Wrapping Up 2021

It's been a busy end of the year...

• Things that are blooming right now--roses and lemons (see photos above).  Our neighbors' lemon trees are all blooming like crazy as well!
• We've realized that we have saved A LOT of money not traveling the past couple years (we usually did four or five trips a year including at least one cruise per year...when we aren't paying to travel we have a lot of leftover money!).  With the current covid situation ongoing, it doesn't look like we will be cruising or flying anywhere in the near future.
• Christmas was quiet with just the hubby and I (all of his cousins are elderly and still not wanting to gather with people due to covid).  We went to downtown Las Vegas, walked around checking out the holiday decorations, hubby played poker for a couple hours, then we ate dinner at Salt Grass Steakhouse (free courtesty of hubby's casino comps from playing poker).  It was a perfect, quiet Christmas.
  
• We have been getting letters, calls, and emails from realtors and car salesmen wanting to buy our house and car.  The first offer for our car came about a year ago and they wanted to pay us $15k for our 2016 Honda CRV; the latest offer they sent said the would pay us $18k for it!  If I had a lot of cars I would be happy to sell but we only have one car and if we sold our car we would have to pay an exorbitant amount to buy a new car these days so no thank you.  It's the same with our house--we paid $120k a decade ago for it and now it is worth about $360k with a recent offer through a realtor for his client to buy it at $380k.  We said no for the same reason--we would have to pay a fortune to buy a new house since home price are so high just about everywhere so we will just stay here for now.
• I've been cleaning everything in the house that isn't nailed down.  I like to do a deep cleaning of our house just before the new year, kind of an "out with the old, in with the new" thing.  One thing I am buying ASAP is new smoke detectors.  Ours are about 10 years old and I think they are supposed to be replaced every seven years and then I saw this awful story so buying new smoke detectors is now at the top of my shopping list.
• One of the things we love about living in the desert southwest--no snow.  Our friends and relatives in Portland and Seattle have been hammered with snow this past week which reminds us that while we like watching the snow (online these days), we certainly don't like shoveling the driveway, deicing the car, walking in slush, or pretty much anything else to do with being cold and miserable.  My old bones love the heat and sun these days!
• Finally, my resolution for the upcoming year is to have no resolutions!  Usually I make an extensive list of new year resolutions, vowing to get iron-man fit, super model beautiful, and somehow become excessively productive and then...nothing happens.  It's disappointing.  So this year I vow to do nothing.  I'm going to take each day as it comes, accept opportunities and invitations to do fun and interesting things as they appear, and enjoy each day!

I hope your new year will be happy, prosperous, and ecstatically enjoyable!