Downsides and Upsides: Marking the end of another year

Our usual New Year's walk at the beach on 1 January

In case you're wondering, no. These photos are not from the last few days, although it's been cold enough and the garden at the little house has been covered in frost both yesterday and today. But it's also been misty too, which is hard to deal with as everything becomes a whiter shade of grey. Horrible.

These photos are from last December/January and I hooked them out because I'm making my usual family calendars. I do it every year as it's one way of showing my brothers and sister what we've been up to during the year. My family are all in the UK and I don't get to see them very often (and that's not on purpose – honest!). It's a year since I saw my sister and more since I saw my brothers, which is a shame as I'd love to spend more time with them (see?).

The garden at the end of December

As a result, I make it my thing to put together a calendar of month by month photos for them and I really enjoy doing it because it takes me back over the year and helps me remember what it's like to be warm now it's so beastly cold.

I will admit that 2017 has had its ups and downs but the summer was wonderful and I've only just got myself to accept that it's over. As with most people of my age, things are starting to creak a bit and I've been enduring a frozen shoulder since July (why 'frozen' I don't know, because it feels hot rather than cold), which was one of the down sides, but on the up side, we had two marvellous months 'faring' on the Hennie Ha from June to August.

Since there are far too many photos of our trip to put in the calendar, I've also made a book of photos, but even that doesn't cover them, so I'm going to be putting an album of them all on the Internet based photography site, Flickr, soon. It's lovely just to browse through them and see that we really had some wonderful weather. We both looked very healthy when we arrived back at the end of August, unlike the palid creatures we are now!

I'm not sure if this was frost or snow at the University where
I work, but whatever it was, it was a lovely day too!

Another down for me is that in the last year both my daughters have moved out of Rotterdam, so I don't meet up with them often. But one of them has started teaching at the university where I work too, and that at least gives us a chance for a brief get together once a week most of the time. I've also just heard the other daughter will be teaching there again soon too, so there's my upside again.

The Dutch doing what they love...skating on natural ice

Of course we also had the downer in May that our slipway and yard in the harbour were going to close, but as I mentioned earlier, that's had a stay of execution too and we'll be keeping it for at least 18 months – something to celebrate when we have our harbour Christmas drink this coming week!

All these clouds have silver linings, don't they? We don't do much in the way of Christmas festivities at home, but we do like to have a family meal around the day and I put my little tree up with all its home-made decorations. And then there are the lights in the harbour to look forward to. It's lighting up week this week which is a lovely moment and one I always cherish. On balance then? There've definitely been more upsides than downsides in 2017 and that's how I like to keep it!

What will you all be doing for the festive season, allemaal?