Looking back on old posts..101 things in 1001 days

In January 2020, I guess I was feeling pretty ambitious because I created a list of 101 things I wanted to achieve in 1001 days. My daughter, Mini (her nickname for the blog), was almost two and life was becomming a little less hectic, as it felt like we were over the hardest of the baby years and finally getting a bit more sleep!

However as you know, in February 2020 everything changed when the world was thrown into a global pandemic Immediately life became a whole lot more stressful. There were several lockdowns that lasted months on end when our Kindergarten was closed and we had to juggle minding a toddler and doing our jobs. There wasn't a second to think, let alone complete goals. So needless to say, I soon forgot about the list and focussed on surviving the present as best we could.

While looking over some old posts, I came across the list recently and thought I would read through it to see if I managed to tick anything off anyway. So let's find out...

The first section was regarding "Health and well being". I did manage to get a skin doctor and dentist checkup, flu vaccine and even quit sugar for 3 days at one point, but I didn't find much time to exercise. I did a few walking challenges and managed 10,000 steps one week but didn't do any jogging. Still overall I did pretty well in that secion I guess.

After that comes "House". Decluttering is constantly on my to do list. We managed to give away/sell a lot of old baby stuff, and I've been gradually giving away Mini's clothes as she grows out of them, however there is still a LOT of decluttering that could be done. So I'll give myself a score of "could do better, room for improvement" on that one.

Ok, then we have "self improvements / style". My hair grew really long during the first year of the pandemic when I wasn't able to get to a hairdresser but not sure that really counts as updating my style! I've been to the hairdresser several times in the past year and I'm happy with my current hair colour. I would still like to update my style though. Maybe this year I'll have more time to think about it. I've been to the shops a few times recently but didn't particualry like the current fashion trends, so I'll keep working on finding my individual style. Still don't have much upper arm strength, haven't done a thing about that goal. So we'll move on..

Hm, I'm feeling a little down while reading through the rest of the goals because I've managed so few of them. But perhaps I should cut myself some slack considering how crazy the past few years have been. Maybe I'll allow myself some extra time, like until the end of the year, to give myself more of a chance.

Christmas in Ireland

We made it over to Ireland for Christmas 2022! The last time the whole family were together was Christmas 2019 prepandemic. It was so lovely to see everyone again. Since we are a big group (with 5 grandkids) we decided to go to Center Parcs in Longford for 5 days over the Christmas period. That worked out really well. We stayed in two lodges beside each other, around a ten minute walk from the "village". Most of the restaurants there have play areas for kids which is great.

Loads of the activities had booked out super fast unfortunately but my Dad still managed to book the Santa experience for us which worked out really well. Mini was a bit shy and barely answered him but we got some nice photos. They have a lovely spa at Center Parcs in Longford and really big indoor pool. The Christmas decorations around the forest were beautiful. So the whole thing felt really Christmassy.

Pizza night!

Spending time with her cousin

We went to the Jungle Book pantomine in The Gaiety theatre one afternoon and another day we went to a fun fair in Dun Laoghaire. We also met up with several friends and spent time with relations. So nice to see people after 3 years! Unfortunately my sister and her family came down with a bad cold/flu during our trip so there were several days we weren't able to meet. That happened with some of my friends too. Then hubby also got a cold towards the end of our stay. (and myself a few days later!)

Overall though it was a wonderful visit and I felt sad saying goodbye to everyone. Hopefully we'll be able to plan lots more trips over to Ireland this year though!