Oh man. Our New Year’s Eve tonight is being spent in a manner that pretty much sums up how 2014 has rolled for us! As I write this, Matt has just finished up in the shed and as we are mostly all pretty exhausted, we have decided to hole up together in the house to watch a movie and carve out some quiet family time. The last few days have been some pretty crazy mango madness! Everything is a mess in the house as I’ve struggled to stay on top of that as well as some Blue Sky farm stuff. We’ve got no big party planned, actually, nothing at all exciting planned to see in the New Year cause we’re just too tired – eek! I feel so lame just writing that! But, we’re happy. And grateful to have each other, and a small bit of time together! Oh – and we’ve got junk food in the form of chips, bhuja mix and maltesers so that gets us over the line in the eyes of the kids as some kind of celebration!!
2014 has been a big, busy and kinda all over the place year to be honest – not really how I like things to run! Everything this year has felt two thirds crazy out of control, one third grab a breath, catch up. There have been times of sitting outside on the grass on the lawn with the peace of a quiet farm about us and thinking how lucky we are to be living this life, to other days of just wanting to buy a little five acre lifestyle block and go back to 9 to 5 jobs!!
Recently we got a fantastic idea from one of our clever family members (thanks Glynis) who each year puts together a slideshow of photos and videos from the past year. The kids in the family eagerly await the slideshow viewing each year at Christmas time! I love this idea so much and have been madly trying to put together our family slideshow for 2014 over the last few days so we can sit down and watch it together on New Years Day. It is such a nice way to look back on the year and also awesome to be able to do something with the bizillion photos we take throughout the year!
Here’s a couple of my favourite pic’s from 2014;
Fealy cousins do Granite Gorge
The Johnson, Fealy, Simpson kids = The Blue Sky kids!
Teaching him bad habits already!
Gregory River
Check this out Mum!
Lawn Hill National Park
The stunning Mission Beach
Port Douglas Wildlife Habitat
Mangoes in flower – Blue Sky Produce
Our campsite – Gregory Downs
Peter Prado – Walsh River Crossing
A baby boy in his Dad’s hands
And then there were 4!
‘Bell’ girls 2014
The new look Fealy Family!
A BOY! How am I supposed to play with another BOY?!
Patches had 9 puppies!
On looking back, we can see that thankfully, we’ve had more good than bad this year. So we can sip a drink tonight and know that it is another year under the belt, another year of lessons learnt, memories made, kids grown, and lots of love with a fair sprinkling of tired/grumpy in there too!
Here’s a bit of a round up of the Fealy Family Year in a nutshell!
Best Part of The Year as voted on by all family members – Camping at Gregory Downs
Worst Part of the Year as voted on by all family members – Saying goodbye to Jerry
The Top 3 Blog Posts written in 2014 (as dictated by the number of views)
It’s A Boy – The arrival of Baby Kipp (which gained us the most views on our blog in one day with 323 hits)
Flashback Friday ‘Free’ the slideshow of some of the best photos from our trip around Oz!
A Cup of Tea with Me a post inspired from my Blog With Pip course.
The Most Popular Blog Posts to Date (written any time over the last 2 years we have been blogging)
And that’s 2014 done and dusted! How was your year? What was the best part? Roll on 2015!
You can’t half tell we are sisters! We are sitting here having a quiet one too, enjoying a bit of down time. Chips, maltesers, movie and party poppers got us over the line here in the west. Feeling a little lame too, but enjoying it none the less. I am also doing a little bit of a wrap up post for the blog as well. Wooo party animal. Favourite part of the year from the boys – Adventure World, Worst part of the year from the boys – All the driving. Happy New Year and will see you soon!!
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Love all of your pictures! Happy New Year!! Hope it is a great one!
Happy New Year to you too Mariah! Thanks so much for still following along! I drop in on you guys every now and then too – will be sure to say hi next time!
James & I also had a very peaceful New Year’s Eve. Some years, you do just need to chill out! We did set our goals for the year and the result of one of them (connect with the community we have bought a block of land in and are in the process of designing and building a house for) might just mean a more party like New Year’s Eve for 2015!!!
Thank you Judith! Happy New Year to you and James too!
Jess you had a baby this year. Enough said. Anything else you achieved this year is EXCEPTIONAL! You are an amazing family ( yes you are) and we miss your enthusiasm very much. Happy New Year! May mangozilla be a sign of things to come xxxxx
Michelle you are too kind! We miss you Engo’s lots! Happy New Year to you too and hopefully we will make it to Brissy for a catch up in 2015!!