2021 Year in Review

2021 was certainly not the year we hoped it would be.   I think the whole world can agree on that.  

First up are the pictures of the kids from the beginning and end of 2021.

Reading, Watching and Thinking

• We read Harry Potter 2-7 with D between the end of the school year (1st grade) and Halloween night, when we worried D would get a spoiler from friends.   Over the summer we had quite a few successful car naps for Dd while one of us read Harry Potter aloud.  Everyone was happy.
• Together, Jack and I read Piranesi and reread Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell by Susanna Clarke.   We also enjoyed the fifth Cormoran Strike book (which is actually by JK Rowling).   It seems that nearly every good book is made in to a show these days, and we got to watch adaptations of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell and the Cormoran Strike series.
• Sometime in the middle of the year Dd's insistence on reading truck books eased up and we got to diversify a bit.   In December he liked reading (reciting) Eric Carle's Pancakes, Pancakes to us and was just getting in to his first Magic School Bus book.
• In October my book club of lovely people restarted.   Instead of hosting in our homes we met at restaurants with outdoor dining.   I particularly like Pachinko, a historical fiction book set in Korea.
• After fourteen months of steady progress on my Kindle I finished A Breath of Snow and Ashes, from the Outlander series.   I really like this series, but these books are quite long and I read many other books simultaneously based on many priorities.   It's funny that I read it a pace that was almost real time for the characters.
• D read dozens of Warrior Cat books, some Spirit Animals, Spy School and Wings of Fire among other things.
• This makes us sound like extremists, but D watched his first movie in a theatre in December.  It was Godzilla vs. Kong for a birthday party.   We never got around to it before the pandemic.   Dd saw his first movie (at home), which was Moana, and he's been singing it ever since.
• We have a google home smart speaker in the kitchen, which we use for music.... on repeat.
• I'm not sure this really fits in but the most annoying task of the year, at least for me, was switching off of Verizon to a cheaper carrier.   Last winter we switched to an MVNO reseller which was about 1/6th the price of Verizon.   We always put our phones on airplane mode at night and that contributed to us both having bizarre problems with group texts, photo texts and notifications for things that happened while our phones were on airplane mode.  I got a new phone (technically Christmas 2020) and the issues followed me on to the new phone, which defies logic.   We talked to a ton of customer service people, factory reset my new phone and put in an annoying amount of time.   In the end we switched to Google Fi, which works and costs more than the MVNO but still way less than Verizon.   
• D got to be a fun competitor in many board games.  Just ask his grandparents.  Popular games this year were Citadels, Monopoly and Ticket to Ride.  We started playing a little chess at the end of the year.

School, Work and Learning

• D finished out first grade with a return to in person school in early April.   Even though this only meant in person time from 8 - 10:45 four days a week, it was a big improvement over not leaving the house.  He had a couple of virtual classes in the afternoon, including PE, art and music.  In his 1-2 split class of about 18 kids, only 4 other kids opted for in-person school.   I think this was more about logistics than fear.   With both of us working from home one-mile from his school, pickup was still on the heels of drop off.   Second grade had a good start and with all of the disruptions of covid, we feel grateful for his teacher and school.
• Dd moved up to preschool at the beginning of the school year.  Aside from a closure after Thanksgiving due to the very first case of covid in the daycare, he attended regularly, unlike 2020.   As noted in covid lifestyle update he has brought home a ton of colds in the first half of the year, but none of note in the second half.
• In the summer Jack started going in to his office 1-2 times a week.   We suspended that few times based on case counts.
• We both stayed at our jobs.   2022 holds some exciting changes for us both - more on that in another post.
• D started online piano lessons in November.  I'm really excited about it and for now the online format works really well for us.  
• Jack and I psyched ourselves up to spend a few Saturday evenings studying (math on Coursera for me and a new kind of modeling software for him).   It was probably about 4 hours total, but it's more than nothing.
• After frustration with a the backlog at a local bike shop, Jack learned how to replace the spokes on his bike wheel by himself.   He used a sturdier gage so they shouldn't break as often.
• D went to six weeks of day camp, including a fun Harry Potter art camp and one in the Arboretum that had a two week long session with the same kids, as a covid precaution.  

Travel

Again we stayed (99.9%) in the state of Washington.   This was a result of time and pandemic constraints, but now it's also a point of pride that we didn't despoil the planet much this year.   

This year also brought an unusual number of trips consisting of various subsets of our family.

We've done our fair share of camping with little kids, but this year kind of broke us.   We cut short a two night camping trip with friends in June after sleeping only from midnight to 4:30 am.   Some kids sleep okay while camping, but Dd is not one of them.   I think we have finally learned our lesson about avoiding camping near the summer solstice for at least a couple years.   Then in July, we bailed on our reservation at Lake Wenatchee state park and booked a hotel in Leavenworth after I looked at the temperature and the reports of mosquito activity and contemplated our trip from June.  I immediately moved from dread to anticipation and rather then spending hours and hours packing and arriving at dinner time, we were enjoying a hike by 1 pm on the first day of the trip and then showering and eating at a restaurant.

