Happy new year!
2023 has come to an end, and so has my Goodreads annual reading challenge.
I was able to finish 51 books this year, which is two more than last year and more than any other year since I started using Goodreads to keep track of my reading.
I get more excited about my Goodreads year-in-review than my Spotify Wrapped, to be honest.
My Goodreads year-in-review says I read about 17,000 pages this year, and while some of them were duds, I was easily able to list nine books that I really, really loved over the course of this past year.
2023 was a pretty chill year compared with more recent years.
Zero complaints. None at all.
Of course, after an absolutely insane 2020 full of unexpected (and unwanted) transitions — such as being involuntarily terminated from the Peace Corps, evacuated from Ukraine, unemployed for half a year, moving to Flagstaff and starting a new job — everything seems pretty chill in comparison.
Goodbye 2023! I’ll be sharing my annual list of the best books I’ve read this year shortly, but for now, just a quick post to recap what I read this holiday month.
Merry Christmas from Flagstaff, Ariz.!
It’s been a long time since I’ve done a “what I packed” post, but my post about what I packed during a Europe trip several years ago has been getting a lot of traction lately, so I figured I’d do a similar post to recap my recent trip to Minnesota!
This year is flying by!
Oh, hey dere! /Midwestern accent
Ryan and I just got back from an extended weekend in Rochester, Minn., where we visited some family for a little pre-Christmas celebration.
Where has this year gone? There’s snow on the ground, tomorrow is December and I’m only one (!!!) book away from reaching my goal of 50 books this year!
Thanksgiving is over, which means it’s Christmas season!
(Thanksgiving comes BEFORE Christmas, this is a hill I will die on.)
Following our hastily-abandoned moving plans, Ryan and I hosted Thanksgiving dinner for his parents and a few friends at our apartment, tore down our fall decor and hiked out into the forest for our second-straight year of cutting down our Christmas tree!