My life today: Merry Christmas, 2021. The year of technology trauma

Merry Christmas everyone. We made it. Who is ready for 2022? I'm not sure that I am. The world is technologically evolving faster than this old brain can manage. I wonder what new technological advances will take place in 2022 and then how many years it will take me to understand them?! Our year began with us getting a new refrigerator. It’s a “smart” fridge but I'm not a smart user. It can do many things that I do not understand (like show me who is at the front door) but hey I managed to upload some pictures on it and the food stays cold so there ya go. The year ended with me getting a new 2022 vehicle. It’s a smart vehicle too. Again, I am a less than smart user. It does things like slows down without me telling it to (and not because it is broken). It has a heated steering wheel which I did not know I needed until now. I can hit a button on the steering wheel and make a phone call. I can listen to text messages come in over the speakers in my car and then text back with my voice all without taking my eyes off of the road. It has both my phone and James’ phones synced to it and when he is driving in his truck behind me he can make my new vehicle play his heavy metal music in my car as I am driving it. He thinks this is hilarious. You might want to pray for him. Luckily we don’t caravan many places.

In between the technological traumas that have bookended my year, we squeezed in some much needed happiness which I will now share with you in pictorial form because I at least know how to cut and paste a picture (sorta).

In February James and I had a nice Valentine’s dinner at one of our favorite semi-local restaurants and managed to take a picture.

We spent some time in March in Florida celebrating our family March birthdays.

Alex flew down a week or so later and celebrated his 21^st birthday in the Florida sun with his grandparents and aunt/uncle.

Adam spent some time working as a waiter so we had fun letting him serve us for once.

We spent the spring watching Adam play varsity tennis. We were happy to host the varsity players for dinner in Camdenton as they participated in a tourney there. We froze a few times due to ridiculously cold spring weather but were happy to be able to support him.

James was recognized for outstanding teaching. Here he is with some of his students.

In May Adam turned 17.

Adam went to prom over the summer and had a nice time.

In June Adam and I flew to Los Angeles so that he could participate with his St. Louis modeling/acting team in a competition. He was able to sign with a California modeling agent and if he gets his calculus grade up we may just allow him to go on some auditions. (Lol). Seriously though he did fantastic (and his calc grade is coming up nicely so there’s that). He took away several honors, medals and recognitions and we got to spend some special time together seeing the sights in-between competitions.

Out of all of his amazing photos I think this is my favorite which I took on our return flight.

In June I made it to see another birthday.

We met Alex in Kansas City for Father's Day and took in a Royals game.

I may not be very good with technology but I have now proven that I CAN throw an axe.

In July we enjoyed some time in Minnesota with my cousins at their family resort. It was so good to see everybody again and we can now take that trip off of my bucket list.

In August we dressed my brother-in-law Kevin up as a Fed-Ex delivery man and had him deliver all of us to Hot Springs Village to surprise my dad for his 75^th birthday. We had a ball and we pulled off the surprise so mission accomplished there.

Alex spent his summer interning with an engineering firm in Kansas City and when he had free time he traveled. He made it out to Colorado to see our friends Keith and Lori and he also went to Minneapolis to see Stacey and Tony. He hit the lake too with aunt Molly and uncle Kevin. Of course he took in sporting events everywhere he went and he enjoyed living his best life.

We road tripped to visit Alex and I took the boys to the KC zoo.

James and I tried to get out in the convertible when we were both home at the same time.

I had fun getting to know my great nephew Brixton Bradley Wallin. He is a SLP’s dream kid in that he is a veritable sponge for language development tasks. Seriously, we should make a video and sell it to SLP training programs.

Here are my three guys on their first day of school this year. Adam is a high school senior, Alex is a college senior and James is still teaching 8^th grade (for only one more year!)

The middle school told James he would have to mask this year so he showed up in this.

This fall we had fun watching Alex play rugby and Adam run cross country. The grandparents were able to travel to watch also which the boys loved. Alex made all American so that was pretty cool.

Last year when Covid hit and neither Alex nor James could attend any Blues games in person Alex paid to have a cardboard cut out of James to appear in the stands at the games. (Back row in the pic below) When the season was over his cutout traveled back to Rolla and they put him in their front window as a sort of “guard dad.” He also made an appearance at some rugby games when we couldn’t go in person.

Adam hopes to study cyber security next year and has chosen the University of Central Missouri.

Alex had fun road-tripping to the Michigan state game with some of his Hendler cousins over the Thanksgiving holiday. We were happy to be together again for thanksgiving this year and as we speak I am getting ready to host Christmas with everyone once again.

Speaking of that, I need to quit writing and get beck to my fridge. Somewhere on there is the Christmas menu and the grocery list is synched with my phone. If I can’t figure out how to get the holiday meal info off of my refrigerator hard drive I'm making the decision to have Chinese take out for Christmas. That's if I can figure out how to open the back hatch of my new vehicle to put the take out into. I still cant find that button. (But the steering wheel is nice and warm). More than once this year I have likened our current existence to an episode of the Jetsons with all of our smart technology. Here is what we would look like as stars of that show if we were broadcasting from our home.

Most of the time this is what we look like when trying to figure out anything related to new technology.

Next year will be a big one for us as we will become empty nesters. Perhaps we will then have time to figure out all of the new technological advances. Frankly though, I will likely decide to take a nap as James continues to flip houses and manage all of our investment properties. Merry Christmas to you from the technologically challenged.