Top Ten Tuesday: My Favorite New to Me Authors of 2023.

Top Ten is an original feature/weekly meme originally created by The Broke and the Bookish and is now hosted by The Artsy Reader Girl that features a great bookish top ten every week.

My favorite new to me authors of 2023.

Goodbye 2023, Hello 2024: Life updates

Hello and happy New Year!! 2024!? What!? 2023 FLEW by! Obviously we had a very eventful 2023 and I have not really been posting since Juniper was born.

This is usually a 2 part post, one has what I did and loved about 2023. The other is what I'm looking forward to reading, watching, doing in 2024. 

So let's dive in shall we?! 

This past year in...

January

December 2022 Finn had seizures, so in January of last year we were still reeling from that. Otherwise it was a pretty uneventful month. 

February

February was even less eventful than January. We had valentine's day but honestly I couldn't tell you what we did. Otherwise that it was just us getting ready for Junie to be born. It did freeze again and I played a ton of Disney Dreamlight Valley.

March

In March I turned 30 and John and I had our 6th wedding anniversary. Yay. Finn and John got baptized and I started serving with elementary age kids at church. We did worship in the park, Finn's bluebonnet pictures, and got even more ready for June. We were so close!

April

In April we went to visit my grandparents on their property, we had Easter and we had to do a 72 hour EEG to make sure Finn wasn't having seizures. So much fun, not. Finn also went to his first book club.

May

In May our rainbow baby was born! Juniper Hensley Grace was born 5/1/23 at 11:17PM and she had to stay in the NICU for a few days, but now she is a perfectly spunky, feisty, loving baby girl. 
Besides Junie being born we had Mother's Day and my son's dad got married, which was super exciting. Besides that nothing... It was a lot of trying to get used to having a newborn. Let me tell you, having a baby at 20 and at 30 is completely different.

June

June was Father's Day and just getting used to our little family. Finn was with his dad for most of June unfortunately.

July

July was 4th of July, Juniper meeting her cousins, swimming for the first time, Finn had book club, and Henry's 4th birthday in Heaven.

August

August we got back into school and Finn had his first boys only birthday party for his 10th birthday.

September

September I got back into playing Animal Crossing A LOT. It was my parent's 23rd wedding anniversary and they went to Florida like they do every year. I also started making baby jewelry.

October

October is almost always our busiest month, we had the chalk walk, trunk or treating, went to a couple pumpkin patches, took Junie trick or treating, had our homestudy (Which we passed!!!) and probably some other stuff that I just can't remember now.

November

In November Junie went to her first Day of the Dead festival, we decorated for Christmas, we had June's dedication, June met Santa for the first time, it was June's first Thanksgiving, she got to meet grama for the first time, and we took our first ever Christmas family photos. 

In November Finn's hamster, Odin, also died and he got a new hamster named Marshmallow.

December

Ahh, December. December was magical. Benny and Lily, June's elf, came out. It's been a year since Finn had his last seizure, we found out our court date to finalize the adoption is in January, we helped to pay to send my mother in law and father in law to Hawaii for my mother in law's 50th birthday. One of my best friends from another state surprised us with a visit and we got to meet her little baby for the first time. We got to play in "real snow", visited a second Santa, baked cookies, did our Christmas light scavenger hunt, went to a Christmas festival with our church, we got to go to a Christmas tree farm for the first time ever, and Junie had to go to the ER not once, but twice. June also got her first two teeth at the same time.

In December Finny lost his second hamster, Astrid. So now we just have Marshmallow.

And of course it was Junie's first Christmas. We also celebrated Greyson's 5th birthday in Heaven. This is the first year since losing Greyson that we feel like we can have a holly jolly holiday and we made sure we packed a lot in.

For New Years we just had some friends over and played some games and shot off some fireworks. It was still fun and I'm very happy with who I brought the new year in with.

2024 has so much I'm looking forward to, especially the court date to finalize the adoption and June's first birthday. We already have it all planned out.

How was your 2023? What was the best part? What are you looking forward to the most in 2024!?

Join me in my next post to see what books and movies I'm looking forward to in 2023 along with my favorite reads of 2023.