Memories, Dreams, And Reflections 2024

It's the last day of 2024 and I am recapping our year. I found this way of reflecting through Lysha last year and I really loved it. Lysha blogs at A Camera & A Cookbook and you can find her here.

 

1. Me!

This is me, in my favourite outfit from this summer -- a striped navy t-shirt I bought at Target, a pair of denim shorts, and my old red Toms. My principal worked really hard to encourage me to front tuck this past year so I'm laughing that I've done so in this photo. She would be so proud of me!

2. I Love You

Of course this has to be a picture of me and Dave! I love that we're both wearing our Blue Jays Spring Training shirts here! This is on one of our trips and I love exploring new places with Dave too!

3. Still Laughing...

This was from the rainiest day of our walk in Scotland this past summer. It rained for five and a half hours straight and we were so wet! Then we had to walk through this stream/runoff and there was absolutely no way our feet were staying dry. The situation was so ridiculous that I asked Dave to take a picture. I'm still laughing at how wet we got this day! Plus, I thought it was super fun to just jump right into this stream to get across!

4. Winter Wonderland

After a few years of missing it, we went to our church's winter retreat on one of the snowiest weekends of the year. Dave and I went for a walk on Saturday morning in the forest and it was a beautiful winter wonderland.

5. Birthday

My birthday this year was a bit disappointing as I'd been pretty sick right before it. So we moved my birthday celebration to a few days later and I enjoyed a good family evening. However, I didn't really get a birthday experience this year so we'll have to remedy that for 2025!

6. Friends

We had so much fun with friends this year, including an evening at a Phillies game with Emily, Adam, and their boys. We had talked about doing this for so long so it was fun to make it actually happen!

7. I Was Inspired…

When we went to Virginia for Easter, Willem taught us to play disc golf. We were inspired to buy discs on Amazon, play a few times on our summer vacation, and even went on a road trip to New York to watch Willem play in a college tournament.

8. Spring Fever.

As much as I love tulips, I've never actually picked them before. So for Mother's Day, we went to a tulip farm and we got to pick a bouquet of ten tulips each.

9. Travel or Vacation

We got to take a few trips this year but this picture of all of us on our lobster cruise in Maine sticks out as one of my favourite travel memories with all four of us. This was such a fun tour and we loved getting to participate in lobster fishing!

10. Summer Days

I spent many, many, many summer days documenting the growth and blooming of my lily bed. I was so happy every time a lily bloomed and sent many excited texts to my parents as they blossomed.

11. A Day In My Life

There were a lot of days when I was walking up and down my favourite path -- mostly to get to work, but sometimes to get to the library or to get ice cream. Walking on this path is a pretty regular occurrence on every day in my life that we spend at home.

12. All Smiles

We were all smiles with the amazing display of Northern Lights we experienced in October. It stands out as one of the three best displays I've seen in my lifetime. I was thrilled that Dave and Rachel got to experience it with me. Sam experienced it with his friends and even called us to let us know it was happening.

13. Autumn/Fall

We weren't sure we were going to get a great display of fall colours this year but they came through around mid-October. I spent a few weeks crunching through leaves on my walks to work.

14. Family or Home

Drinking coffee outside with Dave while laundry hangs on the line is one of my favourite ways to start a morning at home. There are never enough mornings like these for me!

15. Celebrate!

I don't remember why our favourite ice cream shop was doing a fundraiser but I remember we celebrated the fact that the sun was shining. Our January was so grey and just a glimpse of the sun was so encouraging.

16. Let’s Do It Again…

Dave and I got to travel just the two of us for the first time in six years. We walked 154 km/96 miles on the West Highland Way in Scotland. This is a picture of us at the official end and while we were happy to be done, I would have gladly done it all again. It was such an incredible experience.

17. I Miss You

While we were on our summer road trip, we got the news that one of our pastors had unexpectedly died. In December, Rachel was drinking hot chocolate and realized that she had received this mug from that pastor. This is definitely the person we miss the most this year.

18. Beautiful

I had a flower share again this summer, and while this isn't the best picture, the bouquets were beautiful. I loved them all!

19. Dress Up

We are not a dressy family, but we loved dressing up for our Marvel Day At Sea cruise in March!

20. Macro

I always love a hot dog at a baseball game. And I think I take a yearly picture of a hot dog with the Skydome in the background! Hahahahaha!!!

21. Holidays

We love spending Christmas in Saskatchewan! And I love getting a Christmas morning picture of us in our matching family pajamas.

22. My Favourite

Janice and I had a fancy tea in February and doing a favourite thing with a favourite friend absolutely defines this prompt.

23. Don’t Ever Change

While going to Bubble Planet probably wasn't worth it for our family (it was aimed at a slightly younger crowd), I loved that Sam and Rachel still enjoyed playing with the bubbles. I hope they don't ever lose their sense of play.

24. Just Because…

I didn't get a lot else done the week Sam got his braces off as we ate a lot of popcorn and binge watched Ted Lasso but I loved getting to spend so much time with Sam.

25. Hopes and Dreams

Sometimes I find random things to do with my family and they are absolutely amazing. Sometimes, the events don't live up to all our hopes and dreams. While the Water Lantern Festival definitely fell on the "not quite worth it" end of the spectrum, there were still some magical moments.

So that was some of 2024. There was a lot of good this past year, but there was also some loss and some hard mixed in with it. What memories of 2024 are you taking with you?

