January is for hibernating. That’s my assessment of the first month of 2022 for our family. It feels like we hunkered down, stayed in, watched shows and movies, and read books. I mean, I have no complaints. Our monthly round-up of What We Did, What We Ate, What We Watched and What We Read is heavy on basketball, soups and movies/TV shows.
What We Did
New Year’s Day 2022 feels like four years ago. Since we were all home and it was a Saturday, we played a couple of board games. For Christmas, Phil had bought the family Forbidden Island. It was fun, but also a little stressful. The island is sinking and you have to work together to save artifacts/relics and get off the island. Fun, though. We also played our new favorite card game, Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza. But our hands hurt from all the slapping on the table.
We had one legitimate snow day in January. I put together this puzzle after an hour-plus of shoveling outside with my son.
Our Saturdays are full of youth rec basketball. There were several wins and one tough loss. We are becoming THOSE parents who cheer loudly and sometimes vocalize our discontent.
But on one Saturday, our daughter got to participate in a county band event and we watched her concert later that day. It was moving to be in the audience for live band music again.
We got our first ever parking ticket in downtown Lancaster. We were minutes late upping our parking time on the app, but the truth is, I’m glad it happened. I’ve been freaked out about getting a parking ticket my whole life basically because I wasn’t sure how expensive they were. Parking in general gives me anxiety. (Will we get towed?) It wasn’t as expensive as I thought and while I don’t want to repeat it, I know now I can survive it.
Uno on FaceTime with family. It’s a highlight of our weekend calls when we get to play games via video.
During the mid-month snow storm, Phil and I had plans to go out to dinner with friends. We had rescheduled a couple of times due to Covid or Covid-like symptoms, so we kept our date and drove through the city while it snowed looking for a place that was open. (See below). It was a fun, refreshing time.
Phil started playing Wordle and eventually all four of us joined him. It’s a daily family conversation.
And at church, Phil and I made our debut in the nursery/toddler room as volunteers. So far, we’re having fun, but I’m quickly realizing that I might be getting too old to be down on the floor with kids all the time. (Or maybe I just need to stretch more.)
What We Ate
New Year’s Day lunch is always full of snacks per Phil’s family tradition. There were lots of chippy dippy kinds of things. We also had pork and sauerkraut for dinner, a PA Dutch tradition that we don’t mind at all.
Soups, soups and more soups. Here are some of the soups we made and ate this month. (Some I forgot to take a picture of because I was so eager to eat them!) We had French onion soup from the Harry Potter cookbook; carrot, mushroom barley soup; Irish stew with turnips and carrots; pork chili; and Scottish “stovies” for Burns night.
On our dinner date with friends, we ended up at Queen Street Bistro because it was the only place we could find that was open. I had a crab melt that was meaty and delicious. Phil had a mushroom pizza and an ahi tuna appetizer.
Crickets. Yes, crickets. A couple of our classes at school read a book about eating insects and the teacher who leads our class bought some cricket flour online to make cookies. She came to school on a Monday with choco-chirpies (chocolate chip cookies made with cricket flour). Honestly, they tasted like chocolate chip cookies. It was a fun day watching our students try something new.
What We Watched
The New Year’s Day tradition for Phil’s family continues with a watching of The Tournament of Roses parade.
Usually we’re more of a shows kind of family, but we watched a bunch of movies this month. Our son had heard about Ron’s Gone Wrong, so we watched that. It is one of those happy-sad movies. We cashed in some digital credits to rent Free Guy. Uh-mazing. I can’t stop thinking about this idea that we can be more than spectators in our lives. Then we jumped on the Encanto bandwagon and it is worth the hype. And we finally watched Eternals. Unpopular opinion? I didn’t hate it. I thought I was going to hate it because I had heard some bad reviews, but I’m considering rewatching just to catch all the threads. Yes, it’s a long movie (we watched it over two nights), but I enjoyed it.
Some of our family shows we watched together: Supermarket Sweep, the new one with Leslie Jones as host and Welcome to Earth hosted by Will Smith.
Phil and I are watching Around the World in 80 Days on Masterpiece PBS. (David Tennant as Phileas Fogg?Yes please.). We’re also trying to finish Kim’s Convenience so we can move on to other comedies. We logged another episode of The World According to Jeff Goldblum, too. And weekly, as long as there are episodes, we watch SNL clips.
We watched a couple of documentaries, too. Storm Lake is PBS documentary about a family-run newspaper in western Iowa that won a Pulitzer Prize. It reminded me of my journalism days.
And we’re halfway through a four-part docuseries on Netflix called This is a Robbery: The World’s Biggest Art Heist. It’s an intense look at the robbery of the Isabelle Stewart Gardner Gallery in Boston, Mass., in 1990, an as-of-yet unsolved crime. I’m sort of obsessed.
And one afternoon, I watched A Castle for Christmas. Yes, I watched this in January, weeks after Christmas was over. But it was on my list for Christmas movies to watch and I never got to it. Cary Elwes with a Scottish accent was something I didn’t know I needed in my life.
What We Read
Reading out loud with the kids: more Spy School books by Stuart Gibbs! We finished Spy Ski School and are about halfway through Spy School Secret Service. We will read every book in this series.
Phil finished a book! (I’m not being mean. This is just a rare event because of his limited leisure time and reading speed.) His book was Arsenic and Adobo by Mia P. Manansala. He saw it on a list of the top books of the year in the mystery category as voted by Goodreads users. There are more books coming in the series, and he’s really looking forward to them.
Books I finished: Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone by Diana Gabaldon. The long-awaited ninth book in the Outlander series. I started it over Christmas break and finished it about halfway through January. When I first started reading the Outlander books, I was borrowing them from the library and rushing to finish them in two weeks or less in case they couldn’t be renewed. I was glad to be able to take my time with this one.
The Talented Miss Farwell by Emily Gray Tedrowe. Loosely based on the Rita Crundwell decades-long crime against my hometown.
The Long Way Home by Louise Penny. The next Inspector Gamache book. Was not my favorite.
And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie. My first Agatha Christie read! And definitely not my last.
Books in progress:
Truman. Yep. I went back to it. But not for long. I need to finish it just to be done with it, but it puts me to sleep right now.
Atlas of the Heart by Brené Brown. Book club pick for the winter session. I have mixed feelings already. Stay tuned.