2020

I will never forget 2020.  No one will.  The world turned upside down.  A global pandemic.  We were lucky enough to live in one of the least affected countries on Earth.  We locked down in March for a month but for Queenslanders, that was mostly it.  It was a year without travel and forced separation from loved ones.  We still had a memorable year with Penny though and I couldn’t ask for much more than that.

We built a Lego PENNYTOWN for Penny to play with.

I got into craft beer in a big way during 2020.  Finding a new can I hadn’t tried before became a Friday treat.

I still love taking the family to Roar games.

Jen found an incredible deal from an online seller and got me every single Agatha Christie book ever published as a complete set.

I worked four day weeks for the whole year and on my day off, I’d take Penny for a coffee and babycino.  Then we’d hit the playground and go swimming.  Many of my favourite memories of 2020 come from the two of us hanging out on our Fridays.

Penny loves nature and most weekends we go to the local creek to look at ducks.

During lockdown, I suddenly found myself collecting Fighting Fantasy books I read as a kid.  I buy myself one a week and am working my way towards completing the original set of FF1 to 50.

Lockdown is thirsty work!  This is the first beer I had at The Woods after lockdown in March.  You had to book a week in advance for a two hour timeslot and mask up upon entry and exit.  An interesting experience!  The beer never tasted so sweet.

Before 2020, I had probably bought less than a dozen things online.  With a lot of forms of entertainment cancelled, closed or shutdown due to COVID, my online shopping habit blew out big time.  A lot of it was tracking down old games, comics and memorabilia from my childhood like these Super Nintendo games.

Halloween remains a very big deal on our street.  200 kids came knocking for candy!

Its cliche but we spent a lot of weekends during lockdown doing jigsaw puzzles and streaming music to dance to.

Working from home

China started mass producing these cheap retro portable systems in 2020 and honestly they were some of my favourite pieces of tech.

A rare date night for Jen and I to go see Thelma Plum at the Old Museum.

With no overseas travel, we made the most of holidaying on the Sunshine and Gold Coast.  Lots of trips to Seaworld and Movieworld!

Penny got a trampoline for Christmas and hasn’t stopped bouncing since.

Never met a pizza she didn’t love.

Nothing reminded us how lucky we were in 2020 like going to Christmas Carols in the Park with hundreds of fellow Queenslanders to safely enjoy the holiday season.  Most of the rest of the world celebrated Christmas in lockdown.

Merry Christmas from the Inoues!