the 2024 christmas letter

First things first: this is likely my last post here. I've been slowly transitioning to Substack, so if you still want to follow me, you can follow me right here :)

[The year is 1997. You’re eating cheesy popcorn out of one of those giant Christmas popcorn tins, Jingle All the Way is on TV, no one has heard of Taylor Swift, and presents are stacked under the tree bedecked in colored lights and tinsel. Your mom hands you this letter and says “read about how great the Bellamys are!”]

2024 was the year of adventures none of us asked for. My girls and I spent a month in California with my mom, dealing with family things while James held down the fort at home. While that sounds like beaches and sunshine (and there was some of that), it was also abnormally cold and very rainy, I was on a first name basis with my grandma’s plumber, I shared a twin bed with my 4 year old, and I learned how to successfully pick a lock. I’d like to say that James missed us during that month, but he later confessed that he put his drum set in the family room as soon as we left town.

Actual footage of me dealing with my grandma’s bathroom flooded with sewage circa April 2024:

Pros of 2024:

+ Taking a month off school to see family and travel.

+ A cross-country roadtrip with my kids and my mom wherein I narrated the Donner Party’s trip from Illinois to CA, complete with a stop at the Donner Memorial where I showed my kids where I had a picnic lunch with my 5th grade (6th? who knows) class at the cabin site where they ate each other for dinner.

+ Watching my kids play at my favorite childhood park in Reno.

+ A beach vacation without kids for our 13th anniversary.

+ Seeing the northern lights in May, which sounds super cool, but really everyone else in the US saw them too, so it kind of feels like bragging about going to Walmart.

+ Growing a successful flower garden.

+ We got a puppy! Her name is Poppy, but her full government name is California Poppy Louise Bellamy (Gracie says Louise is the cat’s middle name, but I disagree).

Cons of 2024:

+ A cross-country roadtrip with 2 kids.

+ A cross-country roadtrip with 2 kids who threw up the entire way across Nebraska from a stomach bug.

+ A cross-country roadtrip with 2 kids who were looking forward to swimming in hotel pools every night just for most of them to be closed for various reasons .

+ A first trip without kids for our anniversary to the Florida Keys where they had record breaking heat which resulted in my Irish skin breaking out into hives from the sun whenever I left the hotel room.

+ Biking across an entire island in 104 degree sunlight plus 629% humidity.

+ Being stranded on a plane in Florida for 8 hours with no food or water and the woman behind me threatening the crew (toward the end of the saga I almost joined her).

+ Health scares for everyone!

+ Clara learned the hard way to never lay her entire forearm on the piping hot rotisserie chicken shelf at Costco. I learned the hard way that my secret talent is whipping up makeshift ice packs out of things found in my car.

+ A couple family deaths.

James is still working from home and spreads himself out all over the house, stretching extension cords from here to there, stealing my chargers, and leaving coffee cups on every surface. My cute little kitchen table is covered with a giant monitor, 13 cords, a laptop, and an ergonomic keyboard, complete with a black office chair with lime green accents. This means the Lore Pemberton painting vibe I’m trying to achieve at home is more like a redneck Best Buy vibe. He’s still drumming, occasionally teaching drum lessons, and is absolutely judging the state of your front lawn and how high your mower deck is set (I have no clue if those are the correct words). He has cheerfully taken on all puppy responsibilities, and even though he looked me dead in the eye and said “we aren’t getting a puppy right now” when I forwarded him the email with the appointment I made at the shelter (please note he spent months sending me links to shelter puppies prior to this), he and the dog are inseparable. His claim to fame this year, when he wasn’t doing the dishes for me, hunting down my dream walnut baby grand piano to surprise me with, getting up early to make me coffee, being the rock in the midst of 3 emotional females, or getting the kids out of my hair, was accidentally setting the air fryer on fire while under the influence of Benadryl.

this is what my entire house feels like with James working from home

Gracie turned 9 in March and started 4th grade in the fall. She loves math and science, taking care of her pets, drawing, riding her bike, and playing with the neighborhood kids. She’s in Awanas, swimming, and after a year of gymnastics she switched to the Ninja class and is rocking it. Her various phases this year have included Perler bead creations, making friendship bracelets, Barbies, painting Barbies in the bathroom without permission, Lord of the Rings, watching every episode of the Andy Griffith show with her favorite character naturally being Otis the town drunk, and asking me for more pets. When the temperature is below 36 degrees Farenheit and Pluto completes a full rotation around the sun, she’ll ask for me to give her a piano lesson. She’s my right hand man in the kitchen, could eat a steak for every meal, and will not clean her room, but she will stay up late to secretly organize the coat closet. If you’ve seen Kevin McCallister in Home Alone, then you’ve met Gracie. Her ingenuity could give Kevin a run for his money. With her birthday money, she bought a life sized stuffed cat she named Zippy. It looks unnervingly like a taxidermied cat, and she’s used this to her advantage by taking it places and putting it where it shouldn’t be, like a restaurant table or a car dealership, and pranking people into thinking there’s a real cat. And honestly that sentence sums her up perfectly.