What's Up Wednesday (On A Monday): December 2024

Even though the hosts never publish a "What's Up Wednesday" post in December, I like having the continuity throughout the year. However the last Wednesday of this month is Christmas Day so I'm publishing my post today. My first paragraph in these posts is often a short 'here's where we're at' and, to keep it real, where I'm at right now is...sick again. Womp womp. I got diagnosed with bronchitis last week and it was a week of rearranging, and missing, plans (and work). However, today is the first official day of Winter Break and I am really hoping that two weeks of sleeping in, and having not much on the schedule, will set us up for a healthier New Year.

So here's what's been going on with us this month... I love how answering these questions helps me reflect on the past month and I really appreciate having a monthly record of what we've been up to. I go back and re-read these posts often. The questions come from Shay at Mix and Match Mama and Sheaffer at Sheaffer Told Me Too.

image from here

 

What we're eating this week... This month has been all about the cookies! The kids started the month by participating in the Youth Mentor cookie bake and exchange. Then Janice invited me to do a Zoom baking class with her and Tessa and we baked three different kinds of cookies. And of course, we've baked quite a few batches of Applesauce Jumbles. So we've been eating a lot of cookies this past month!

A shout out to Holly at Pink Lady for our absolute favourite cookie this time of year. You can find the recipe for Applesauce Jumbles here. PS. This tab is constantly open on my computer/phone from mid-November until January.

What I'm reminiscing about... As I've felt under the weather this past week, I've been thinking about other hard Christmases we've had, for various reasons. Christmas 2012, I had the flu for two weeks and cried a lot. Sam was almost four and Rachel was one and a half and it was a very hard Christmas with two young kids. My parents came and I have very few pictures of this Christmas because I was in bed for most of it.

Christmas of 2020 we were all still isolating in the throes of Covid. There was no in person Christmas Eve service, no in person gatherings. It was so lonely. We decided to do Wonders of Winter with Tim & Janice outside but we were all wearing masks and didn't get too close to each other.

Christmas 2022 was the year of the major weather system across most of North America. Our Christmas morning flight was cancelled, and never rescheduled, and we returned home to a sad, closed up house. We bought new flights for a few days later, and those flights were delayed and my dad ended up driving to Calgary on 20 minutes notice so we could have some bit of Christmas in Saskatchewan. We enjoyed a Christmas dinner with our friend Elinor and worked on our skating during that mixed up Christmas.

I think it's good for me to remember that some Christmases are picture perfect but some of them are full of illness, mixed up plans, cancelled flights, and either way, there are still (hopefully) moments of joy and remembering the real meaning of Christmas.

 

And to clarify, me being sick shouldn't mess with our holiday plans too much but last week I had to miss Rachel's dance showing and we had to switch our Christmas celebrations with Tim & Janice to Zoom and I'm not good at changed plans so I've been a little sad this past week.

What I'm loving... Antibiotics, which are helping me feel better! Hahaha! I'm loving that for the next two weeks I have very few things I have to do. No schedules, no alarms, very few plans, -- I probably won't even get dressed for a few days. That is the best!!!

What we've been up to... We've done a couple of puzzles...

...we've played a lot of soccer (and Sam's team won their division!!!)...

 

...Rachel's had four different dance performances...

(an accessory in one show, Waltz of the Flowers from The Nutcracker in another)

 

(aviators in another show)

 

...and we've baked many batches of Applesauce Jumbles for friends, class parties, and to share with co-workers...

What I'm dreading... As always, this time of year, I'm dreading cancelled flights. There's some snow forecast and I really hope it doesn't interfere with our travel plans.

What I'm working on... I've been working on getting better but Sam was working on a history project and Rachel was working on a Secret Santa gift, which is a little more exciting :)

What I'm excited about... I mean, besides the holidays, I'm super excited that our "get out of the house" shelf is currently empty! Yes, we have distributed everything that shouldn't be in our house -- for the time being. Whoooo hooo!!!

 

What I'm watching/reading... I've been watching a lot of Hallmark movies with Rachel. We've watched old favourites (The Santa Summit and Christmas With The Darlings) and some new ones (Leah's Perfect Gift and Holiday Touchdown).

 

As for reading, I took out a bunch of books which seemed Christmas themed from the library so I'm reading my way through those. I'm currently reading Mistletoe & Mr Right by Sarah Morgenthaler.

What I'm listening to... Ah, I don't know what I'm currently listening to...? I haven't really been feeling the Christmas song love this year so I'm not listening to a lot of Christmas music.

What I'm wearing... Matching family pajamas!!! We got ours at Old Navy and I LOVE them!

I don't have a picture of us in ours but this is our pattern this year. (image from here)

What I'm doing this weekend... Instead of writing about what I'm doing this weekend, I'm going to share a little bit about this past weekend. Winter Break started and Rachel had a dance performance.

She reprised her Polichinelle dance from the Chamber Orchestra performance.

We watched Hallmark movies, ate Applesauce Jumbles, and drank Cranberry tea.

We celebrated Channukah (a little early) with Dave's parents. Dave was particularly thrilled that he had to fry latkes outside on the coldest day we've had thus far this year. It was -17C/1F with windchill.

We did some holiday puzzles.

We enjoyed a trip to Stratford to eat some pickles on pizza and take in their Lights On Stratford displays.

We celebrated Christmas as a family, a little early.

 

What I'm looking forward to next month... TULIPS!!! If you're new around here, every January I buy tulips and I love them so much!!! Also, we're going on our church's winter retreat and I'm really looking forward to that too!

So that's what's up with us this (not last Wednesday) in December. I hope you all have a Merry Christmas, a Happy Channukah, and some time doing the things that you love most this time of year. See you next week!