2021 Year in Review

Riley turned 14 in May and she continues to be involved in theater, dance, and piano. She also started mock trial this year. Her schedule has been intense with all of the extracurricular activities and her actual classes. For a kid who can’t drive herself anywhere, she sure has lots of places to be. 🙂 She’s sassy, smart, and funny - perfect for a theater kid. 

Joel turned 50 this year! I always envisioned having a big party for him when his 50th came around but the pandemic had other ideas for us. So instead, we spent a few hours at TopGolf, eating bar food and having a few drinks. Not a terrible way to celebrate a big birthday. He started a new ¾ time job at a local electric work truck company. They build electric chassis for utility companies and the like. He’s handling all of their digital marketing and content creation. The rest of the time he’s working for our company. In his spare time, he still loves sim racing and his setup is still something to see.

He took a weekend in October and went on a guys’ trip to West Virginia to ride UTVs and get muddy on the Hatfield and McCoy trails in the mountains. 

I have spent my year keeping our company running, doing digital marketing projects, and some business coaching as a side hustle. I’ve been creating content for my business and working through professional development courses. Reading and writing are still loves of mine so that’s what I do in my spare time when I’m not driving Riley to her activities (haha).

Over the summer, Riley and I went with her friends and their moms on a girls’ trip and we had so much fun! So many laughs, good food, wonderful friends, boat rides, skiing, tubing, and games. 5 moms and 6 girls and we plan to go again in 2022. 

Memorial Day weekend, we traveled to Pierre, SD to finally spread Mike’s ashes. Joel’s sisters and their families all came and we spent the entire weekend sightseeing, including the houses they had once lived in. We spread Mike’s ashes along a lovely creek he used to play near when he was a kid. I think Mike would’ve been proud of his kids and grandkids for honoring his wishes.

We had a ‘staycation’ in Woodbury this summer where we rented a pool house with a pool table, theater room, and a grand piano! Plenty of room to spread out and we brought one of Riley’s friends and our dogs. Everybody had a great time and we would definitely do a staycation again. Short drive time, food deliveries, and a personal swimming pool? Yes, please! Another fun thing we did over the summer was rent a pontoon boat with Joel’s mom and boated along the St. Croix. Because of the wildfires, it was very smoky (thanks, wildfires) and hot, but we enjoyed it nonetheless.

We continued updating our house. In January, we had the kitchen countertops redone. Joel removed the old countertops and cut down the bar height top to be countertop height. Check out the photos in the Joel & Brandy album linked below.

The biggest and hardest thing we did this summer was rebuilding our deck. When we bought this house the deck was falling apart and had become really unsafe. We took all of the top boards off and repaired some of the joists, expanded the square footing of the deck overall, put in a new support beam, and replaced all of the top boards with composite. It was an all summer long project because it was also very very hot! MN had record temps (100+) for about two weeks straight. Also, Joel fell through the deck, about 7 feet down, injuring his back, he was bruised and scraped up mostly. We took several days off so he could recuperate. It’s hell getting old! I had fallen down the stairs to our basement in January so we compared stories of who fell the hardest, got hurt the worst, and who had a bigger bruise. Marriage in a nutshell. 🙂

Speaking of, Joel and I celebrated 20 years of marriage this September! We wanted to have a party but we opted to get chicken nuggets and wander around a bookstore for a few hours instead. I wouldn’t trade that time for anything: sitting quietly with Joel with a coffee and a few good books. These are a few of my favorite things.

Christmas this year will be spent in South Carolina on the beach. I don’t think I’ve ever spent a Christmas at the beach, even being a Florida girl. But, new experiences with family is something we love so we’re looking forward to it. The entire family will be together and that’s what counts, although I do miss seeing my side of the family. Hopefully, I’ll get to go visit them in 2022.

We hope that you have a lovely holiday season as well! 

Joy, peace, and love to all of you,

Joel, Brandy, Jamie, and Riley Eckman