Sometimes it feels like a few years pass in the span of a couple of months. I still can’t believe how crazy this past year was. When I sit and reflect on it, we were literally in some sort of transition for half of the year. Here’s everything that filled our calendar:

Our hopes for a better year quickly turned to horror in JANUARY as we watched an insurrection unfold in our old home of Washington D.C. There was still a lot to celebrate as Mark received his first dose of the COVID vaccine on inauguration day and we received the news on my birthday that we would be heading to Germany in the summer.

A chilly FEBRUARY meant we spent a lot of time indoors reading, knitting and trying different cocktails to mark the end of the week. It even snowed one morning (!), albeit briefly.

MARCH had us feeling like college students again with a Spring Break trip in St. Augustine with friends. We had fun doing aerial yoga on the beach and clearing out our liquor cabinet in anticipation of our upcoming overseas move. I was also finally eligible to receive my COVID vaccine, so I joined Mark in that vaxxed life.

By APRIL, our time in Alabama was starting to wind down, so our friend J came to visit. We used his trip as an excuse to see all of the historical landmarks in Montgomery and Selma since they were finally open again. We visited The National Memorial for Peace and Justice, MLK’s church and home, the capitol building and a few of our favorite breweries.

Things got real in MAY as our entire house got packed up and I quit my job. As if that wasn’t exciting enough, we also sat through a minor tornado in our car (picked the exact wrong moment to try to return a package). By the end of the month, we were looking for any excuse not to sit on our folding chairs and air mattress, so we road tripped to Nashville for my cousin’s graduation party and watched a lot of Biscuits baseball.

We went north to Alaska in JUNE so we could renew our drivers’ licenses before our move. Yes, we had to go in person since we had already maxed out our mail-in renewals. While we were there, we spent a lot of time on the trails and seeing old friends. The month ended with a week in Atlanta with my parents before we flew out to Germany, sadly without puppies since it was too hot (thanks again, Mom and Dad, for watching them).

Our new life overseas started the first day of JULY. We spent the whole month living in a hotel doing all the garbage that comes with moving to a new place: buying a car, finding a place to live and setting up contracts for phones. Since one of our friends was deployed to Stuttgart, we spent the weekends exploring with him, checking out Heidelberg, Strasbourg and Colmar.

The pieces of the puzzle slowly started to come together in AUGUST when we moved into our apartment and finally got to sleep in our own bed again. Friends, don’t ever take your own bed for granted. We continued being a tourist in our new home with weekends cuckoo clock shopping in the Black Forest, checking out the Glockenspiel in Munich, touring a palace in Ludwigsburg, and roof stomping in Kaiserslautern.

We tried to will cooler temps into existence in SEPTEMBER to no avail as we wandered through the streets of Rome with friends, visited Nuremberg for all the WWII history, and tried to get #basic with it at the largest pumpkin festival in Germany.

OCTOBER was an utter whirlwind of travel. We made one last big outing with our deployed friend with a weekend hiking and seeing the tallest mountain in Germany. Over Labor Day Weekend, Mark and I visited Paris for what I’m sure will be the first of many times. I was home for less than 24 hours before hitting the road with friends to visit Wrocław and Bolesławiec for some Polish history and pottery. Oh, the joys of FUNployment! While I was gone, the car we custom ordered was delivered, so we made a day trip to Basel, Switzerland to put miles on it. At the end of the month, I went back to the states to pick up the puppies. Now, Germany could finally start to feel like home.

Since October was so busy, we decided to stay relatively chill in NOVEMBER and took the puppies on a road trip to Trier and Bernkastel-Kues for Veterans Day. Mark’s parents visited at the end of the month, so we took them to all of the Christmas markets, or at least the ones that didn’t get canceled (there were many canceled thanks to a COVID spike).

The month of DECEMBER has been a revolving door of guests, and we wouldn’t have it any other way. My cousin, who is currently teaching and living in Spain, visited us at the beginning of the month when her school was on break. The holidays were spent with my whole family visiting for a few weeks.

Whew! While it was a little messy at times, we’re both glad where we ended up and are so excited to NOT have to move in 2022. Here’s to love, light and all of the adventures in the new year… we can’t wait!