WELL! That snuck up quickly. Somehow we’re in 2022. The children have gone back to school, the husband has gone back down the bottom of the garden (to his office, I’m not that cruel) and I have managed to bring some sort of order to the house and enjoy a few moments of quiet.

The latter part of Autumn passed in a bit of a haze. I picked up an absolute BEAST of a cold the week before half term, Beardy had to deal with the kids in between working as I was completely wiped out. During Half term week there was an improvement and we were able to get out a little bit (not that the kids were particularly fussed), we had a lovely weekend at the end of it but by Sunday evening I really didn’t feel to well.

Monday morning heralded a call to 111 and a very early drop off for the children at breakfast club followed by 12 hours in various emergency departments and a discharge with blood thinners and antibiotics for plurisey and not one, but TWO! pulmonary embolisms. I can 100% not recommend either of those. They both suck royally and take a while to recover from.

It took a good couple of weeks before I felt well enough to knit again and I still get out of puff if I do things too quickly 2 months on. It has also put the brakes on my cold water swimming as, until I’ve been seen by the thrombosis clinic, I’m not allowed to do anything strenuous and dunking one’s self in super dooper chilly water is definitely classed as strenuous.

That being said, the end of the year wasn’t a complete write off. I spent some wonderful knitting time with Phil from The Twisted Yarn (if you don’t follow her blog you can find it here), spent a lot of time with the cat ( that is time never wasted) and eventually managed to pick my needles up (both knitting and sewing) and get some Christmas presents sorted. I’ll pop these up in next week’s post.

I don’t make resolutions generally. The last two years especially have shown me that your situation can change so quickly that the stress of having to keep to something you made under different circumstances is not worth getting yourself het up over. There is one thing in particular though that we’re going to have a good crack at.

The royal They reckon children spend on average 1200 hours on screens a year. That’s approximately 3 and a quarter hours every day. I know that mine don’t spend quite that much time on them as they aren’t really on during the week but I’d still like to swap most of that time they do spend on them out for something a bit more wholesome. I also know from the very prompt weekly report my phone send me that my yearly usage of my phone is SIGNIFICANTLY higher than this. There is a website called http://www.1000hoursoutside.com where the sole aim is to get everybody outside and away from their screens. I’ve signed up to their newsletter and downloaded the trackers.

I’ve worked out that as long as we can manage an hour a day on average through January, February and December, all those extra hours can be made up when the weather improves. We’re planning on some camping trips this year which should bump that figure up signifincantly too.

We snuck a cheeky hour in at the park last afternoon after school. My kids will go out in any weather as long as they aren’t cold or hungry so, armed with toasty salopettes, snow boots, a flask of hot chocolate and a boatload of snacks we played in the rain and swung on the swings until it got dark. They enjoyed it so much, I’m packed and ready to go again this afternoon.

As I don’t have a crystal ball, I can’t tell wht this year is going to hold, but I can make the most of what we’ve got right now. I’ve always said it’s the little things that mean the most and that’s what I’m holding on to going in to 2022.

kx