Clara turned 4 in April and started a very loose preschool with me in the fall. I put her in gymnastics at the beginning of the year and she absolutely loves it, even when she pretends to be scared of the balance beam and vault. She took a fall ballet class and has been putting on daily ballet recitals ever since and lives in her leotards. She is in love with all things princesses, puppies, and if it’s not pink she doesn’t want it. She is deep in her Bluey phase, changes her outfit 13 times a day, wants to eat nothing but strawberries and cheese, and still wants to sit on my lap literally all day long. No really, all day and all night. More than once she’s woken me up at night just for one more hug. She is my velcro baby, sidekick, and partner in crime. She loves to play “duets” on the piano with me, steal drinks of my coffee, draw pictures featuring me with a goatee, make beds for all her babies, and she’s been known to do nefarious things with scissors. She keeps us laughing and pulling our hair out.

Michelle, ahem, I have felt this year, as a meme I once saw said, like a terrified chihuahua in God’s designer handbag. I’ve continued to homeschool, and even though we still truly love it and are committed to it, I spent the first day of school this year in self-imposed mom time-out (every mom knows what I’m talking about) with various school phone numbers pulled up on my phone. Quiet is a word I’ve lost all familiarity with. I’ve continued to teach piano lessons a few afternoons a week, which has been a joy. Basically every spare moment I’ve spent at my new piano either teaching or playing and sometimes fighting Gracie over who gets to play next. I’ve been a table leader for the mom’s group at my church, playing piano at church, not cleaning the kitchen and then yelling about the kitchen never being clean, reading whenever I have a brain cell to spare, and scrolling Instagram reels and memes and sending them to my various friends based on their humor level. I have been perpetually behind on laundry, did not weed the flowerbeds once, managed to grow approximately 3 tomatoes, have been going on sunrise hikes with my neighbor so I can brag about hiking before everyone else is out of bed, and have only had to refer to the answer key a handful of times while teaching 4th grade math.

You guys, I didn’t even bring up the election! And I won’t—that’s my Christmas gift to you. My prayer for you this Christmas season is that your eggnog mugs overflow and you avoid the WWIII draft in 2025.

Love,

the Bellamys

currently, may ed.

recovering: from truly the wildest spring. We had the birthday bonanza, Easter, a month in California (in which every possible thing went wrong), a cross-country roadtrip with a stomach bug, a visit from my MIL (she helped with the kids SO much), and James and I went to Florida for our anniversary where we were plagued with record-breaking heat and then held hostage by American Airlines on a plane for 8 hours with no food and water (cancelled flight due to weather, then diverted to Miami, then the flight crew timed out and we needed a new one, then a maintenance issue, then waiting for no reason??? All in all we spent 8 hours sitting on the same plane with zero food or water and I hadn't eaten that day due to airport drama)(and then we had another flight after that!). And then I came home to end-of-year mom's ministry stuff, a billion make-up piano lessons, a broken key on my new piano, etc. I also picked up a wicked cold on the aforementioned plane thanks to the recirculated air and the sick couple sitting next to us. It's been almost 2 weeks and I'm still not feeling great, and now it's slowly working its way through all of us. We are doing GREAT and not at all hanging by a thread!

prepping: my garden. Thanks to this insane spring, I'm doing a very minimal garden this year with zero expectations. Last summer's pest drama destroyed my will to live. I bought 2 tomato plants and a few flowers, and they're still sitting on my patio table, waiting to be planted. That's the level of care I have this year. I'm going to try to grow some flowers from seed on my deck so I have something pretty to look at. That's as good as it's going to get. 

hoping for: a peaceful summer. Last summer was not great and this spring has had my stress levels at an all time high, so I have completely changed my schedule. I don't have to plan my mom's group this year (!!!!), I'm only teaching one afternoon a week (!!!!), we are just going to finish the last few math lessons and be done with school (!!!!!), and I'm not doing ANYTHING aside from volunteering for a week at VBS (beer me strength). I will not be stressed and frazzled. I will not waste my time on social media. I will not scream at the chipmunks in my garden. I will not be overwhelmed. I will not read books that stress me out. I will rest and reset myself so I feel ready to dive back into school and other responsibilities in the fall. 

(please Lord hear my prayer)

worried about: the nest of baby robins in the bush outside our front window. Poor mama bird flew into our picture window and broke her neck, so daddy bird has become a single dad and we are all very invested and concerned. 

love that: we saw the northern lights! That's been a dream of mine. A few days later, James and I toured the Hemingway House in Key West, which was another dream. It was a big week for the bucket list.

watching: Below Deck. Listen--I am ashamed. I am not a Bravo person and I renounced "reality" tv when we backed out of House Hunters, but when we were in Florida and I had a heat rash and nausea from walking and biking in the 104 degree heat and humidity, we hid out in our hotel room and it was the only thing on tv. I became obsessed with Below Deck because the idea of living and working on a boat is my worst nightmare. When we were in California, the social media algorithm started showing me reels of people who live and work on cruise ships, and that became my hyperfixation for awhile. You could not pull me onto a cruise kicking and screaming which means I had to know what it's like to actually live and work on one, and ever since our travel nightmare a few weeks ago, I got hooked on watching pilots who post their day in the life reels. WHY am I like this?

