January 2025

Fast forward and now it's October 2025. 😬

After working hard to get the blog updated for 2024, my time to work on it just disappeared. Poof!

Let's say it was too many volunteer jobs and too little time.
By the time I had some time to sit down to craft a blog entry, all I really wanted to do was veg out and read a book or something. Or nap.

Also, it's kinda weird now that one kid is off and away having their own life. I also have a teen that is working toward moving on to his own adventures. Mostly this blog has been about them.

I'm thinking that I'll update a month at a time with a handful of pictures to give you an idea of what happened. Like, just the highlights.

Let's see if I can post all of 2025 before January 1, 2026, gets here! 

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JANUARY 2025

Katie went back to school for her winter quarter.

Mikey attended a cupcake decorating class for a friend's birthday party.
I had lots of cupcakes to eat and no one to share them with.

Per tradition, we headed to our friend's house to celebrate El Dia de los Reyes Magos (Three Kings Day).

Two of the kids are now off at college and couldn't participate. Boo.

Katie purchased a cake from a local bakery; hid 3D printed figures in it and then shared it with some friends and her roommates.

Mikey found a baby Jesus in the Rosca de Reyes (King's cake).

 

In December, Mikey chopped up a huge branch that broke our deck when it fell during a windstorm.

He realized that he liked chopping things with an axe.

Huzbend found him some logs to chop with help from a park ranger who was also looking to get rid of trees debris that fell in the windstorm.

Here's Mikey choppin' wood.

Mid-January meant it was time for the winter play.
Mikey was cast as Ed Carmichael in You Can't Take It With You.

Two months of rehearsal led up to two weekends of performances.

For the role, Mikey had to learn how to play the xylophone.
A neighbor, who had a percussionist kiddo, let us borrow a xylophone and we got some beginner books from Amazon so he could practice.

Hair and makeup in the green room.

The cast.

Mikey's in the back on the xylophone.

Grandma came to watch.

For some reason, we lost power at our house in the middle of January.

It wasn't even storming.

No power means no wifi.

No wifi means no work from home.

So, what did we do instead?
We cut down a huge branch from a tree that was overhanging the road.

'Cause, why not?

As Ralph has gotten older over the past year, he's been to the emergency vet a few times for a hurt neck.

Sometimes he tweaks it and can't move. Not sure how or why it happens.

On this evening, Ralph was acting weird. 

He was doing this twitchy thing and was wobbly. 

I thought he might be having or had had a stroke, but it didn't seem to bother him at all.
I wanted to keep a close eye on him.
So, I locked him in Katie's room, and I slept on a foldable mattress on the floor with him.
He had a few more episodes over the next few weeks, but then they ended.

With the winter play over, Mikey had to return the xylophone.

He had gotten quite attached.

He played it one more time in the car before we dropped it on our neighbor's steps.

Rehearsals for the spring musical had started and the cast went away for an overnight musical retreat.

Huzbend and I took the opportunity to go out for our upcoming anniversary.