

 

Well this photo was taken on my phone this week but of course the original photo was taken a while ago.  37 years ago on Wednesday to be precise.

Not going to forget my wedding day am I?  I made a good choice.

21 in 21 - Weekly Photo #22 - w/c 31/5/21

We took a walk through a different section of woods yesterday.  It was early evening so very quiet - we could here the birds singing.

We came across these:

Someone had been busy!

21 in 21 - Weekly photo #21 - w/c 24/5/21

This week has been all about family.  It's the first time we've all been together since January 2020.

We didn't manage a photo with the grandparents in too, it was tricky enough getting all the little ones and their parents together.  Setting up a camera on a timer would probably have proved impossible.

21 in 21 - Weekly Photo #20 - w/c 17/5/21

The joys of baby led weaning!  Vinny seemed to enjoy playing with his carrots more than eating them!

21 in 21 - Weekly Photo #19 - w/c 10/5/21

On your marks, get set, go!

 

Nathan is usually the winner lol.

He loves his Grandpa.

 

21 in 21 - Weekly Photo #18 - w/c 3/5/21

Broccoli!  Weaning babies is sooo messy lol.  Most of the floret of broccoli seemed to end up everywhere but in his mouth.  The pasta on the other hand went down a treat.

21 in 21 - Weekly Photo #17 - w/c 26/4/21

It's Bluebell time!

 Not the greatest of pictures and not the masses of bluebells like we had in Chalet Wood near our old house, but these pictures were taken in the forest near Highams Park Lake this week.

Most of my 21 in 21 challenges are suffering due to Covid but at least I'm keeping up with the weekly photo.

21 in 21 - Weekly Photo #16 - w/c 19/4/21

Don't you love it when there is enough take away left for lunch the next day:

Not the best presentation of leftover chicken korma, lamb bhuna and mushroom rice but it still tasted yummy.  I justified the big lunchtime helping by walking over 10K steps today.

This was only our second takeaway since we've been here but this is another Indian restaurant at the end of our road.  That's good.  But they don't do deliveries, so that's not so good.  It's just that little bit too far to walk it back without it getting cold so it does mean going down in the car and finding a parking space.

Normally it's an eat in restaurant and we're looking forward to trying that when restaurants can open their indoor areas again.  Not even sure if they were doing takeaways before lockdown or if that will continue.  Watch this space.

21 in 21 - Weekly photo #15 - w/c 12/4/21

 

 

Happy birthday to my Hubby - it was his birthday yesterday.

We had our youngest son and his family for lunch on Saturday and then on Sunday we had my daughter and her family.

This is actually a still from a video my DIL took of Grandson Nathan helping Grandpa blow out his candles.

And then enjoying his piece of cake!

It was lovely to see all of them at the weekend.  Hopefully it won't be too much longer before we can catch up with our eldest son and his family.