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?