Christmas 2025

Merry Christmas!  Happy New Year!  Happy MLK Day!

Every post seems to start with me apologizing for the untimeliness of a blog post.  But it's a new year and I'm not going to apologize.  I'm busy with work and my kids aren't here in the house with me for daily content so my life is (thankfully) pretty dull.  This blog where I happily used to update several times a week, has sadly become just a spot for a quick update here and there and pictures of major holidays and family life events. And I'm okay with that.  

So without further ado...I present to you... Christmas 2025.

December was pretty busy for me.  Even though it is my slow time at work, I had plenty to do.  Which is nice because Dan has been travelling a lot.  I managed to work and get all the Christmas shopping done and I even decorated the tree by myself as you will recall from my last post. 

As Christmas approached, I realized that other than shopping for everyone on my list, I hadn't done anything "Christmasy".  I had done nothing fun or festive ahead of Christmas day, so I made a mental note to fix that next year.  A show, a party, a festival, a weekend trip somewhere special. Something...anything so that I can enjoy the time prior to the actual day itself.  Now if someone would just remind me of this in early November so I can make a plan, that would be great!

Sarah is in her Senior year of college, so she basically had a month off for winter break.  She came home for a day or two and then headed out to California with Joe and Noah to spend some time with Joe's cousin and aunt and uncle who live in Belgium but were visiting for Christmas.  Sarah had met all of them before and was excited to see them again as she really hit it off with them.  Here are a few pictures that she graciously texted the family chat during her trip...

The spent a little time in San Francisco and a little time in Lake Taho but most of the ten day trip was spent in Healdsburg. She had a lovely time!

Peter and his friends visited the Governor's Mansion one evening when it was open to the public and decorated for Christmas...

And he and his roommates hosted a Christmas party at their house.  Peter's a huge Grateful Dead fan, if you didn't know.

Now that he's a working man, he only got a little time off for Christmas so he didn't make it home until the evening of Christmas Eve.  Dan got home on the 23rd and Sarah got home from her travels on the 19th so it was very, very, very nice to have everyone home for a few days.  

On Christmas Eve, we attended the Christmas Eve Lovefeast service at the church I attended while I was growing up and afterwards came back to our house where we hosted our annual Christmas Eve Party.  Jennifer's family (minus Cheyanne who was in the Bahamas, lucky girl!), and my mom and brother, and Joe were all in attendance and we had the best time. And you know the drill...I didn't get any photos because I'm the worst.  Maybe next year I should designate someone as the photographer and have them go around all evening snapping photos.  

We were all slow to get up on Christmas morning.  Having older kids is nice.

Santa was very kind this year and left a bounty of good things.

I love and appreciate how the family puts on these Christmas pjs to humor me.  We first wore them in 2021.  We only wear them on Christmas Eve/Morning.  Who needs new Christmas pjs when you only wear them once a year?  Not us!

After we opened presents and enjoyed our morning coffee and a raspberry kringle from Trader Joe's, we speedily got ready and raced to Mass where we met Cathy.  After mass we came home and enjoyed lunch at Mom's with my brother, Cathy, Eric and our four.  It was a nice time and mom outdid herself on lunch as normal.  She had cataract surgery on both her eyes in December and wasn't feeling her best but she didn't let that show.  Her vision is much improved and she's thankfully, finally feeling back to her old self!

After lunch, we went home to relax a bit.  I cooked dinner and we watched Wake Up Dead Man which was the third movie in the Knives Out series.  It was really good and might be my favorite one yet.

On Friday, we headed to Seagrove, NC to visit some of the many pottery shops in the area.  We saw a lot of beautiful pottery and even made a couple of purchases.  On our way home, we stopped at the Town Creek Indian Mound. The visitor's center was closed but we visited the mound any way.  It wasn't locked so we just had a look around. Technically we probably shouldn't have been there but we didn't get caught so it's all good!  We had a bon fire after dinner.  The weather was perfect and it was a nice end to a nice day!

On Saturday we slept in as we were all tired.  Later that afternoon, we headed towards Charlotte.  We stopped in Kannopolis for Mass and drove through the town.  We got a picture of the kids in front of the Dale Earnhardt statue:

Then we had dinner in Concord and headed to the Charlotte Motor Speedway to see the Christmas lights. It was really a neat show.  You drive through the displays and at one point you are driving on bank of the race track.  That was really neat.  A large portion of the lights are synchronized to music on a certain radio station and that was very cool to see the lights coordinated with the music.  Then you park and there's a Christmas market with food and vendors and quite a few light displays to walk through.  Then you get back in your car and you head out through the concourse.  We parked and got a whole view of the speedway from the top of the concourse.  It was really a neat thing to do.  And because Sarah just finished her fellowship at the Speedway, she was able to get us free passes!  That was nice!!

