Wow what a year it has been... looking back on it there has been quite a few things that have been accomplished and also some that were missed.
Family News:
We missed out on going on timeshare holidays in May (floods in Natal), June (car accident) and August (getting sick) but Mom and I did get to go to Mtunzini in February (LWM) and to Wyndford in April (LWM retreat) and again in September (Mom's birthday).
As a family we also changed church this year. We joined New Harvest Christian Fellowship and have really grown in our faith journey after a few years of spiritual drought. Aaron has joined the youth group and made some very good friends through that too, they even helped him celebrate his 21st birthday in November. He also started a parttime job in June working at Kumon... loves it! We managed to buy him a car with the insurance payout from our car accident.
Aaron hasn't done as much flying this year but he has written all his exams for his Private Pilot License. On the 16th of December, after numerous weather delays and rescheduling of the flight, Aaron flew his exam flight and passed!! He is now a fully fledged two stripe Private Pilot. I am soooooo proud of him.
Keith retired at the end of October having turned 63 that month... but in November he was offered a contract from his company so he has continued to work until they can find his replacement.
Mom has battled a bit more this year with her vision but she has been blessed with a great Opthamologist who has treated her so well over the past 9 years. He unfortunately has retired, but left her in good hands of the doctor who has taken over his practice. She has made lots of adjustments (sometimes daily) and has kept her very positive outlook on the situation. Each day is a new adventure.
We have had more loadshedding (planned power outages) this year that any other year in the past. Loadshedding actually is the word of 2022... how sad is that! We have learnt to work around the schedule... so long as the municipality stick to the schedule that is! Boiling the kettle and filling a flask is routine now. Thankfully we have a gas hob so I can still make supper. We bought a little generator which helps with being able to have wifi and tv (but it's needing to be fixed now as it hasn't been performing correctly in December). Torch light is great to a point! At least with summer here it is lighter longer.
My news... I am still working mornings only, loving my scrapping and just going on day by day. I got a new laptop on the Black Friday sale in November which has been such a great buy. My scrapping is quicker, downloading stuff is easier and I can use it when the power is out as the battery lasts!
Scrapping:
Having changed to digital scrapping in 2019 I have been doing more and more scrapping each year than at any time when I did paper scrapping. This year I was on 12 teams, some full time and some for just a few months at a time. I scrapped 618 single layouts and 1 double layout which is 620 pages, just over 1.5 pages a day!
I even played with paper and made a few minialbums this month. On one I did the coptic binding technique that I have been wanting to do since 2020, so can cross that off my scrapping bucket list.
Reading:
I set myself a reading goal each year on the GoodReads site and keep track of all the books I've read. This year I made a goal of 52 books but surpassed that in October already. It's been a really good year in fiction for me... I've finished 66 books!! You can see a summary layout of my reading in this post.
And so that winds up this past year. Let's get ready for the adventure that is 2023!
