Merry Christmas 2021, From The Barretts!

 

Merry Christmas from the Barretts 2021!

The Barrett family spent a large part of 2021 RECOVERING from 2020; much of the winter & spring was still spent in semi-quarantine, with no jobs/school/etc. outside the house. When "real life" started again (somewhere in March or April? It's hard to pinpoint), it seemed to come all at once! We were no longer used to "going places" and "doing stuff" (a feeling many of you may be familiar with, after 2020). As this year progressed, we managed to shake off our intertia and accomplish some great things, in spite of our sluggish start. 2021 has been a challenging one, but it has also been a year filled with joy, gratitude, and love. After last year, we have become more aware of blessings we've taken for granted. We've learned to look out more for one another and humbly admit it when we need help. We have been reminded of the great value of family & friends. We hope to always be more aware of (and grateful for) the many amazing things in our lives!

WARNING: Lots of pictures/videos from 2021 on the way!

The first "big event" of 2021 for our family was in April; it was the 68th annual TMTA Piano Ensemble Concert. Because of COVID, it had to be held outside, but it was still a successful event!

The girls practiced their pieces hard and everyone sounded lovely. Adrianne was on the event's planning committee and so she was present for all rehearsals/etc. None of us had ever attended an OUTDOOR piano recital, so it was at least a memorable experience.

 

In July, we had a family reunion with the Nashes in July at YMCA Snow Mountain Ranch in Colorado. We rented a huge family cabin and we all loved it! Everyone loved hanging out together in the cabin and bonding together as a family.

There was a little something for everyone at the YMCA (hiking, horseback riding, swimming, roller skating, arts & crafts, tubing, ropes courses, zip lines, indoor games, etc). We had a busy but very exciting few days! It was great to have new adventures, and to share them as a family.

 

We also took a short trip across the border in October to Rocky Point (Puerto Penasco), Mexico. It was only a few short days, but it was a welcome respite from our hectic fall season.

While in Rocky Point, we laid around on the beach, eating lots of tacos and doing as little as possible! Well, we did do a FEW things:

The girls took a ride on one of the "banana boats" hanging out along the shore. We also went four-wheeling along the nearby sand dunes, and strolled a bit through town. It was a great family outing; we all thought it ended too soon!

Here are some of our "greatest hits" from the rest of the year:

Nathan is on the verge of earning his Human Resources Certification from Pima Community College…his final class concludes this month! He is excited about the new career opportunities this will create for him. He is currently still working at PAG in downtown Tucson, where his office is still (mostly) empty a lot of the time. The biggest excitement he experienced this year was unexpected oral surgery; one of his teeth cracked in half while eating soup! (Actually, biting down on a chicken bone, but soup sounds funnier). It was an ordeal to install his new, "bionic" tooth, but we will probably all be laughing about it in a few years.

Nathan also serves as a Gospel Doctrine teacher in our ward, and spends most of his spare time working on puzzles & listening to audio-books. We love his great example and his sacrifices for us all, and we tolerate his many “dad jokes.”

Adrianne kept herself busy this year with a variety of jobs & volunteer work. She helped out on the Ensemble Committee for the annual TMTA Piano Ensemble Concert, and is on the committee again for the 2022 concert. She is also the Vice President of Walden Grove High School’s Music Booster organization. Adrianne is especially happy to be back working as a K-5 music teacher at Great Expectations Academy, and did we mention she is still teaching private piano lessons from home?

Whew! Somehow, in all that, she still finds time to “taxi” kids back & forth, read a lot of books, and teach Mission Prep to local LDS teens a couple of times a month. Adrianne loves her family, and she is especially excited to be celebrating her 20th wedding anniversary with Nathan at the end of 2021! Hooray! They are getting pretty decent at this marriage thing.

 

Lorelai has reached her junior year of high school (already!), and has been so busy that seeing her is a rare treat. She worked hard all spring and summer at getting driving practice, finally earning her driver’s license in August. Now she can drive herself around!

 She has had a lot on her plate this fall; Homecoming, hanging out with friends, three AP classes, National Honors Society service projects, church activities, and of course marching band.

