Making Madness: The Story of 2022 so far

Journal along with us this year as we work through the new sensory knowledge journal, Making Madness. We will start at the most reasonable place of course, the beginning. This vintage-style guided journal opens with a short 6-page section for recording a few paragraphs about how the year of 2022 has gone for us so far. The calendar, which we’ll work through next, starts in May when the freshness of spring urges us to start anew. We are making notes about life happenings from about January to now, the beginning of May.

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This year has been a whirlwind ever since the sun set on New Year’s Eve. I’m flipping through my worn-out agenda book from the past year and old phone photos to refresh my memory for this little prelude section of the guided journal. We did get a southern snow in mid January down here in the state of Georgia this year. We built a snowman with frozen beef jerky for a nose, since we were plumb out of carrots at the time. The snow cover was gorgeous on the trees and we couldn’t help but get out and enjoy our short time with the powdery snow that day.

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We were wrapping up some of the projects from our move to the new house over the summertime. The big one in January was building the side-island for the kitchen so we could finish unpacking the cooking gadgets and finally have a place for all that extra popcorn that gets devoured every time a movie is watched around here. I ordered some pre-built casework for the base cabinets and an oversized butcher block for the counter. It took a couple of weeks to assemble, trim, and paint after all the materials arrived. I think it turned out pretty well!

I got antsy to start the garden early this year because I didn’t get to really do much gardening last year. We were busy packing and selling for the move. I had big plans for the new place, though! It started last fall when I planted a few last season flowers to get established over the frigid winter. The pink variegated petals bloomed out bigger and brighter a few weeks ago. Then, I measured and drew up plans for a new raised garden bed in the south-facing lawn to catch the maximum sunlight. I wanted to use more of a dead space in the back corner, but eventually accepted that there just wasn’t going to be enough sunlight over the course of the days to start there. I may still try an experimental shade garden there, but that’s for another season. I ordered, probably too many, seeds and a healthy number of rose bushes to start establishing around March. I tried a couple of store-bought grape vines, but I put them out too early and a super late frost got them. The little girls got involved, and made chia pets in their art club to use at home. As of this past weekend, the cedar bed is just about built and I’m going to get the fill done soon and start the garden veggies and hopefully a juicy watermelon too.

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After a lucky St. Patrick’s Day when we saw a rainbow leading to a pot-of-gold, I started to get back into cooking a little bit. With a new air fryer that the cashier at Target convinced me was basically essential to pandemy survival, I am learning that they are so popular now, a lot of the food packages are now including air frying directions. Life saver. It took a few tries, but I finally stopped burning the french fries and they are, in fact, every bit as golden and delicious as she said they would be. I even started baking bread again. It’s been a while for some reason, but I pulled out Julia Child’s recipe and made a delicious few loaves and now I can’t keep it around for more than a couple of days before it all gets gobbled down.

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Let’s see, now on to April. It feels like we just had a relaxing stay-cation for our spring break, already a month ago! We visited grandparents, explored an escape room, and found some books to read at the book store. The mall parking lot was hosting a mini traveling carnival and we stopped by one afternoon and rode the rides before it started raining. They loved swinging high up in the Air Flyer and I broke a nail being terrorized by the Monster Swinger Thing.

A friend turned 50 and he threw some bluegrass down with his old friends from Tennessee for a night. They were pickin’ to every tune they could remember together on one of the first perfectly pleasant evenings of the season. Speaking of the season, the elementary school was back to business as usual and held their spring semi-formal dance for the first time since 2019! All the girls were excited and making plans for outfits the whole week before the big day. The older sister, who is in middle school now, even wanted to tag along because “there is gonna be food there.” She’s definitely my child. I took a shopping trip with the girls and we enjoyed checking out and coordinating clothes in the dressing room. I had to explain how they worked. They were so cute going back and forth to each other’s stalls. We finally found the perfect ones and took pictures before they headed out to wreak havoc.

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Cookie season started right from the jump on the first in January, as it does every year. The girls recorded a cute video for their online cookie order page and we started getting orders right away. They are cookie pros by now, their fourth Girl Scouting year, so they already formed a sales strategy and had sales targets on their minds. They worked hard through the spring hosting cookie booths (even at the mall this year), decorating them with acid green balloons to draw attention, and calling relatives to pitch their cookie business. They even went door-to-door in our new neighborhood one afternoon. The troop blew their old records out of the park and sold the most boxes ever this year. We are making room for the badges now. Geocaching was a hit for the girls this year and they even hosted a booth for other troops to learn about it. They were even old enough to try out archery with the pros now.