• Packwood AirBnb and White Pass snowboarding (January) - Dd had a cold and so only Jack and D went.

• Sequim (February) - We dug our car out of the snow and headed out. - Snow and Sequim
• Shelton overnight (May) We had a great bike ride with our friends and camped in GG's yard, for what turned out to be one of our last visits there. - Memorial Day weekend
• La Push and Lake Quinault (June) - Jack and I went away for a week without the kids! - 10th anniversary trip
• Middle Fork (Snoqualmie River) Campground (June) - solstice camping, as mentioned
• Leavenworth (July) - the hotel hit the spot

• AirBnb on a lake in Lynnwood (August) - My parents and sister and the kids and I played at a lake while Jack played baseball. - 38th birthday
• AirBnB on Camano Island (September) - Camano with bikes
• Dosewallips State Park Yurt (October) - Dd turns 3
• One night in Ridgefield (SW Washington) at my cousin's farm.  We did dart across the state border to an NBA game in Portland!

• Motel in Ashford, by Mt. Rainier (December) - Again, we left home in heavy snow.   We snowshoed a bit and caught up with our friends since all the kids had been away from school (and hopefully covid) for a while.

Home

At first I thought we hadn't done many projects, but after listing them out I feel a sense of accomplishment.  2021 house projects

Buying stuff isn't the same as a project, I know but it can be quite satisfying.   My two favorite home related purchases of the year were our massive fruit bowls and our awesome Dyson vacuum.  The off-brand vacuum we bought a year ago is literally only fit to be a child's toy (Dd is in luck).  I also broke out my new sewing machine and made some Christmas bags with it and found the perfect storage spot for it on the stair shelf.

In our home we also have two furry captives who often hang out on our bed.   We finally have established a habit or pulling up this pretty cover over the bed during the day so that it is fur free when we take our turn in bed at night.  

Health

D and I spent the spring coughing, which wasn't fun and made pandemic life tough.  He actually got a doctors note saying he'd been cleared of covid for this ongoing cough in order to attend school.  I had a series of health scares that I think I'll write about another time.  

Jack and I were vaccinated as soon as possible in April and boosted around Thanksgiving.   D was vaccinated in November as well.

Friends and Family

• Jack's grandma moved out of her house and in to an easier house in early December.
• My parents bought a new boat in August and gave it the same name as the previous two boats.
• Other family members had various surgeries and bumps and falls, but everyone got through them okay.
• It now feels totally normal to have fully outdoor gatherings with most friends and family.
• My parents started babysitting once a week again after they were vaccinated in the late winter of 2021.   Jack's mom and stepdad also babysat often on weekends or when we were double booked.  
• Babies born to architect classmates: Cygnet to D&C (New York), Elwood to M&N (Michigan), Emery to L+1 (New York)
• Babies with non-architect parents (younger siblings to D's peers): Nolan to K&C (Germany), Eloise to M&V (Seattle), Jack to R&J (Seattle)
• We sent out Christmas cards for the first time, using this family picture.

Recreation and Sports

• Jack got to play baseball again.   He played on two teams which sounds tough (for me) but really did translate to more flexibility about missing some games to make family plans.
• D played coach-pitch baseball (with Jack as coach) in the spring and soccer in the fall, with two practices a week.  The practices and most of the games were walkable, so that was nice.  
• I swam laps some and taught D to swim.   https://aglie.blogspot.com/2021/08/d-can-swim.html   In the fall my parents or I took Dd swimming most weeks, which is still just getting him used to putting his face in the water.   He said things like "I live in this pool" and "I want to stay here forever."
• I raced (sailing) on my parents boat a couple of times in June.

Food

We ate less dairy on the whole this year.  Cashew yogurt is pretty good, it turns out.  Another favorite new food was the Keto nut granola (grain free) from Costco.      

In September we started getting a weekly delivery from Thistle, which makes delicious salads.   It's been nice to have a quick healthy lunch option.  They're even vegetarian, which feels good too.

We've tried so many meal kits in the last six years and watched many of them fold.   This year we loved Homegrown (from the local sandwich shop) and gave Gobble a try.    We hardly go to restaurants these days and I actually prefer the meal kits two take out, with the exception of picking up a PCC pizza.

Imperfect Foods has been a reliable grocery (mostly produce) source for us for over two years now.

We tried both Beyond Beef and Impossible Burgers (meatless meat) and now they are in light rotation.