 Despite having very little band in 2020 and early 2021, the marching season was successful beyond everyone’s wildest dreams. The Red Wolf Regiment ended up as the Division 2A Runner-Up for the state of Arizona (2^nd out of 26 schools) in the state competition this November! Lorelai just took her SATs in December; she is clearly looking ahead to even bigger things in the future.

Celeste had a rocky start to 2021, but has recovered nicely as COVID restrictions have lifted. She loves being with friends and loves to serve others; this was proven time & time again in 2021, as she would bring “care packages” and notes of encouragements to friends who were either quarantined with COVID, or else who were having personal struggles. Her empathy, friendliness, and love are great examples to us all! She is doing well in eighth grade so far (she even helps her Algebra teacher grade papers & help younger students).

 

Celeste is also back in the Blue (advanced) Band at Great Expectations Academy, playing tenor sax and mentoring younger band members. She also started private piano lessons outside the home and is blossoming as a performer! We love Celeste for all that she does for us and the joy she brings to our home.

Aurora’s soccer team practiced informally through the fall of 2020 and the winter of 2021, even though there was no official season. It was so beneficial to all the girls to be outside playing and exercising!

 Her team is now part of the Cardinals soccer club organization, and her team just became division champs for the fall season. Besides kicking the ball around, Aurora has taken up the trumpet and joined GEA’s Blue Jazz Band; she is having a lot of fun learning that instrument! She also continues to take piano and has progressed a lot in 2021.

 And even though she didn’t get to play “Young Elsa” in the community theater production of “Frozen,” Aurora still managed to get a role as an Arendelle Townsperson in the “revival” of the show (a community-based production with an older cast). She had a great time and hopes to do more plays in the future. She is in sixth grade now (wow!), and is sometimes overwhelmed by her homework but has good grades so far!

 If you've made it this far in the blog post...thank you for reading about our family's adventures! We love you all & wish you a healthy & safe 2022. We have a lot coming up (a possible promotion for Nathan; a high school senior (eek!) AND a new high school freshman; a possible family vacation to California in the spring); we are eager to see what 2022 brings our way. See you next year!

Merry Christmas 2020 (AKA, Hooray, 2020 Is Almost Over!!!!)--Love, The Barretts

  Merry Christmas 2020, From the Barretts

or

"Hooray, 2020 is Almost Over!!"

It's finally time to return to the blog...but what to write about this year? What, really, can we say about 2020? What can ANYONE say?? It has been long; it has been hard for us all. Fear, loneliness, isolation, stress, exhaustion, contention, illness, death, depression, uncertainty, violence, hatred...the list goes on and on, and it's seemingly all around us. As a family, we have been spared much of the worst of 2020; we have not fallen seriously ill with COVID-19 or anything else (nor, thankfully, has most of our extended family), and we've only had minimal financial hardship. But we know many others who have been touched by tragedy and trials. We have had to say "goodbye" to many activities and events in our lives we used to take for granted. We have had to deal with changes in our work and educational environments. We've often found ourselves impatient, frustrated, and more uncertain about the future than ever before. Such is life in a pandemic!

And yet...in spite of the worry and uncertainty that has defined 2020, our family has found things to be happy about and to be grateful for. It’s true that many things have changed in our everyday lives; nevertheless, we have been able to draw closer together. We have been fighting less, listening more, and better appreciating our blessings, large and small.

It is true that we really miss our friends, family, and "normal" social interactions. We are impatient for the pandemic to be over, and for us to reclaim our lives, changed though they might be. But as part of our unexpected "extra family time," we have also learned to better work together, worship together, pray together, and laugh together. As our girls become teenagers, we know our family time together is running short...so we have cherished this extra time together as a "silver lining" in a difficult year. At the beginning of 2020, my girls' relationship with one another was strained & distant. Now, they love spending time with one another. They don't even mind hanging out with their "lame" mom and dad once in a while too!

This year, our family spent most of its time at home....the girls' schooling was primarily done online, and Nathan was also working from home for about 3 months in the spring. It was a crowded & somewhat stressful time, but we survived!

We tried to break up the monotony with some outdoor adventures (mostly hiking in the spring, then neighborhood walks in the fall/winter).

 

 Thankfully, we were lucky enough to take a family trip in July, to Yellowstone, Grand Teton, and Glacier National Parks this summer…with a bonus Barrett family reunion while we were in Montana. It was beautiful country and great company! We felt very fortunate that the National Parks re-opened shortly before we were scheduled to leave (although some of the parks were not able to open all the way due to the virus complicating things).

