2015 Recap

2015 is coming to a close and I find it easier to think back on my year if I write it down. We've had a fun-filled year with it's fair share of ups and downs but here are some of the highlights of our year.


Books
My reading challenge for this year was to read 25 books. So far I've made it to 23. I'd like to think I could knock out a book a day these next couple of days and I'm sure as heck gonna try but it may not happen. I'm usually late to the game with books so it's not as if any of them are new this year but here's my list of books that are worthy of your time. They are quite varied: political, fiction, religious, Appalachian, cooking, you name it....it's on the list.


1. The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom
2. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
3. On Writing by Stephen King
4. Gray Mountain by John Grisham
5. Deer Hunting with Jesus by Joe Bageant
6. Searching for Sunday by Rachel Held Evans
7. The Red Tent by Anita Diamant
8. Heritage by Sean Brock


Movies


I went to the movies exactly twice this year. Both times with my sister to see rated R female comedies which were funny but I'm not qualified to give you advice on movies considering I don't watch them.


Podcasts
I discovered podcasts this year and my life was changed forever. These are worth your time (as if you didn't already know).


1. Radiolab (the very best)
2. StoryCorps (duh)
3. Gilmore Guys (they break down every episode of Gilmore Girls, it's my guilty pleasure)
4. Serial (which I haven't actually listened to yet but I've heard only wonderful things about it)


Music


This year we bought a record player and started our collection of albums. We saw Old Crow in concert 3 times (Blacksburg, Denver, Roanoke).

TV
I may not know movies but I am an expert TV watcher. Aside from watching countless football games these are the shows I wasted precious hours binge-watching:


1. Drunk History
2. The Mindy Project
3. Sherlock
4. Parks and Rec
5. Orange is the New Black
6. Gilmore Girls for the 47th time


Animals
In 2015 a small fortune in vet bills (2 hip replacements, lots of pain meds, physical therapy, Lyme's disease test) and added some new outside family members to the farm. First 2 hens and a rooster, then 4 hens and minus one rooster. Do the math and we have 6 wonderful hens and said good riddance to a hateful old rooster who attacked all of us.

Food
We grew our largest garden to date and had the widest variety we've ever had. We ended the season with 10 cans of strawberry rhubarb jam, 15 cans of kraut, 16 cans of pickles, 4 cans of pickled peppers, 14 cans of salsa, 6 cans of tomatoes, and 40 cans of spaghetti sauce. We also put a good bit of asparagus, broccoli, rhubarb, corn, and zucchini in the freezer.

Travel
Our big summer trip was when I got on an airplane for the first time and we travelled to Colorado for a week where we hiked, camped, relaxed and decided we didn't want to move there.


We attended our first pro football game in Charlotte and watched Green Bay lose. Drew went to Italy for 2 weeks. We camped with family on Memorial Day. We spent a week on the New River with my parents. We had two weddings in Tennessee and my siblings and I spent a week in Williamsburg.

Here's a little video recap of the year

I hope you all have a wonderful New Years and a joyful 2016 filled with sweet friends, books to lose yourself in, travel to beautiful places, and animals to love on. What were some of your 2015 highlights? Books? Places to travel? Podcasts? Chicken names?

Colorado

Remember when I had a life...and a blog. I'm beginning to get back a small part of that now that it's summer. Nevermind the fact that I'm already doing prep work for next year, I have a little more freedom.

I'll do a reflection on the school year at a later time. It's still pretty fresh but FIRST I want to share about our trip to Colorado. If you follow me on insta (mountainmeghan) then you likely felt like you were on this trip with us. But in case you didn't get enough allow me to give you some highlights and pics here on yet another social media outlet.

This was my first time flying and the flight west was amazing! So easy, arrived 30 minutes early and lugged our Osprey packs and luggage around Denver for a few hours while we waited on our room to be ready. We stayed downtown and enjoyed walking along the 16th Street Mall. We were told we had the "swagger of humanitarians" by a friendly street vendor. When I asked her what that looked like she said that we were wearing earth-tones and were smiling as if enjoying vacation but still pondering the injustices of the world. She was pretty dead on actually so we listened to her for 45 minutes.

Denver was a city. Convenient. Wonderful brunch. Lots of people doing their own thing. We attempted public transportation and bragged on ourselves as we got on the bus saying "We are so good at this." Then had to pay a stranger $20 because we didn't have change for our bus fare and after 15 minutes on said bus another well-meaning stranger told us we were on the wrong bus. Despite being a "city" Denver was incredibly friendly. In the end we paid $40 to realize we should just stay downtown and walk to destinations. Lesson learned.

While in Denver we also went to Red Rocks amphitheater which is apparently a rite of passage if you visit Colorado. We would have seen any old band there just to say we went but once we caught wind that Old Crow Medicine Show was going to be there we bumped our trip up from July to June. The venue was breathtaking and OCMS never disappoints. Drew clearly scared our neighbors when they played Carry Me Back to Virginia.

We spent the next day driving into the mountains (we rented a car after our bus fiasco) where we rented sleeping bags to camp in Rocky Mountain National Park that night. We took our Enos and set up camp for the night. We made pork chops and s'mores and lounged and read. Unfortunately it rained and we slept in the car but it was still a great experience.

The next day (my birthday) we had planned for an 11 mile hike along the Lumpy Ridge trail. We chose this trail because it allowed for so many different views, it is supposed to be the best to see all of the landscape of the National Park: mountains, meadows, rocks and a lake that is only from snow melt. Pretty freaking awesome. Sure it rained and I thought I was having a heart attack because my left arm and hand went numb but again totally worth it.

That night we met our friends Sarah and Ben for my birthday dinner in Boulder. I ate my weight in crab legs and we enjoyed catching up with them. Drew and Sarah had planned for us to go to an escape room which was really cool even though we didn't solve the mystery.

We stayed in Boulder for the remainder of our trip relaxing in our awesome Airbnb, or Enos, or eating really yummy food. Admittedly, this trip was to kind of feel out the city of Boulder as a possible move for us in the future and we did love the entire vibe of it. We did a little kayaking and a tour at Celestial Seasonings for our last day.

Our trip home was not quite as smooth, cancelled flights, mechanical issues and an overnight stay in Newark made us more than ready to get home.

The landscape in Colorado was breathtaking everywhere you turned. We WILL go back and hopefully take our family and dogs. But....it's not home. We were so happy to be back in "our" mountains and immersed once again in our small town. It's been so nice to be home and start my summer.