Bye Bye 2021, Welcome 2022!

It's a feeling shared by many: quite glad 2021 is over and behind us.

This post will rehash some marking events during this long year, both ones we loved and ones we never want to go through ever again, if we could have a say. For those latter ones, we are deeply grateful for the friends and family who were by our side, offering kind words and support when it was needed most, whether from close or far.

• We started the year with Grandma Tammy still staying with us for several months, during our COVID-19 self-imposed isolation. She brought our family twice as much joy and peace, as conversations exploded in many more combinations than when Greg and I are the only adults around. Fae gained a whole extra year of learnings, just by being around all that, and is now speaking like a four year old at the age of two.
• For the first part of the year, our friend Chandni taught Mara and Gaius throughout virtual school in the pandemic, and rounded up the schooling with beautiful life learnings for all of us. She taught Greg and me an excellent recipe for Paneer Tikka Masala, that quickly became a family favorite of which we can never get tired.
• Summertime brought us, once again, a large variety of family board games, biking on trails, swimming, planting and harvesting in the backyard, hugging Silkie chickens and climbing on the Ninja line. We even got to build our own rock-climbing wall from scratch, including sanding, painting, gritting, and waterproofing the wood.

• August marked the first year anniversary of Greg's surgery for papillary thyroid cancer, when he removed half his thyroid. At the check-up ultrasound they discovered calcified formations in three of his remaining lymph nodes on the original tumor side, which bumped him up to a medium-risk cancer status. So we had to make space in our lives for surgery #2 in early September, to resect the remaining thyroid tissue, and radioactive iodine treatment in October. For this last part, he stayed physically away from children for 2 weeks because his body was emitting ionizing radiation. We did our best to mitigate, found a wonderful location for him to stay isolated (and I even got to visit twice!), but honestly it was not easy. Tammy and Gene visited once again to offer both emotional and physical support which truly saved our sanity. We will eventually write about that experience in more juicy details in another blog post.
  The most important thing to know: we hope Greg should now finally be fine, do not expect further cancer recurrence, and he's doing fine on the thyroid replacement medication (levothyroxine).


• Halloween had us all back together. Mara crafted her own costume from scratch - she wanted to be a walking willow tree with flowers. Gaius was a bat-ninja. Fae loved her ladybug wings and tutu.

• Once all medical issues finally settled down and kids COVID-19 vaccines were available, we finally were ready to start Fae in school. She loves it there, and loves it home as well - she finds wonderful things to do wherever she is. Below, you see Fae walking in with both parents on the first school day (left); Greg finally enjoying being safely around the kids again (middle) and Elena's 10 years anniversary plaque from Google:
• Winter holidays were a wonderful relief, with all unwanted things behind us. We rejoiced in Christmas lights walks, got our boardgames back out, and opened a whole suite of Advent calendars each day of December.

• We even escaped on a last minute Christmas getaway at the Great Wolf Lodge, splashing in the large water park, performing amazing feats with our MagiQuest wands all through the park, put-putting in minigolf, mining for crystals, exploring mazes and braving a ropes course that is much more frightening than it looks. 

The absolute best part of it all: we are all healthy and happy together! Happy 2022!