 It was divine to experience the cool days and lush greenery of the northern United States. We really want to revisit this area again sometime soon! As (2020) luck would have it, this summer turned out to be one of the hottest and driest in Arizona HISTORY, so we are doubly glad we had this short break from the heat.

Here's the basic rundown of our family's year:

  Nathan has continued working for Pima Association of Governments…although his office has been much quieter this year, as many coworkers have chosen to work remotely. He also worked from home for a few months in the spring! Nathan is currently working towards a Human Resources Certification from Pima Community College.  He serves as gospel doctrine teacher in our ward, but he was not able to teach very many lessons before church services were suspended. He has diligently kept up his audio-book habit, as well as taking regular walks, so he is likely in better physical shape than most of us at this point!

Adrianne was “unemployed” for large stretches of 2020, due to school closures. As of this writing, she has still not returned to her music teaching job at Great Expectations Academy; she misses her students and hopes she can see them again in 2021! After a quiet summer, she has resumed teaching several private piano lessons a week (even organizing a "virtual recital" this month), and she has also sold a lot of baked goods this fall to get a little extra cash. She’s spent the remainder of her time reading a LOT of books and trying to stay on top of the girls’ remote learning. She was also just called to be a Mission Prep teacher for our stake, and she is excited (but nervous!) to help teach future potential missionaries.

Lorelai performed in a district-wide school concert last January as the first-chair trombone; she was very proud of that honor! In February, she was able to appear in the local drama production of “Into the Woods” with some of her friends. With no marching band this fall (her sophomore year), she has branched out a bit, joining her high school’s golf team. She loves it and wants to try it again next school year. 

 

 Lorelai also served (as best as she could) as the class president in her Young Women's class at church. Isolation is hard on our high-schooler; she sometimes worries her life as a teen is slipping away from her while she is trapped at home. But she has made deeper connections with a few of her closest friends, and she has been slowly improving her relationship with her sisters, her parents, and her Father in Heaven. She is a diligent, smart, funny, hardworking kid, and we are proud of the ways in which she has grown more mature, resilient, and responsible this year.

 

Celeste has really missed seeing her friends during this quarantine; social distancing is hard on our social butterfly. However, she has been developing her other talents from home (playing piano, cooking, and makeovers). She was also able to have a small outdoor movie party AND a mani-pedi for her birthday, which gave her some much-needed social time. Celeste was ALSO class president in her church Young Women's group, and deespite the pandemic, she really stepped up to the plate and showed initiative and compassion in leading her class and working with her adult leaders. She is enjoying seventh grade so far, and is happy she gets to attend school every day (at least until multiple COVID cases sent the middle school back to remote learning in December...ugh!).

 

...and she got braces, too!

 In spite of these setbacks she rarely complains; her naturally positive demeanor is a shining force for good in our family (especially those of us who sometimes tend to the pessimistic!). We are all so grateful to have such a helpful, sunny person like Celeste in our home.

Aurora was about to perform as “Young Elsa” in our charter school's production of “Frozen” just as the quarantine hit. Sadly, the play had to be canceled, a fact which brought her much sorrow.

 

However, Aurora is nothing if not determined; she has found happiness by achieving other goals. She has been lucky enough to attend school daily for the last couple of months (she's in fifth grade this year); it has been very helpful for her to have regular social contact. She has also finally caught the reading bug: so far this quarantine, she has read the entire Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, AND Keeper of the Lost Cities series...wow!

 And (of course), she's been playing as much soccer as possible! Aurora played on her first "all-star" (tournament-playing) team last winter pre-lockdown, and she has been practicing informally with her old team this fall in preparation for a new winter season starting in 2021. Through it all, Aurora has tried to stay positive. She is sometimes nervous about the future, but she has also enjoyed the extra time to "laze" around the house and hang out with Mom & Dad.

 We love you all; thanks for reading! We wish you all a safe and healthy 2021. May we learn and grow from the trials we face, and learn to rely more on the Lord and each other while counting our blessings, both great and small.

With Love, The Barretts

PS. Enjoy this "mini-recital" from our three girls!