January 2022 Happenings

 Another year gone.  Where is the time going????  All I know is that if I can't travel more in 2022, I'm gonna lose it!

On the first of the year, we went up to Wakefield to the Cucci house for the ???th annual holiday party!  We have (obviously) missed it for the previous 6 years, so we were really excited to go.  Only... we didn't want to drink and drive, so we got a hotel room in Wakefield and brought the kids with us.  They stayed at the hotel after dinner at the Yard House, and we went to the Cucci house to party.

Now don't worry. We could literally walk back to the hotel if we wanted to.  (We got an Uber though - both ways!)  You really can't get Kern and Todd in a room together without something ridiculous happening.

See?  Not that any of us are normal!  But Kern and Todd, who have been asked several times throughout the years if they are brothers, are still less normal than Mike, Cooch, Joe, Michelle and Dorothy!

Todd and his three wives.

Beth, Joe, Cooch and Mike!

The Cucci's had a new kitchen put in when we were in Germany and we hadn't seen it yet - and it is spectacular!  It's so much bigger with a massive island that everyone hung around.  I'm sure Kern or Mike did something ridiculous to warrant these faces.

Cooch can't even believe it.  I would have shared more pictures from this part of the night, but it's not suitable for a family blog! But seriously- look at all this food!

Todd loves Joe, and Beth agrees!

At one point, Karen decided she loved Kern and that she wasn't going to let him leave. (This is Kern doing his best robot imitation!)

Karen and I missed Mandy, and now we need to replace my face on a baby Maker's bottle with Mandy's face!

After a fun night where we laughed so much our stomach's hurt, Cooch and Karen had a full mimosa and bloody Mary bar the very next morning to help us recover!  PLUS they cooked a big breakfast for us all (even the kids got to partake in this!)  They are the BEST hosts!

THEN... Steve sent me THESE PICTURES that he had taken years ago of my babies at Warren and Carole's house.  LOOK AT THIS BEAUTIFUL BABY!

AND JUST STOP RIGHT THERE.  I can't even!!!!!  I want to cry! When did they get so big??

While her death happened on the last day of 2021, we mourned the loss of Betty White for weeks to come (in fact, the world will hurt from this for many years!)  In honor of Betty White- here is a picture of her with my man, Michael Stipe!  This picture brings me such joy!

This, however... does not bring me joy.

The stores also have been hit-or-miss with certain items as we battle it out with the Omicron variant of the Covid 19 virus.  We (along with many other people I know all around the country) cannot seem to find any Gatorade!  Isn't that a weird thing to be out of? Got that Powerade though - and only the Cool Blue Gatorade remains!

Natalie, as I mentioned last month, joined the Ashland High School ski team! Their meets alternated between slalom and giant slalom (she preferred giant slalom), and each week, they race against a handful of other schools at Ski Ward.

Nat leans in for a hello to her dad before she gets back on the lift.  They each did two runs per race, and I have to say- Ski Ward was really good about all of this and super efficient.  The nights were VERY cold and I would not have survived without hand warmers so I don't know how these kids did it!

My little cutie after her first race!  I couldn't be more proud of her.  She loves to ski, but doesn't have any racing experience.  She didn't really care- she just went out there, did her best and had a blast.  She is the complete opposite of Grant, who is super competitive.  I mean- MAYBE joining the team had something to do with her being able to exempt one of her PE classes, but she really does enjoy winter sports!

Meanwhile, Grant continued his peanut immunotherapy every other week with his dad. I always joke that he looks like the doctor here, but they let him use their desk to work on his homework.

In case you were looking for an early January Covid update... 

We had an ACTUAL blizzard in January, too!  A blizzard is defined by the winds, mostly.  You have to have sustained 35 mph winds and snow or blowing snow that reduces visibility to 1/4 of a mile or less for THREE consecutive hours.  And we reached that goal!

People think a blizzard is all about heavy snow amounts and it really isn't.  We only got about 13 inches of snow with this storm.  That's not a small amount, but it's certainly nothing like 2015.

It was still breezy the day after the blizzard and we made the kids help us do some shoveling.  Natalie, ever my New Englander even though she wasn't born here, was actually sweating and had to take off her coat.  The wind chill was waffling between single digits and below zero!

The neighborhood kids took full advantage of the fresh snowfall by doing some night sledding in our backyard when school was cancelled on the following Monday because the DPW couldn't plow all of the roads and bus stops in time for school to start (due to high Covid numbers forcing the DPW workers to take sick time.)  I don't think the kids were too disappointed!

And we're on to February!