2024: Our Year in Review

This post is slightly overdue, and while I will try and say “I was just too busy with work” the reality is that I didn’t schedule time to get this post out. Here I am today, just doing that so that 2024 can finally go into the Garies Girl history books.

Let’s look at the whole year.

January passed in a blur, as more months tend to do now. We celebrated Simon’s 22nd birthday with a dinner out as usual. This is usually the last big holiday outing before everyone returns to their separate lives.

After both kids returned to college, I focused on giving the whole house a well-deserved clean / refresh. I like doing it this time of year, right after I packed up and stored all my Christmas decorations. I worked from top to bottom, tackling one room at a time. Spreading out the cleaning works best with my schedule (I work from home). My room-by-room method means the mess cleaning and reorganizing creates, is mostly confined during the process. It breaks one big task down into more manageable pieces for me.

During this time, we also started planning a huge South African trip. We have had a lot of big milestones that seemed to go by unrecognized lately, and we wanted to celebrate them all in a big way. It is also the year of turning 50 for both of us, so we might as well celebrate in South Africa where the majority of our family is.

We made it to a couple of Sidney’s college rugby games. Pieter coached her team for a bit in 2023 and still likes to give them game-day advice. It is very exciting to see how their team keeps growing and improving. Rugby gave Sidney a great way of getting exercise and building a close-knit community within the bigger university life.

Back inside the house, I upgraded my office desk to a standing desk and did some desk shuffling throughout the house. My old desk went downstairs to become Pieter’s new desk, and I sold the desk that was a bit too small for what he needed. I also got rid of some office and kitchen clutter while I was at it, advertising the majority for free on a local Facebook group.

At the end of March, I started my annual garden refresh. It takes a lot of weeding, pruning, and mulching to get our garden ready for Spring. This year, Pieter took care of all our deck plants – refreshing the soil and repotting all of them. He really likes growing different types of peppers, so we dedicated a space on the deck for that purpose.

Spring

By April, I’ve already spent tons of hours in the garden. I love seeing the plants come back after winter. This is also the time of year when I prepare our small little vegetable garden for planting. On the back deck, we created an outside seating area. We had to put the furniture together ourselves, but it was worth it. You can read about that effort here – An Outside Living Room. It became our new favorite spot until the summer heat (and new neighbor dogs) settled in.

The rest of April was spent finalizing our summer trip and the big celebration we were planning while there. Of course, along with the everyday things that fill a regular life.

May 10th arrived and we were off to South Africa. I fully intended a blog series on our whole trip, especially since it was also a more touristy type of trip, but all I have to show for it now is just the memories and a bunch of drafts. I will get to that soon (I hope).

We spent a total of four weeks in South Africa this year. We had the first week to spend with our family, and the middle two to spend with our friends that arrived from the USA and England. The big party happened the weekend of the 24th of May and was absolutely wonderful. Most of the family was able to join us for the weekend, with friends joining us on Saturday for an evening of great food, music, and conversations. At the last minute, Pieter, myself, and Simon extended our stay for another week, so I could spend more time with my mom and dad in Paarl. We all got some type of flu, unfortunately, so the week did not go exactly as I planned. But we were there and we could see them as much as we wanted. By the beginning of June, it was time for the three of us to head back home again.

Summer

After being away for a month (!!!) we arrived back to a Georgia summer in full swing. The baby vegetable plants we planted before we left, were huge and already producing some peppers and tomatoes. Throughout the summer and fall, we collected bags and bags of veggies – the most we’ve produced in all the years of having the vegetable garden.

Life got very quiet after the month in South Africa and all the people around. The kids were doing their own thing and enjoying the last of their summer break before they had to go back to college. I kept busy with work and the occasional baking effort.

Fall

Before too long, it was time for Simon and Sidney to head back to their college towns. We were down to just the two of us at home again and the adjustment it usually brings. Pieter was actively looking for a new job at this point, so another adjustment was needed from my side with him home full-time. A lot of my day-to-day outings became couple events.

In September we had to make the tough decision to let Ben go. Our Great Dane turned 12 this year and was not doing so well anymore. We have tried some joint supplements and injections, but in the end, it was just his time. We all know this day will be there when we get our pets, and we know we had a good 10 years with Ben. But this was tough on all of us, even on myself, who complained a lot about the cleaning and upkeep that is needed when you have a furry family member.

October brought the Halloween season, and I threw myself into this decorating opportunity. I’ve been struggling with some depression, among other things, and keeping myself busy is the only way I can deal with it. I have a collection of Halloween decorations now that I reuse every year. I just try and use them in different areas of the house.

Pieter installed some new outside lights that included a Halloween theme. Those, along with a new fog machine, created a special evening for our Trick-or-Treaters. Read more about Halloween 2024 here.

Winter

Winter was now around the corner and when the Halloween decorations come down, I gear up for my Christmas decorations. I did another good house cleaning to prepare for the holiday season. The kids came home for Thanksgiving break and we had a lovely late afternoon lunch with Carmen and her family. We took a weekend trip to Statesboro right after Thanksgiving for a big football game and had a great time hanging out with Simon and meeting new friends.

Once back home, it was the final stretch to Christmas. It took me a while to get all my decorations up, especially since I had the plan to do icicle lights on the inside of my front windows. I needed way more strings than I had, and who knew – there are so many different types of white, and yes, it does matter. Along with all the lights, came a side project to automate it all. I have two types of smart plugs in the house, but prefer these rectangular double plugs. You can set them up as a unit or as individual plugs. I did both. Once all the window lights had their own smart plug, I added them to our Alexa and created a Christmas Routine to automate the turning on and off of them.

The kids made their way back home again for the holidays. We focused our time mostly on being together. We had our now annual Christmas Eve fondue in front of the fire, with a big Christmas Day meal the next day. We invited our niece, her husband, and their furbaby and prepared a gluten-free meal. Leg of lamb, fried potatoes, Pieter’s famous sweet potato, to name a few of the highlights. Sidney was in charge of a homemade caramel to go with our dessert of ice cream. She was also in charge of delicious Christmas cocktails.