Year in Review 2021

I always love doing these recap posts to really celebrate the year that we are about to leave and get ready for the new year! Here are our highlights:

January - we had a really fun time on Edisto Island bringing in the New Year and even had a beach day! We also put an offer in on a beach house that would become ours in Ocean Isle Beach, NC but didn't tell many people until we closed in March. 

February - we celebrated several birthdays - Jade's, Kevin's and Hilary's!

March - we closed on our beach house and that was the start of a wonderful summer ahead. 

April - we had Easter at the beach and Grady caught his first fish/

May - Grady turned 3 and we celebrated with a John Deere party!

June - Molly Anne had her first recital and first swim meet

July - Molly Anne turned 6 and we celebrated the weekend before with a My Little Pony party. 

August - the kids and I went to Maryland to see my parents..we went to a baseball game and a carnival while we were there. And it was the first day of school later in the month. 

September - Labor Day weekend at the beach, summer beach memories recap and I started playing tennis. This was not a great month to be honest as my Mom was very sick. Then Dad got sick and ahhhh. Fortunately Mom is much better now and Dad is still working on it. 

October - Chili Cookoff/Pumpkin Beer Tasting at the beach, Molly Anne cheered at the high school football game, Kevin and I saw the Rolling Stones and we went to the pumpkin patch. 

November - First trip to Carowinds for Grady, and Kevin and I went to Napa here, here and here. We also spent Thanksgiving at the beach and got to go to my brother's for Thanksgiving Day. 

December - Santa brunch was so fun, sprinkle for Margot, Christmas parties here and here, Grady's Christmas program. 

It was a year of mostly happy with some sad in between that I haven't mentioned here. As always, this is definitely a highlight reel and certainly doesn't cover everything. 

I wish a happy and healthy 2022 for each one of you dear friends and readers. Thank you for supporting my little blog year after year...since 2009!

OIB

We went to the beach on Tuesday for a couple of nights and that was the biggest treat and so much fun the weather was unreal. 70 and sunny every day. 

But first  - our in-house Lego master teaching grady how to build! I love it! She also did a 375 piece set in a couple of hours this week. She’s unreal at legos!

Heading down! Bikes and all!

Kinetic sand is a really great activity for the porch ;)

Mills in his fav spot - on our back porch and with his Molly Anne. 

Never can have too much of them in my lap. All 100 pounds. 


Nannie in her happy place! 




Breakfast at Causeway

Riding bikes!




We rode them up to the playground. Grady can officially swing by himself!!! Whoop whoop!!


Looks like something is going to happen to our dock very soon! It needs help!


My parents like ocean isle! 




Molly Anne and I were trying to catch Kevin some bait with the casting net but didn’t have good luck!





Mom and I went shopping at the surf shop where I got some sunglasses then we went over to Hilary’s for champagne on their back porch! They had picked up Molly Anne to play with the girls so we saw her there!


She happy!


The six of us headed to Sharkys for our last dinner with my parents before they went back to Maryland. We had a great visit with them and no one likes when they leave!


(If you go to Sharky’s get the PJ Margarita!)

Loving This Week

Been browsing online too much this week with all of the good sales. Ha!

I fell in love with this beautiful shirt. It’s striking and def a special one!

These highlight yellow shorts are always hard to get but they’re in stock now. I love this 4” fit! 

Unique dress

How come I can’t find coverups to buy in the summer but then I find this fringe one! Should grab while it’s available!

And last but not least. A fav shirt to lounge or workout in! Comes in a bunch of colors. 

Christmas Day

Coming down the stairs! 

I love hearing all of their expressions and excitement on Christmas morning. I remember doing the same with my brother. 






My parents gave her a Truly Me doll! She was so excited. 




Beach house sign still covered in wrapping. 



The king of the castle. He had surgery on Thursday...two days prior to this because he had another cyst rupture on Sunday. Never a dull moment. He recovers so quickly from these surgeries though. 



Molly Anne and Poppa ready for our Christmas afternoon. 


Kevin's parents joined us for a bit to see what the children got for Christmas and hang out. It was beautiful out so shockingly we were on the porch with another fire. ha!

My kids don't know how lucky they are to have both sets of grandparents. Mills put himself in this picture!











My Mom making cream of crab and regular crab soup!



We put a scoop of crab soup in the cream of crab and it was DELICIOUS. My dad's idea. He said G&M Restaurant does it in Maryland. 



Our other next door neighbors are always overly generous and gift my children something for Christmas each year. Molly Anne received Wellie Wisher Willa and Grady got a pogo hopper and LED light up gloves! So fun! They saved these gifts to open that night!




It was a Merry Christmas indeed!

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve was on Friday and we hung around the house. We put whole cloves in fruit -- anyone else do this? We did it growing up...they smell so good!

The kids and I made peanut butter hershey kiss cookies for Santa. 

We got another standing rib roast from Butchers Market this year. It was so good last year we had to do it again. This one was almost 11 pounds. They season it for you and tie the bones back on. It's perfect and Dad loves cooking it. The meat is SO good. This year we cooked it for 45-50 minutes at 500 degrees then turned the oven off for 10 minutes per pound but it still wasn't at 125 degrees for medium rare. So we put it back in at 350 degrees for about another hour and got it to 125 degrees. 

We did a lot of chillin and playing outside while it cooked. 

Chopping wood. We had fires all week. We had a truck load of firewood delivered a couple of weeks ago and more than half of it is gone. We have had a fire almost every day! 


We had some friends and Kevin's family over for Christmas Eve dinner. It was so nice out so we were on the porch. 

Five excited children for Santa to come!


The chef!







We headed out after dinner to look for Rudolph's nose flashing in the sky and we found it when we were driving through a nearby neighborhood. So we rushed home and got in bed quickly before he arrived! My Dad pointing to it for Molly Anne. Grady has told me several times since we did this - "seein that flashin red light...it was so crazy!" Very magical!



Spreading their reindeer food that they both made in school!




My littlest loves so excited!



Picture with Achy before he left. Both kids have commented how much they already miss him!



Santa came!