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My son transitioned from Tang Soo Do Korean-style martial arts to basketball this spring. He went to an exciting game at Georgia Tech with his alumni grandfather and was introduced to a slew of players after. I think he learned what it was like to experience a true role model that day. Even Buzz was there to fan the flame of sports passion. He wants to join the NBA and I whole-heartedly support him in his hoop dream and love cheering him on during his practices and games. He was blessed with an amazing coach and their team is second overall and heading to the number two seed playoffs this coming week. Now, if only I can convince him to wear the knee guard pants…

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He’s also enjoying his bowling league, although he confessed a desire to focus more on basketball next year, so this will probably be the last year he does that with his good friend from elementary school. He and his sister also started middle school and the band this year. They’ve learned so much about performing music in just a few short months. My son is learning percussion and my eldest daughter is discovering the oboe after picking it up with a quickness at the summer instrument try-outs. They just wrapped up their spring concert where they performed and completed three full compositions.

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All the girls gravitated to their respective art clubs and soccer team this year, after a long hiatus for one of them. My youngest daughter tried out for and made the chorus. We just watched her boisterous spring chorus show in the school gymnasium and could tell from the smiles and joy on the kids’ faces how much they all enjoyed that teacher and club, which had also been inactive for the last two years. They even featured the infamous, “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” song from Encanto every child under 12 was singing this year.

As for me, I embarked on a journey this spring to tie all the loose ends of my health and fitness that had become a bit disheveled from the chaos of the last few years. I made doctor appointments and dentist appointments. They always seem to find something, and I had to have two root canals and then some at an endodontist before it was all said and done. I even explored some medspa offerings (that shall remain unspoken of) and tried a few of the local hair and nail salons to find my new go-to spots in the new city. I think I found my girl, but we will see how the next few salon trips go. My hair is getting back to long. Mostly, though, I’m rocking a side braid these days for all the daily runs around town.

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We’ve found some new hobbies and fun spots around the area to delve into this summer. There is a roller skating rink close by and we all had a blast there and will become regulars this summer, no doubt. There are loads of trampoline and fun indoor parks opening up with games and speed racing and bowling and golf and so much to look forward to over the summer break now that the restrictions from the last couple of years are relaxing. We even tried dinner at Medieval Times for the first time EVER and couldn’t resist fanning out with period costumes and crowns for the birthday twins. We got flowers from our Red Knight and were all smiles coming out of the flashy tournament.

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These last few weeks of the spring of 2022 are flying by as we hunker down on school work assignments, performances, games, teacher appreciation, and end of the school year celebrations. Now, we prepare for the long summer break, but I know that will fly by just as quickly and we will be sunburnt and buying school supplies in the back of Target again before we know it.

Hopefully, we will capture most of our adventure inside the pages of their journals here to keep as a souvenir of the story of 2022 so far. My artist started hers in bright purple pen. My pragmatic eldest daughter began with a list chart of the activities to date and my observant daughter filled the entire six pages with details of her favorite things and favorite friends from the year. My son, however, is occupied with last-minute studies and some catch-up he needs to focus on and will have to fill his section another week. It perfectly demonstrates their personalities, even from the first pages. I’ll add some sketches, photos, and get my entry recorded by hand too.

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Because we have many different copies of this journal in use here, we are going to do a linen book cover project right when summer begins that will let each of us customize our own book. I’ll share that project and many more we do with this journal right here on the blog over the next year. There are so many different ways to approach the prompts, as you can definitely see with the different takes each example of the “Story of 2022 so far” above took to tell it.

How would you tackle documenting the “Story of 2022 so far?”

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Flip through your download sample:

Print setting recommendations: Click on the 3 “More…” dots on the menu at the bottom of the PDF booklet viewer above and “Download PDF File.” Choose a folder to save your file to. Open the PDF in an Adobe PDF viewer and click “Print.” Under the “Page Size & Handling” section, choose the “Booklet” mode; “Booklet subset: Both sides;” “Binding: Left;” “Orientation: Portrait;” and “Print” your booklet on 8.5×11-inch letter-sized paper from your printer.

Project details:

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