Happy New Year - 2021

Happy New Year! 

Never have we been more ready to ring in a new year. I think we can all agree that 2020 was a crazy year and we are more than happy for it to be over. With that thought in mind, we had a funeral for 2020. RIP 2020!

We all wore our funeral attire and said goodbye to 2020 in the best way possible. 

I sure love these cute kiddos.

 

Our funeral had some yummy funeral foods. 

 I made some gravestone sugar cookies. 

and we had a chocolate Bundt cake

Chris and I were more than happy to say goodbye to 2020. I sure love this guy. 

Our party was pretty low key this year. It was just our family and we ate snacks and played games for a couple hours. Then we watched movies until the kids fell asleep. 
Shockingly, Tanner and Bailey almost stayed awake until midnight. They made it until 11:30 pm. Tucker and Benson passed out around 9:30 pm.

 

It was a wonderful night of family time. We played the games we got for Christmas and laughed a lot together. 

While I can recognize the year was really hard. It was so hard for so many people. We were very blessed that Chris had a job that allowed him to work from home. We never lost our income and for that I'm so grateful. We enjoyed months of church at home by ourselves before we started having virtual church. We loved getting to learn from our kids and hearing their sweet testimonies. 
We were able to visit family all the way in Oregon for almost a month because Chris could work remotely from Oregon as easily as Arkansas. 
We homeschooled for the first time. We have learned a lot and have grown together. We also get to study "Come, Follow Me" every school day together and its been so nice. I love getting to hear my kids explain the scriptures and the gospel. 

While we've all been suffering from anxiety, isolation and frustration, we've also grown closer to each other. We've learned to rely on each other and on our Heavenly Father and Savior. 
While life is beginning to open up and resume, many aspects of life haven't gone back to normal. 
We have hopes for 2021, but they are much more reasonable than they would have previously been. 
We are excited for something hopefully new and different in 2021!

Happy NEW YEAR!