2020: New Year & New Decade (or is it?)

How has 2020 been so far?

To be honest it’s been a lot of things. The first words that come to mind are slow, relaxing, bright, challenging, optimistic, hopeful. It’s the start of a new year, which always presents its own sets of challenges and goals, and there’s so much excitement when you wake up on January 1st for fresh start, but at the end of the day (and this is especially true when you wake up on January 2), we’re just the same people we were yesterday, aren’t we?

Still, and we fall for it every year, there is something about a brand new calendar year that gets us going. However, it seems we’re starting the year off with sad, heartbreaking news every other day in the news. The devastating wildfires in Australia (to help out, click here), the slight possibility that we may be going to war, etc. It’s a new year, but the same old stuff seems to be happening.

On a lighter note, things are home have been rather relaxing. We were able to finish all of our work deadlines before Christmas, so we had nothing due during the holidays. This was the busiest year of our lives and we’re honestly not sure how we finished it all in time, but the last few weeks for us have been so welcomed. We have had time to enjoy our slow, sleepy mornings with the kiddos and just take a breather at home. It seems like we haven’t left the house in WEEKS (though in reality that’s not true) because it’s been just us and the kids, learning, cooking, playing, cleaning up, opening toys and playing with them and breaking up fights over them, watching tons of movies and TV shows (speaking of, we started “Dracula” last night on Netflix and it’s so good! Have you seen it?), and just in general enjoying each other’s company.

However, we would be lying if we said all the time spent at home all the time hasn’t gotten to us, and maybe made us a little more irritable towards each other. Think less patience, letting little things annoy us about one another, etc. That’s just how it goes sometimes, you know?

The kiddos have been vacuums lately, eating anything and everything in their paths. Thank goodness, though. Their current favorites are carrots with peanut butter, apples (with no skins, of course), strawberries, bananas 4everandever, cut up grapes, oranges, and cereal.

One of the things we didn’t anticipate was just how much turmoil the new toys would cause. After talking to our relatives, that’s to be expected for the first few weeks after Christmas. The kiddos received a bunch of new toys for Christmas from our family, their family, and even some of y’all sent some gifts (thank you SO MUCH! we made sure to let them know where each of the toys came from and especially so when it came to your gifts to them). So far, a day hasn’t gone by without at least one toy causing at least one fight, and then the toy having to go to “time out”. Our rule is that if it causes trouble or anger, it gets taken away for a period of time. The kids are learning that now, thankfully.

So with the new year upon us, we’re feeling excited for what’s to come. We should be rolling out international shipping on our products soon (!), we’ve been vlogging more, and we have a few trips planned. A lot to be thankful for going into 2020!

Speaking of 2020, do you think it’s the start of a new decade? Or does the new decade not start until 2021? We posted this on IG and received A LOT of messages giving us both sides of the argument. Where do you stand?

Happy new year, friend (and depending on what you believe, happy new decade :)! xx