• "Hamnet" by Maggie O'Farrell*
• "Somebody's Daughter" by Ashley C. Ford*
• "Untangled" by Lisa Damour*
• "Finding Mother God" by Carol Lynn Pearson*
• "One Thousand Ships" by Natalie Haynes
• "Restoration" by Patrick Q. Mason
• "Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick" by Zora Neale Hurston*
• "Salvage the Bones" by Jesmyn Ward*
• "The Gift" by Edith Eva Eger
• "The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls" by Anissa Gray
• "Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent" by Isabel Wilkerson*
• "We Are Not Like Them" by Christine Pride and Jo Piazza*
• "The Midnight Library" by Matt Haig*
• "Smile" by Sarah Ruhl
• "Cloud Cuckoo Land" by Anthony Doerr*
• "We Run The Tides" by Vendela Vida
• "Sankofa" by Chibundu Onuzo*
• "Braiding Sweetgrass" by Robin Wall Kimmerer*
• "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" by Caitlin Doughty*
• "We Should All Be Feminists" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie*
• "The Book of Form and Emptiness" by Ruth Ozeki

Looking forward to 2022 and my ever expanding list of books I'd like to read! Books marked with an asterisk (*) are the ones I recommend most, which on the list seems to be most of them!

Looking out for number one! Oh boy, this boy makes me laugh!

I have pictures somewhere of Holly doing a very similar thing at a very similar age - walking around with a bag of cheerios. I wish I could've found them.

Another round of sledding, this time with the new Christmas sleds and both the babies! E loved sledding, although it's all fun and games until his hands got cold! And Ira wasn't so into it. But he did enjoy me holding him. So, win? It takes an immense amount of effort to get 5 children to the sledding hill. Thank goodness for my big girls!

It's the kind of year where I take pictures of the ornaments I made when I'm taking them off the tree. This year's ornaments were embroidered using a Sampler Pattern from Purl Soho. I really enjoyed making them primarily in the company of Ted Lasso.

I made salt dough ornaments this year too. I made handprint Santas of the youngest three's hands. They turned out really cute and only took two tries!

I love the way we roll on Christmas Day, nice and slow and we savor the day. Everyone was so excited to see that Santa had visited in the night, filling stockings. Honestly, watching Maeve open her stocking was a highlight! She was overjoyed with every item! Our daughters were really excited to exchange gifts and while some of the gifts were just right, some had to make us laugh. Maeve picked out her gifts all on her own with an elf at Santa Express. I likely would've steered her in a different direction for one of the gifts, but she was so excited to give it and confident that it would be well received! Maeve worked so hard to not tell what her gifts were and only gave "mints" (aka hints). But when I had just about opened the gift she gave to Conor and I, she couldn't hold it in any longer and told us all about it! So cute.

The rest of the day was filled with good food, family and games.