2021, the new 2020

Chinese New Year was a strictly immediate family event this year.

Anna rocking it out in online school

Watching Rachel’s college orchestra concerts streaming on youtube

Taking a selfie to commemorate my first time waiting “backstage” in a long time at Northwest Bible

Keeping up with our older girls on our weekly family meet

This one just makes me laugh because it so captures the mood of the whole winter! The posture, the PJs, the stuff strewn on the floor – if it were an art print, we’d call it 2021

Just a snapshot of the spring. What a strange world we are still living in. I think we all thought that if we could just get through 2020, things would change, but 2021 seems to be a challenge as well.

I have still been canceling or moving most of my events. Because of Noah’s heart condition (my son), our family is really locked down, especially in the winter months. We’re still homeschooling, and trying to stay connected with our college daughters even though we can’t see them in person.

Our oldest, Rinnah, went back to school after Christmas break and they immediately had a pretty huge outbreak on campus. She got Covid, and was pretty sick which was pretty scary for us. The school didn’t have enough housing to quarantine everyone who caught it and it was kind of a mess for a while. She recovered, but it was two of the three weeks of her short January term, so she was really scrambling for that class which was required for her graduation and not offered any other time. Very stressful.

In February I had my first event since September for Westerville Christian Church. It’s been so weird since I’ve been a full-time speaker and music artist for 15 years, and going that long was just surreal. They wanted to do a hybrid event, with some in person and others watching online, and in the end, we realized it would just be easier technically for me to be online as well, so I ZOOMed the event which was fine, but it’s not the same.

In March I had my first event in person, a women’s events at Northwest Bible Church, while all my other March events moved out yet another year. Several of them were events that were already moved from March of 2020! Hopefully one day I’ll get to do them. The people at Northwest Bible were amazing, so nice, so organized, so Covid careful, and we were all grateful to be together. I’m still really nervous about being in groups, and meticulously careful about masking and distancing, but what joy to be with others again. I was also able to get my first vaccine which makes me hopeful that I may be able to work more now personally, and also that events may be possible for more people again soon.

We have a big announcement next month, and Rinnah’s senior show! Can’t wait to share, and I’m hoping things are turning a corner for all of us.

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