Climate Conscience 

This needs to be on everyone's list nowadays.   In the fall I started reading (and finished, in early 2022) a book called Under the Sky We Make which was really powerful.    We have work to do in 2022, but the changes we made in 2021 were:

• getting a dedicated laundry drying rack for the roof and air drying much more often up there in the summer.   We've always had drying lines and a rack in the basement but we don't attempt to dry towels and sheets down there.   Solar and wind power make it a breeze :)
• using wool dryer balls after I read that they help efficiency.  They also prevent bottom sheets from tying themselves in soggy knots.  
• starting to use the setting that stops the dryer automatically when it detects that clothes are dry.  In five years I'd never noticed that our inexpensive dryer was that smart.   Now we've stopped habitually over-drying loads.
• doing a better job recycling a few things:
• my sister pointed me to a site called Terracyle where you can recycle directly with manufacturer and find recycling programs.   We started saving our daily wear contact packaging for special recycling.   They are too small for municipal recycling to deal with them. https://www.terracycle.com
• we used the Seattle Public Utilities special collection service to recycle Styrofoam and a few other things from the basement

2021 house projects

It was another busy year. We celebrated five years in our house, so maintenance projects are now in the mix.

Indoor Projects

• We put up some cabinets in the entryway that actually have enough space for each of us to have a place for shoes, hats, gloves and face masks.  The roomba fits underneath it!

• Jack put in a laundry sink for a birthday present.  It's great, in part because the water gets hot so quickly right next to the water heater in the basement.
• With help from my parents, I refinished our table and Jack and I finally hung pictures above both of our desks (https://aglie.blogspot.com/2021/10/new-old-table-and-gallery-wall.html)
• Jack replaced the ugly fluorescent lights on our stairs with track lighting.   It looks great.
• We continued our tradition of switching the kids' bedrooms every two years.   This  year we did it between Thanksgiving and Christmas and D got a new bedframe with a trundle bed.  They have bunked up once over the holidays when my family spent the night.  
• In April we put up a really thick glass panel behind the stove and the final five electric blinds on the third floor. 

• After reading a scary article, we bought a kit and cleaned the dryer vent.   I'm not in the market for a house fire.
• We had to cut the railing on our spiral stair in order to clean the house air intake filter 

Outdoor Projects

• On the roof, we put in a second heather plant that promptly died in the July heat wave.   We also moved a boxwood to make room for a Japanese maple.   We also put in a Raspberry Crape Myrtle and <something with red berries>  bushes and some blue spruce sedum. 
• Down on the parking strip we planted white and pink symphony snowberry bushes in October.    The dogwood tree might have died in the heat wave too.  Time will tell. 
• We assembled and reinforced the roof pergola
• In the trough off the boite we planted a little sweet bay tree in February

roof pergola

 After a few years of indecision about reckoning with scope of projects and priorities, we bought an inexpensive pergola for shade on the roof.   With some help from D, we put it up on the fourth of July and enjoyed some shady lunches at the end of the summer.

Flash forward to October, when the wind reminded us that we needed to secure it better.   First, we tied it down and then we attached concrete blocks to the feet and reinforced it with cables.   It was our first time drilling in concrete and the first type of anchors we used were crap.  After many trips to the store and some chilly work, it's done and we're pretty sure it is secure enough.

covid lifestyle update

Here we are in the 22nd month of the covid era.  Wednesday was Dd's first day back in preschool after a week off because of one of the toddlers in his school caught covid over Thanksgiving weekend.

There are a few positives angles: no one got very sick and we as a school community have had an impressive covid-free run.  Also, Jack and I survived a week of juggling Dd with full time work.  I think he enjoyed the time at home and we enjoyed parts of it.   It's also nice to not be too worried that he as a healthy kid would have a serious case, if he had caught it.

That said, having him at home while we both work just isn't sustainable, which is why I find myself worrying more about all the other viruses too.  Our current culture requires that even little colds be taken seriously and treated like covid until tests come back.   It's so tragically funny to look back at the old days where we went to school in the throws of a bad cold, spreading germs like crazy.   We've been relatively cautious about rejoining society, because even a cold throws our delicately balanced schedule in to such disarray.

We know this from experience.  Looking back over the last year, Dd brought home colds on a monthly basis from September '20 through this past July.  I got most of them, D got a few and Jack has had a few minor sniffles.  Miraculously we haven't had a cold in our household since July, finally enjoying the break from minor illnesses that many people had last winter.   Maybe it's because Dd's been wearing a mask much more regularly at school since the summer (though still not at snacks, meals or nap time) or maybe it's because we've already had everything that is circulating, aside from the covid (knock on wood).

In other good news, D had his second vaccine dose on Nov 28th and Jack and I got our boosters prior to Thanksgiving.  Now that D is more protected, we've switched over to having him ride the school bus, which is so very nice for us.  

