Long time no see! It has been a while, but there has been a lot going on since Rosie turned 7 on December 3rd. It has been busy, just like the rest of you- but it is very FULL of all the good things.

Christmas 2021

In the throes of the pandemic, we had another Christmas- and another, and another, and another… I say that tongue-in-cheek, but each year is a little different now than the year before, and with it, come different needs and joys. It was just last year that Mercy was a tiny 3 month old baby that could be taken anywhere and she would just fall asleep. This year, she is a walking and a talking (in her baby language) everywhere. And the year before that, in 2019, we were a family of 3!

This year, we had a marathon of some Christmases, and learned a few lessons along the way. Our celebrations included Christmas at the Register’s house on Wednesday the 22nd, my mom’s house (also known as Cici) on Thursday the 23rd, followed by Grandma Becky’s house on the 24th, and finally our own house on the 25th. Four Christmases in four days is a lot, and we learned never to do that much again. It was great, just tiring with Mercy able to walk around, Rosie being bright and full of energy, and the need to be a good guest for all of our awesome families. Here are some highlights of those days:

Washington

This was awesome. Taylor’s work closes between Christmas and New Year’s, and I had a stroke of good luck as well: our company is merging with another company, and my manager called a few weeks ago and let me know that I had too many vacation days to roll over to the new year, so I had to use some of them, so I took those days off as well. We looked around at some options: Atlanta, Asheville, etc, and decided a trip to DC would be awesome, because the smithsonians were free, it would be an inexpensive trip, right? Well, it wasnt inexpensive, but it was totally worth it.

A few lessons were learned:

• Smithsonians close on the slow days, Tuesdays and Wednesdays. These were also the days we were there.
• The Omicron variant of Covid spreads easily, and Smithsonian employees are also subject to quarantine days. Which meant, without employees, many museums were shut down.
• When one of the popular museums is shut down, the tourists flock to the museums that are still open, and the lines to get in stretch over 1 hour.

So, we worked around that hour long wait the way anyone would: While taylor was waiting in line (with Mercy sleeping in the stroller), Rosie and I went next door to the museum of art (where there was no line), and had a blast. Ok ok, my compassion isnt the greatest with that move, but it worked. The trip was awesome, and we were all exhausted at the end, but not grumpy with each other. Highly recommend.