Welcome 2025!

 Starting the new year with some beautiful snow was so much fun!

Decker absolutely loved running through all the snow. He was zooming all over the yard.

Lots of snowball throwing today!

Ryan and Lily made a couple of snow angels while Mia and I made a cute little snowman.

I promise Decker was having fun even though it doesn't really look like it in this family picture.

Poor boy was exhausted from playing so hard.

A few other items from the month:

Both girls joined Brylliant at JTF this year as they performed Mary Poppins. It was a fun show, and I think they both had a great time.

I gave Lily my leather jacket that I bought my freshman year of college. It doesn't fit me anymore, but it's perfect for her!

& Juliet came to The Fox as part of this year's Broadway season. Ryan didn't enjoy this one, but the girls and I thought it had some great music and was pretty creative.

Ryan and David met up in Nashville for the Ringo Starr & Friends concert. They had fantastic seats and heard tons of great music! Ringo was the main draw, but then lots of other incredibly talented musicians showed up to play: Sheryl Crow (she blew a kiss to Ryan!), Molly Tuttle, Brenda Lee, Emmy Lou Harris, Jamey Johnson, Peter Frampton, and Billy Strings. Ryan's favorite was hearing Molly Tuttle play "Octopus' Garden." This was a super fun evening for them.

The Stonehaven Quiz Bowl Team is having an amazing season. Most of the kids have specialized categories of knowledge. Mia brings pop culture knowledge that these guys need help with.

Lily gave me Clue 3D for Christmas, and we had a lot of fun working on this one together.

One of my Christmas gifts to Ryan was going to see Steve Martin & Martin Short at The Fox. We were laughing pretty much non-stop. These two are hilarious, and they seem to have a truly great friendship. Steve also played banjo with his band, the Steep Canyon Rangers. All I can say is Wow!

It's been a cold but wonderful start to the year!

Wrapping Up 2024

In addition to a wonderful Christmas, countdown leading up to it, and trip to New York, we had a few other fun things going on this month. Here's some of that activity.

We always have a fun little countdown calendar for December. Ours was from Sugarfina this year, and we couldn't resist getting Decker one from Bark.

We had a ton of new ornaments this year (18 in all, I believe), so I couldn't even put a collage together or put them all on here. I picked my favorite one which is from Park Guell; it's made to look like all the Gaudi tile pieces.

Ryan and I enjoyed a date night to Hamp & Harry's one evening. At Christmas it becomes totally Home Alone themed, so I knew we had to try it. This was the outside window, but the inside was completely decked out. The menu has all sorts of items with names that are funny plays on the movie. I had the Kevin's Bolognese and Ryan had the You're Such a Little Jerk chicken.

The school has a "dress like a teacher" day each December. How fun that Calvin Edwards dressed up like, hat and all?! He looked so adorable. The teachers also dress up like students, so Ryan chose to dress up like Mia so he could wear a great hoodie.

Lily set up some wrapping paper and managed to get Decker to stick his head through. He doesn't look thrilled with this, but it's pretty cute!

The girls' classes both had their Progressive Dinners to enjoy one evening.

Mia's class decided to go casual and fun.

Lily's class opted to dress up a little bit (and let Addie Johnson join in while they were at the Johnson house).

Hard to believe this is Lily and Avery's last Stonehaven Christmas concert!

The girls went to Build A Bear soon after Christmas using the gift card Lily gave to Mia as a gift. They made Bluey and Bingo from the cute show "Bluey." Now Lily can take hers to college and Mia's can stay here, and they'll be able to keep them near as a sweet reminder of each other.

We headed down to Florida a couple of days to spend time with Grandpops and Grandma Jan. It was so nice to have time together again. We had a lot of fun with their two little pups, Pip and Rex, too!

Before getting on the boat.

We enjoyed a very nice boat ride one beautiful afternoon.

We are so thankful for wonderful grandparents!

Decker's right; it's been a tiring (though fantastic) month.

And just like that, another year has come to a close. I always enjoy making a little collage of some highlights from the year.

At the end of year, it's always nice to take time to reflect on the previous year. Our family is so incredibly blessed. We've made memories near and far. We're healthy. We have so much to be thankful for, and we look forward with anticipation to 2025!

Christmas Day 2024

Everything was ready for Christmas morning close to midnight on Christmas Eve. All the stockings were stuffed. Side note - This view is one of my favorites every single year.

The tree was filled with lots of beautiful presents just waiting to be unwrapped.

There were some pretty fun gifts ready to welcome the girls that morning. There were some joint gifts: a towel warmer for their bathroom, a Lego set for all of us to do, and a packet with tickets to &Juliet. They each were receiving some packing cubes, a playbill binder, and a record. Both girls each had a fun gift card tree set up for them.

I didn't take many pictures that morning, but I wanted a few. The girls really liked the presents they purchased for each other. Lily surprised Mia with a gift card so they go to Build A Bear together, and Mia gave Lily a cool Wicked Lego set.

Not gonna' lie, it's always fun to receive a little blue box! A gorgeous silver bracelet from Ryan was inside.

I think the best gift may have been from Lily to Ryan. She had written her college application essay about the importance of their traditional Saturday morning Chick-fil-a runs, and it truly was a fantastic essay (no wonder she got accepted to all five universities she applied to!). I loved that she framed a printed copy of the essay and included some fun CFA memorabilia, like a copy of their receipt. This is such a special gift!

Decker seemed to be pretty happy that he received a new stuffed squirrel toy and chew sticks inside his stocking. We can't leave him out of the Christmas fun!

I had one last surprise gift to give. It was originally intended to Ryan but then it kinda turned in to a whole family gift. I bought a Cameo from Daryll Tofa who played Dallas Winston in The Outsiders for the performance we saw while in NYC. He addressed to Ryan, thanked us for coming, and wished us a Merry Christmas. I had mentioned in my request to him that we were already trying to figure out when we could get back to NYC to see the show again, so in the video he said to let him know if we made it back and he'd see about getting us backstage! How incredible would that be?! We'll see if it actually happens or not, but it's fun to imagine.

We had already eaten our traditional cinnamon rolls for breakfast, so we sat down to put together the fun Lego set together. It had four different packs in it, and I bought it specifically for the Beauty & the Beast set which Ryan put together (after all, he was Cogsworth on our Disney Paris day). Lily put together Finding Nemo, Mia put together Moana, and I put together Pocahontas. It was a fun little activity to do together.

When it was all said and done, We kept the Cogsworth and Dude Crush figures in honor of our adventure to Disneyland Paris.

We were all getting a little hungry, so then we made the most wonderful lunch. Ryan grilled up some Wagyu steaks, we had a few side dishes, and some sparkling juice. It was absolutely delicious. 

It was a peaceful and joyful day which really is how Christmas should be.