[Previous years in review: 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013]
This has been another crazy year. The fall, especially, was busy, stressful, and just a bit overwhelming. With Nate writing his thesis the next few months, things will be a bit less intense. Nate lost his paternal grandmother in late November, which was quite sad for all of us.
In terms of traveling, we did make it out to a few places:
- We went on a cruise to Mexico to start out the year.
- We went to Ukraine twice (spring, summer) with all three of us both times! And the second time was for two weeks, so we had a good long time to hang out with my grandparents.
- We traveled to Barcelona and to Milan and Venice.
- We are ending our year as we started it - in the US.
This time for our trip to the US, we ended up flying into and out of Chicago and driving a bit. This way, we spent a week and a half in Nebraska, followed by almost a week outside of Chicago where my brother now lives and my parents flew in for. We also got some time to visit three different sets of friends/families in Iowa and one in Chicago. It was nice to have this time with friends and family, and enjoy the conveniences of the US. We were especially excited to hang out with Chase's new cousin and our goddaughter, Tindra. Chase also spent time with all of his grandparents (and living great grandparents). On our way to the US, we missed a connection and ended up having something like 30 hours to explore Warsaw. We made the most of it, even in the bitter cold, exploring the city's old town and seeing the Christmas markets. For Chase's country/state count, we are at +3 for Mexico, Italy, and Poland, and +2 states for IA and IL, so he's currently at 3 continents (NA, Europe, Africa), 10 countries (USA, Switzerland, France, Spain, Morocco, Ukraine, Great Britain, Mexico, Italy, and Poland), and 9 states (MA, CT, RI, NY, NE, CA, NV, IA, and IL). We definitely plan to travel a bit more next year.
In terms of crafts, I did two knitting projects (headband and dress), and put together a calendar. As always, I am planning many crafts for 2018 -- I just hope I find the time to get them done. I only did one post on Chase but he's growing up so fast! He will start school next year which is just crazy to think about.
