Ringing in 2026

We celebrated the New Year with food. Cole bought $55 worth of shrimp. For 5 people. For those who aren't sure how the conversion works, that equals one metric ass ton of shrimp per person. 

We will have zero desire to eat shrimp again until New Year 2027. 

I made my first cheeseball! I'm officially middle aged!

We watched the final Stranger Things episodes until midnight. 

Cole found some old 2024 New Year stuff we never used, so we blew party horns, exploded some confetti poppers, and forced Soos to celebrate against his will.

And, of course, no New Year celebration would be complete without a solid vacuuming. If you're not ringing in the New Year with a little vacuum action, a cheeseball, and the shrimp sweats, are you even living? 

My only regret is that we didn't bust out the Snuggies. But, you know... shrimp sweats. 

December 2025

Rand jumped on the mustache trend with Cole and Tukk, except his was in bacon form.

We saw the drone Christmas show here in town.

I finally agreed to let Rand watch Stranger Things, so instead of watching Christmas movies all month, we binge watched Stranger Things, and Rand drew the Mind Flayer at church. It's fine. It's what Christmas is all about. 

We were adorable in front of the Christmas tree.

Soos, who is not allowed on the furniture, didn't even care about getting on the naughty list if it meant he could snuggle Caulder on the couch.

We also bought Rylee an official Hufflepuff wizard's robe for her birthday, complete with her name embroidered on it AND a wand pocket. I'm pretty sure we were more excited about gifting it to her than she was about getting it.

We texted her aaaaaaallllllll day long about her present. 

"Look, it's me holding your present!" 

"Look! It's your present on our counter!"

"RYLEE RYLEE RYLEE! We're bringing your present over now!"

I think she really hopes we never buy her a present, ever again. 😂

I freakin' rocked my new fanny pack. 

Rand and his 10 million creep fest stuffies took over Cole's bed.

And we had some really beautiful sunsets.

Luminaria

Yaya treated us to another night at Luminaria this year, and it was so fun! Plus, I think it was a little bit warmer than last year, AND we got smoked tacos after. Nothing helps you survive the post-Christmas depressions like smoked tacos. It's basically Xanax in taco form, WITH guacamole. 

Christmas 2025!

We played games and decorated gingerbread houses at Yaya's on Christmas Eve. And of course ate a bunch of delicious food. Darby made mocktails for everyone, which was super fun. 

Then we headed home, but we didn't do a lot of our usual stuff on Christmas Eve because Tukk was sick (on top of recovering from surgery 😢) and just wanted to go to bed. The rest of us opened our books and chocolate for our Icelandic yakgoskboakflad tradition (just because we can't spell it OR pronounce it doesn't mean we can't enjoy it!), then went to bed without even setting out cookies and milk for Santa. Oops!

Luckily the big guy must not have put us on the naughty list for that, because he still spoiled us. Here's the calm before the storm:

Rand was super excited to hand out everyone's gifts to them. 

Soos was scared and confused, as per usual.

Tukk made us this awesome sign to put up at our new spot at the Bog. We love it!

My favorite: the chaos pictures. 

Somehow this became the year of guns. We got each of the boys an old timey Heritage pistol, Tukk asked for a Browning 7mm, and Cole got a couple of guns, too. 

We spent Christmas evening with my family again, eating more and watching the kiddos play with all their new toys. 

It was a magical year!

Grandma Kathy's Party

One of our favorite days of the year! We love this party. We stuffed our faces, told Santa what we wanted for Christmas, opened gifts, stole presents from each other, and laughed our guts out.

 

But the highlight of the entire party was when Kathy opened her gift during the gift game. She was so embarrassed. We could not stop laughing.

(Kathy, if you read this post, I am so sorry. But this needed to be documented for posterity! 🤣)