After the lights, we headed to the ice cream shop that Sarah worked at before her fellowship (and I think she's planning on picking up shifts there this semester) and had ice cream.  Her manager was working and gave us a huge discount on our ice cream.  And gushed about how much he loved Sarah and how great of a worker she was.  So that was nice!  And their ice cream is delicious!!!!  

My pictures don't do it justice and of course I didn't even try to take pictures as we were driving through the displays.  I was just enjoying it all!

We got home pretty late and everyone went straight to bed.  But we were up early the next morning because Cathy and Eric were heading back to DC.  I had an MRI at 8:30 and Dan and Peter were headed to the Panthers game.  When I got back from my MRI, only Sarah was left at home.  But we didn't feel too bad that we didn't get to go to the game because we had tickets for a candle making workshop!

So while the boys were doing this:

It was so foggy during the game they couldn't even see the city in the background!

Sarah and I were doing this:

Why the weird face?  

We had so much fun.  We both made two candles.  We got to select our scents and we added colors and also botanicals at the end.  And of course, we got to enjoy an adult beverage while we were doing it.  It was so much fun and now we each have candles to burn.  I'm burning mine even as I'm typing this and it smells so good.  Word of warning though...the botanicals will flame up if you get too many of them in there.  

The next day was Monday and I had to work but on Tuesday, the four of us headed to Shelton Vineyards

in Dobson, NC.  What a treat that was!  We stopped for lunch in Winston-Salem at Xcaret which is a tasty Mexican restaurant before we headed to Dobson.

The grounds were lovely even in the middle of winter.  I'm sure in the spring and summer it would be even more beautiful.  There were a lot of people there, which was a good sign.  We perused the menu and each got a flight of wine.  The flights consisted of 4 half pours and we got to choose what we wanted from the reds and whites.  I'm not a wine aficionado but I thought their wines were delicious.  Their reserve Riesling was my favorite!

It was nice to go to a winery (and there are quite a few of them to choose from here in the Yadkin Valley) for a change of pace.  We go to a lot of breweries and drag Sarah along.  She's always a good sport so it was nice to do something that she definitely enjoyed!

And then I had to work the rest of the week because it was end of year and we always do inventory at the store.  Peter headed back to Raleigh on New Year's Eve and Sarah hung out with friends.  I had to work until 7:00 on New Year's Eve so Dan and I stayed home (I had to go to work the next day too) and had one fancy drink (It was a caramel drop martini!) and I was in bed before 10:30.  

And just like that, Christmas was over and it was back to ordinary life.  The kids are all back to their respective towns and lives and Dan and I are back to work.  

It was a great little holiday and once again, my favorite thing is spending time with my family.  We only had a week together, but I think we made the most of it!

Thanks for reading this little blog and following along with my long and sporadic posts! 

Happy MLK Day!

Thanksgiving 2025 and the Christmas Tree saga.

I don't know about you, but Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday.  You get all of the delicious food of Christmas without the stress of gift-giving and decorating and to-do lists a mile long. And the best part - you get to spend the day (or the long weekend!) with your favorite people!

Dan has been travelling nonstop for work, but he made it home from Seattle on Wednesday evening wit no issues.  He was flying through Detroit so we worried about weather delays. Peter thankfully only had to work a half day and made it home from Raliegh about the same time Dan did.  And Sarah came home from Charlotte earlier that morning so I had all of my people in the house!!

I always say that a full table equals a full heart!  Sorry for the big face but this is the only way I can document the full table.  :)

After lunch, we headed to Old Salem to try to get some family pictures for the Christmas card.  We forced my brother to play photographer and thought we had some good ones until I got home and downloaded them and....yikes...Here are some of the out takes...

Blurry, out of focus, why does Dan always look like he's in pain? Also, we are in the bottom half of the photo.

This was taken after just realizing that Sarah was giving me and Peter rabbit ears.  (Which also happens to be the best picture and just might be going on Christmas card.)

I'm annoyed but look how please she is with herself!

So dark and the sun was in our eyes and Sarah is making quite the face.

