Our Year in Review- 2020

2020…is there even a word that I can use to describe this year? Shocking, hard, crazy? I really don’t think there are enough words! It’s definitely a year we won’t ever forget and I wanted to look back and share our families’ memories of this year.

January

We started 2020 by celebrating the New Year with Judd’s dad.  We had a great visit with him!

We hung out at home a lot because it was cold!

February

Camden and Ella turned 3! I wrote them this letter.

On that same day, Judd received a promotion at work (he had worked really hard for this).  The kids and I decided to have a pizza party to celebrate.  Unfortunately, Ella was so excited that she danced on a chair and fell and broke her elbow. We spent the rest of their birthday at the ER.

We had a little party for Camden and Ella…Young, Wild and Three.

3 weeks later Ella got her cast off. I am so proud of her, she was a little rockstar during the entire process!

In March, we went to Ohio to visit family for 2 weeks.  The pandemic started just as we arrived. My brother-in-law made the video below, it’s of Camden and Ella seeing snow for the first time! We had such a great trip visiting our families!

April-May

We spent 99.9% of the time at home! Judd had a lot of extra time off work so we really enjoyed having him home.  It was a scary time, we were pretty nervous to even get carry out but we did (a lot).  I pray we don’t ever have to Lysol our groceries again.

We had a lot of trips planned for the year (19 in fact) that we had to cancel. We pretended we were at Disney World one day.

June

We had known for awhile (basically as soon as we moved in) that the area we were living in wasn’t going to work for us.  We were hopeful we’d find a new house in the city we wanted to be in and sure enough we did!

Our family also spent many days at the beach (distanced far from everyone else).

July

We said goodbye to my childhood dog, Bailey.  We miss him so much!

We said farewell to our first house in Charleston and moved into our new house! I wish I could share a photo with y’all but I won’t for safety reasons.  We love our new house, it has everything we want and our new neighborhood and city are a dream! This was from our closing day.

A huge thanks to my parents for helping us with this move! My dad said he’s never moving us again. Thank goodness we plan to stay here forever! Haha!

August-This month was so much unpacking and getting settled!

We also started a homeschool curriculum.

September

After 3.5 years we decided it was time to give Camden and Ella their own rooms.  I cried several nights before and prayed because I was so worried they would struggle with this.  However, they did great and they love their big kid rooms!

We spent a lot of time at the beach this month, the weather was perfect!

During one visit, Camden was stung by a man-o-war that wrapped itself around his legs.  He is completely fine now but it was pretty traumatic for the little guy!

October

The weather was still glorious in October so we spent a lot of time outside.

During one visit from my parents, we rented a boat.  It was a blast!

We ended up taking our only vacation of the year and went to Orlando.  We had a great time!

We came home to visitors (my aunt and uncle). We had a fun visit with them!! They even surprised Camden and Ella by greeting us in dinosaur costumes.

We started home renovations…our first project was moving the laundry room upstairs.  It ended up turning out perfectly even after a huge ordeal with fraudulent contractors.

Camden and Ella made new friends! We love this sweet girl and her parents!

We had a wonderful time trick-or-treating in our new neighborhood.

November

November was a busy month for us! Homeschool wasn’t working for me so we enrolled the kids in preschool!! There were some tears the first day (by me, haha) but they LOVED IT!!! They wear masks at school so that made me feel better.

They also started private swim lessons, dance, and superhero ninja class.

December

We celebrated Christmas! It was pretty magical; this age is so fun!

We started kitchen renovations! My dad and Judd are doing the entire thing themselves.

We ended the year with my parents closing on a home close to us! This will be a second home for them.  We are so excited to have them close by for parts of the year.

2020 wasn’t all that bad for our family.  Even though I missed traveling, I realized there really is no place like at home with your family. I also realized that we take a lot of photos, haha! I hope you had some happy memories this year as well!  Happy New Year!