2025 Life in our household Wrap Up

 

2025 was an interesting year spent concentrating on our health with hubby recovering from his heart attack, and subsequent diabetes diagnosis and me working through gall bladder issues. We eliminated much of the foods we'd been overdosing on.  No more ice cream, candy, sodas,  pasta and bread, vast quantities of milk and chocolate, chocolate, chocolate.  Hello Keto friendly foods, lots of water, and longer grocery trips perusing the shelves, reading ingredients, and finding low carb choices, which surprisingly resulted in some very tasty meals and salads, salads, salads.  LOL! All of which saved me from intestinal issues when I had my gall bladder removed in October and resulted in a smooth recovery.   Turns out my gall bladder was almost nonfunctioning, full of polyps and stones.  I feel so much better now.  Both hubby and I lost weight, his skin cleared up, no more acid reflux, and the tums consumption reduced to an all time low. 

We actually took a real vacation this year, drove up the coast to Eureka and spent time in the woods, then headed up to Lincoln City, Oregon, spent time on the beach and explored the Evergreen Museum in which we got to tour the Spruce Goose. A fun time for all of us.

Surprisingly we had a stellar year with the business, breaking all time records. Hubby and I worked as a tag team, me covering more while he worked less, then he in turning covering more when I worked less. Our employees pulled out all the stops and it didn't hurt that a couple of our competitors retired and sent their customers our way.  James helped out when he could, but his primary job was completing his college courses (all A's by the way)  all the while busily creating fan fiction and digital art. 

Which brings me to my other loves - journaling and reading.  I lost the impetus when it came to story writing, but I didn't let it stop me when it came to creativity.  I got into journaling big time this year with common place books, as well as junk journaling, book reviews, food diary, poetry, etc.  Discovered the joy and fun of decorating said journals pages from stickers to whole page designs.  I'll be feeding my muse more in 2026, filling the well, in anticipation of breaking through that proverbial writer's block to get back to my stories and characters. 

And reading which is as necessary to me as breathing.  I enjoy reading fiction along with a smattering of nonfiction and hubby's love is nonfiction, James is primarily comic books, along with required college reading.  I read 93 books, out of which 15 were rereads and only 7 were ebooks which meant I did a great job at clearing my shelves.  Only they had lots of babies so my TBR shelves in the kitchen are full again. LOL!   I'll talk more about my year in reading in a separate wrap up post.