Would have been a good picture except that Dan is wearing his sunglasses!  WHY!!!???

We didn't get any good shots, but we still had fun!

Since 2014, we've headed to the mountains the day after Thanksgiving to get a Christmas tree.  But Dan and I made a last-minute decision to get a fake one.  Dan was heading back to Seattle on Sunday after Thanksgiving,, the drive to the mountains is a long one and takes up much of the day and we had a lot to do.  

I've been wanting a fake tree for several years now and as soon as Dan mentioned it, I jumped at the chance.  We went the week before when he was home for a few days and got one from Costco. It was prelit with dual-colored lights, was nice and full, and had a small profile.  (The room we put it in is small and every year I feel like I'm being suffocated by the tree.)  I had suggested we go ahead and put it together before he went to Seattle but we did not.

On the Wednesday before Thanksgiving after we had dinner, we decided to put the tree together so it would be one less thing to do on Friday.  And of course, the lights didn't work.  It was 7:0 pm so we quickly disassembled it and hauled ass (pardon my French) to Costco to return it before they closed at 8:30.  We knew we didn't want to be anywhere near Costco on Black Friday and we had a lot to do before Dan left to go back to Seattle and returning this tree was not a one-woman job so we needed to get it back.  The return was easy but unfortunately, they were out of trees. The floor model was still up and they were going to sell us that one at a discount.  But then I noticed that one strand at the bottom of the tree was out.  That made me change my mind. Even with a discount, I didn't want to come home with a tree that already had lighting issues.  I was beginning to regret our hasty decision to not go to the mountains.

I started searching for trees online in the car on the way home.  Of course, I wanted Balsam Hill tree but their trees are so expensive that I couldn't justify it.  I searched and searched until I was becoming anxious.  You know how you get when we are looking online and you find something that looks nice, has a decent price, meets all your criteria and then you read the comments?  And even though most of the comments are glowing you read a couple that aren't, and you decide you have to start the search over?  Well, that was me.  After searching for a few hours, I finally just threw caution to the wind and ordered one.  

Before we decided to ditch the mountain trip in favor of a fake tree, we asked the kids if that was okay with them.  They both said it was as long as we still spent the day together on Friday.  And that made this mama's heart happy.  For them, it wasn't so much about the tree, but the fact that we would spend the whole day Friday together in the car, going to the mountains, eating lunch, decorating the tree, etc. The family time was important to them, not the tree.   

So I planned a trip to Olde Mecklenburg Brewing Company in Charlotte.  It only took an hour to get there which was perfect. They have a German restaurant there which was also perfect. My people love pretzels and sausages. We had delicious beer, a tasty pretzel, and we all had good food.  I think I was the only one that didn't order a sausage.  After lunch, we headed to the beer garden grounds (with a tasty brew in hand) and perused the Christmas Market that was set up.  There were over 30 vendors there selling their wares.  The day was a little windy but it was sunny and not too cold.  They had a couple of big fire kettles set up, hot chocolate, music, etc.  It was just a great vibe all the way around and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.

The older I get, the more I just really appreciate being all together.

Saturday was chores around the house, Mass together as a family, chicken pot pie soup for dinner, and then more football.  It's always great to see NC State beat UNC!  

On Sunday, Dan headed out the door to the airport at 6:00am to catch a flight to Seattle.  The kids and I ate lunch with Brad and then visited with mom and then they headed back to their respective towns.  

The tree came on Sunday so I put it together.  It took me forever doing it by myself.  The worst part was fluffing it out.  That took a long time and I'm still not sure if it's fluffed properly. The tree is "acceptable".  It's larger than the Costco tree (which in my opinion isn't a great thing).  There are some "holes" and I'm not sure if it's because I didn't put it together properly or if I didn't fluff it properly.  But I do like that i don't have to water it.  There's no sap leaking from it.  There are absolutely zero pine needles on my floor.  It's prelit and I can switch between white (my favorite) and colored (Dan's favorite).  

I finally got it decorated last night. It needs a few finishing touches, but I think it looks pretty good.  No one is home to appreciate it so I made sure to text a picture to the family group chat last night.  

I've spent this past week at work and in my spare time in the evenings frantically online shopping. I'm getting things checked off my list but it always takes longer than I think.  I've been trying to work on the Christmas card as well but I'm having a hard time with it because the pictures are subpar.  Maybe I will go with the rabbit ears photo after all! It really was the best one.