2025

💛 Welcome, family and friends. 💛

This is a short reflection on our year—highlights, lessons, and what we’re grateful for. Gratitude, patience, and humility were the themes that shaped us most.

Family Highlights of the Year

• Celebrations and Gatherings

- Holiday traditions shared with extended family.

• Memorable Moments

- A special trip or outing that left lasting memories.

- New family members welcomed or milestones reached by children.

• Everyday Joys

- Simple moments of connection like game nights or weekend walks.

- Growth in relationships and deeper understanding within the family.

Milestones Achieved

• Personal Achievements

- Educational accomplishments such as graduations or certifications.

- Career progress and new opportunities embraced.

• Family Goals Reached

- Home improvements or moves that improved our living environment.

- Health and wellness goals supported as a unit.

• Important Transitions

- Life changes that required adaptation and resilience.

- Lessons learned during times of uncertainty or challenge.

Tough Stuff

• Death: It's our first holiday season without Mamaw, Ky's grandmother.

• Disease: Dementia is teaching our family so much as Oma, Donna's mom, declines. Family depression and clutter are no joke.

• Struggles: Making healthy eating choices consistently even when the starved dopamine goblins demand cookies. Relearning how to self regulate and parent in our tween era. Embracing new ai tech while balancing the ethical and environmental concerns. National and world politics. Neurodivergent Burnout is real.

A few of our favorite things in 2025

It's so hard the lists are endless but here are a few:

	Ky Ky	Donna	Kiddos
Food		Just beginning to experiment with baking and painting sourdough
Books
Music		A little obsessed this year Also, this was a fam anthem
Video Games
Board Games
YouTube/TikTok		Completely inspired by the live portraits of @art_and_roll
Movie
Shows

On The Farm

Pulled between a lot of worlds (and not giving it top priority), the vegetable garden really struggled this year. One bright spot: our Pink Lemonade blueberries. They’re delicious—and the birds mostly ignore them since they stay pink and don’t “look” ripe.

Makers Corner

I accidentally ordered a bootleg copy of this author’s book—such awful paper and printing it basically begged me to doodle in it. I’ve kept coming back to it all year, scribbling in it with crayons. Maybe you’d enjoy trying something like that too?

Giving To Others & Community

Ky is investing a lot of time and energy into our local Cub Scout and Scouts Troupes as our boys are split between 2 age groups. They've loved the meetings, Summer Camps, and extra adventures.

Start, Stop, Continue: Our Family’s Focus for Growth

• Start

- New habits or traditions we want to introduce into our family life.

- Activities to build stronger communication and shared experiences.

• Stop

- Behaviors or distractions that hinder quality time and connection.

- Negative patterns identified and intentionally phased out.

• Continue

- Positive routines and practices that have strengthened us this year.

- Values and attitudes that nurture patience and gratitude.

We are prepping for our Annual Planning Meeting adding in a few new ideas and tools to help process our thoughts.