It’s been another year of loss, gain, and change at Ward Manor – with a smattering of other notable events.

The losses. The Wife’s father passed back in March. In many ways, we’d already said goodbye when he went into the memory care facility. Still, there is a world of difference between saying goodbye to the memory of a person and saying the final goodbye.

On a much more minor note, we also lost the Ward Wagon for the better part of July after I was rear-ended at the end of June.

The gains. In June we welcomed the newest member of the Ward Clowder, Boo. He assimilated into the rest of the cats faster than any other previous. If we could stop him from jumping up on the counters.

Gun-wise, I added a Smith & Wesson FPC to the armory. Due to life getting it in the way, I didn’t get to take it to a range until the last day of the year. This is also where I found the Sig red dot I bought for it wasn’t doing what I wanted. Like holding a zero.

We gained some flexibility in our budget when we paid off the Ward Wagon.

The Wife gained a trophy for winning the Area Humorous Speech Contest.

I gained a lightsaber when The Wife and I went over to Orlando for my first concert since probably 2019.

House-wise, this was a year for doing upgrades. We added a retractable screen door – which The Wife and MIL have put to good use almost all of December – as well as new glass doors to our master shower. Also, we upgraded the robot vacuums. Having the self-evacuating ones is really nice. The Wife was really happy when we upgraded to a double-oven range – particularly during some of our big family dinners. I was really happy when I upgraded the monitors on my personal and work computers. We also upgraded the dishwasher – which leaves the fridge as the last original appliance since we moved into Ward Manor. I’m not sure I would consider our new main television as an upgrade, as it was more of a replacement that happened to be a better model.

Changes. The biggest change around Ward Manor was my accepting a new position at my day job. It was a promotion, but it meant leaving a position that I held for thirteen years. It also meant leaving a team that I helped found a decade ago. It also means having to learn a lot on the fly, which I will admit, hasn’t been the most fun I’ve had this year. It also meant a couple of work-related trips, which was something I hadn’t done in quite a while. At least I got to meet a bunch of folks that I only knew virtually – as well as see some people I hadn’t seen in person since the pandemic.

Familywise, my nephew graduated high school. When it comes to kids, it’s always long days and short years. Those long days were apparent when we had our great niece while The Wife’s niece transitioned into a new work-from-home position. On the blog side, I introduced anime recommendations. I’ve been getting back into anime for the last year or so, and it’s good to share some of what I’m finding.

There were some notable anniversaries this year. First, it was the twenty-year anniversary of my father’s passing. Which was an odd coincidence when we laid my grandmother’s (his mother’s) ashes in the same family plot around the same time he passed. Second, it was the fifteenth anniversary of the blog. It’s been interesting to look back through the archives and see how it evolved over that time. Speaking of blog-related anniversaries, it was also the tenth anniversary of Metal Tuesdays. Perhaps the happiest anniversary was the five-year anniversary of asking The Wife to marry me.

The TLDR is that everyone had a wonderful little holiday and probably overstuffed ourselves on good food. I got some neat toys for my stocking stuffers and have another neat toy coming after using the gift certificate from MIL. The Wife’s niece got me an anime-style catzila t-shirt,

Last week, The Wife and I went to the optometrist. I hadn’t been in a few years and my prescription needed updating. It updated into progressive lenses. Yeah more aging.

I also renewed my concealed weapons permit. So now I have a permit with my current face.