Dd turns 3

Before the month is up, I want to document Dd's third birthday!   His sense of humor, imaginative play, strong opinions and desire to do things for himself have all increased lately.  It is fun to watch his imagination which often stays on a theme for a week or more: the couch is a garbage truck, we're going camping, let's build a houseboat....

He has a really funny idea of what baseball is.   It involves falling down a fair bit and he shouts baseball words in a way that doesn't quite make sense, like "two ball strike!"

We've also been allowing him a bit more independence in the house.   Both kids have been excited for D to supervise Dd a bit.  The other day we felt confident enough that they'd play on their own that we did about 45 minutes of work on the stair lights while they stayed upstairs on their own.   D often reads to Dd and Dd is interested in words on signs and identifying letters.

At three, it's been a while since he was a baby, but now I find that I really see that we're done with the baby years.   A few things he said recently, really show that he's growing up:

Grammy said we needed some balls and I said "how about baseballs?"

I got up and went potty on one and I didn't bother you.

I live in this pool.

On his birthday weekend we stayed in a cabin at Dosewallips state park with friends in the cabin next door.  The following weekend, the weather was nice and D helped make a wacky cake for family.

a japanese maple for the roof

 I always look at rooftop gardens, as much as one can from down on the ground.  Japanese maples appear to be a successful option for our climate, so I finally bought one and planted it today.   It is a variety called iijima sunago.  Here’s hoping it works and is slightly protected from the wind   

We also put pink and a white snowberry bushes down by the street.  

new old table and a gallery wall!

We got a great big sturdy table, with two leaves, on Buy Nothing, a couple of years ago.   It was just right for our family since some people still occasionally stab the table with forks or put bowls of dry ice on it for fun.  Then, over the summer, the ratty finish on it started to fail catastrophically, to the point where hot soup or a cup of tea would stick to the table.  Next things that weren't even hot started to stick, including the placemats we tried as a stopgap.   

With helpful insistence from my parents, the loan of scraping tools and lots of muscle we scraped off the old varnish over the course of a month.  Then the kids started to stain the bare wood... so just before it got really cold, we put on three coats of smelly varnish.  I enjoyed adding some stripes that are trying to say "I know I'm still rough, but hey, think about mountains."   Over the summer we also got matching red chairs (pictured), from Buy Nothing as well, which look nicer too.

This month we finally hung a Monet picture from a Christmas gift card from Jack's parents and put together a gallery wall above my desk.   I haven't decided on the pictures for the smaller frames yet, but am still very satisfied with how it looks.   It's been five years in the house and now we've hung a few things in more permanent positions.  I feel lucky that we've got a pretty good office set up, with large, personal desks.

Camano with bikes

 Camano Island was a nice labor day weekend destination.   We picked D up from school on Friday and headed straight to our cabin on the beach, making it the rare 3-night trip.   Jack's birthday was the day after we returned.   Will he be able to pick them both up next birthday?

We ate lots of blackberries and some comically big apples.

As with nearly everywhere we've been this summer, the kids spent a lot of time digging.   D actually dug up a pickaxe right in front of our cabin.

We found some crabs and I need to make a point of getting out to more low-tide opportunities with the kids.

Four years ago we did a fun biking weekend on San Juan Island (Friday Harbor!) and D and I are wearing the same shirts again.  The roads were pretty nice on Camano and much smoother than on San Juan Island.   Drivers were nice on both and the shoulders were good enough most of the time.   

On Saturday we rode about 20 miles from our cabin on the north part of the island.  It included some long hills and the kids were troopers.    Sunday we drove to the south part of the island to start and rode about eight miles.   Despite the good roads, I would rate San Juan Island higher because there are such nice destinations.  Camano has two (hilly) state parks, right next to each other and few (if any) other good parks or charming public spaces.  

D's Piccolo has gears and he can definitely help on hills.   Dd's Wehoo is really cool and these were the first rides where he actually pedaled, though it was only occasionally, as one would expect.  Jack's bike has a habitual problem with broken spokes, but fortunately riding on two broken ones didn't cause any problems this trip.

Coming back to our cabin to hang out was really nice.

five years in our house!

 We've added Dd, some plants, window blinds and more.

Here we are in October 2016.

38

This year, Jack had two baseball games scheduled for my birthday and one the day before, which is good for him, but less fun for me.   Either because late August is a nice time of year for a getaway or because they took pity on me, my parents and sister agreed to a little cabin stay.

It was just up in Lynwood and was right on a small lake.   The assortment of boats, a hot tub and the opportunity to play in sandy gravel were some of the highlights.   For D's benefit we stayed up late playing board games (Ticket to Ride and Forbidden Island) both nights.   My sister made an excellent birthday cake.   

I did stand up paddle boarding for the first time and swam a bit, although it was fairly chilly for August.