Greeting the New Year

It was a very slow and mellow winter break in our household. We didn't travel, Sarah only worked one day, and the girls had no sport commitments. Also, with the increased scare of the covid variant we chose to be more tied to the house than we typically would be. It was very nice, and it also led to an activity that Reese had wanted to do for a while. So we broke out Nana Banana's family sugar cookie recipe and got baking.

New Year's Eve became a day full of rolling out dough, baking cookies, and getting our introduction to royal icing. The rolling and baking were relatively smooth, but the royal icing process created a little anxiety.

All of it was also quite time consuming. Baking cookies is not something you just do for an hour and then move on to something else. We also baked a lot of cookies, so the decorating took time.  But the end product was definitely worth the time invested.

We are also happy to report that they tasted as good as they looked. We couldn't believe it, but the new year was about to dawn. 2021 went by in a flash, though we got to relive the whole year as we spent the break updating our blog with posts from the end of 2020 to the end of 2021. It was an impressive and proud feat to get us back on track.

For the first time, Callie had plans of her own for New Year's Eve. It was a sleepover with two of her friends, and she was excited even as we knew her sister was going to require a lot of attention to keep her spirits up in Callie's absence.

We did our best to keep Reese entertained, and even stayed up past midnight to finish the movie we were watching. We took our first selfie of 2022 to send to Callie when the ball dropped, and prepared for another year of who knows what.

New Year's Day brought another great tradition, watching the UK football team at a bowl game with the Johnsons. This year UK was playing in the Citrus Bowl, so we figured it was fitting to get a picture with our own bowl of Florida fruit. Thanks, Sharon and Chris! Yes, we know Seth is looking away in this picture, but he didn't want to miss any great plays from the game during the photo shoot. It was a great day with lots of appetizers, UK touchdowns, and of course, happy new year cookies. Bring it on, 2022!