To bring it full circle, I hate relational drama and I hate the feeling of swaying on a boat in the water and I hate the idea of being at someone's beck and call (other than my kids of course) 24/7, so watching Below Deck is like watching astronauts go to space. I cannot get enough of it and I never want to do it myself. We found the entire series on Peacock and we started from the beginning.

To piggy back off that, Flight Radar is my new favorite app. It shows you every single flight currently in the air around the world. You can click on a plane and see where it came from and where it's going, what kind of plane, how long it's been in the air and how much longer it has to go, and what the elevation is. I'll find a plane on a long haul flight when I go to bed, and then watch it land when I get up in the morning. I don't know what has gotten into me. James refuses to ever fly again after our last experience (I haven't even mentioned the turbulence that made me think I was meeting Jesus), so I have to live vicariously through the people currently on flight AFR090 en route to Miami from Paris. 

They have 3 hours and 23 minutes of flight time remaining, if you were wondering.

when you ask God for an adventure and He actually gives you one

Last year, I prayed for more opportunities to play piano. As much as I love to play just for myself in my living room, my skills improve the most when I’m forced to learn new music and play it for others. And that’s how I somehow became a funeral pianist for a stint last fall. Not exactly the answer I was expecting, but it’s the answer God gave me.

I have prayed similar prayers about travel. My friends all post beautiful photos of their frequent travels, and I think “Lord, I see what you’ve done for others, and I want that for me.”

Then the Lord said “Here’s a month in California! But it’s because every square inch of your family is in crisis.”

My girls and I are back from a month away, and let me tell you.

Actually, I'm too tired to know what to tell you. But wow. What a month.

It started with our flight to Dallas being delayed for bad weather, a turbulent flight, and my child throwing up on every inch of the plane and innocent witnesses as we ran for our connecting flight that we made with exactly three minutes to spare. 

We made it to California smelling like vomit but in one piece, and that's pretty much how the trip itself went. 

There's a lot of stuff going on with my family: selling my grandparents' house and settling their estate, moving my other grandma to assisted living and going through her house, saying goodbye to the places I've grown up visiting, visiting my uncle who is starting a long and difficult cancer battle. So much grief and so many changes all at once.

To top it off, my grandmother's house got the memo and gave up on life as well. The garage flooded right before I arrived. The microwave broke, the toaster broke, and TWICE the house flooded with sewage while I was there.

TWICE.

Y'all I was more than happy to pack and cook and clean, I was not expecting to clean sewage out of the shower. I got to know bleach on an intimate level. I also did not expect to learn how to pick a lock, but nothing about this trip went according to plan.

The washer died, two days before we left, so we had to schlep a bag of dirty underwear half an hour away to my other grandparents' house which had just gone on the market and pray there would be no showings. Then we discovered that while THAT washer worked, the dryer died that day, so we had to schlep a bag of wet but clean underwear back to the other house and use that dryer, which actually and mercifully still worked.

I had to share a bedroom with my girls, who had to share a twin bed (Lord have mercy). They passed colds back and forth, it rained more on that trip than I have EVER seen in California in my 35 years. 

I had to say goodbye to my grandma which was extremely painful. We said goodbye to both grandparents' houses. Goodbye to our favorite places to visit. I'm so glad my aunt and uncle and a few of my cousins came down to have one last family gathering. It was so special to sit and reminisce and spend time together in our second home one last time. 

On the not so sad side, we witnessed two SpaceX missile launches, had a couple beach days, celebrated Clara's 4th birthday with some shopping and brunch and a fun little party my great aunt threw, and got to see so much of the country that I hadn't seen before. 

After dealing with lawyers and banks and whatnot, we finally got to leave California after 3 weeks, and my girls and my mom and I roadtripped to Reno, where I spent a good chunk of my childhood. I haven't visited in 15 years and I was an emotional wreck showing my girls where I used to live and go to school. We spent more time with our family who lives there, and it was such a good visit. We drove through all of Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Nebraska, Iowa, and Illinois. My girls came down with a stomach bug in Nebraska, which felt like the cherry on top of an extremely difficult month of travel. We drove through Omaha and Iowa exactly 24 hours before the tornadoes went through, and had we stayed an extra day to let everyone feel better like we considered, we would've been directly in the midst of those storms. 

My favorite part of the roadtrip was the Donner Memorial in the Sierras. I've been obsessed with the Donner Party saga for years, and I hadn't been to the memorial or museum since I went on a field trip as a kid. I've read books on them since and have seriously prayed for an opportunity to go back and see it all through fresh eyes, and we got to do that on our trip! We drove home on the California Trail (kind of the southern Oregon trail) and my kiddos got a lot of history lectures from me. Moments like that made the hellishness of everything worth it.

We have a quick anniversary trip coming up in a week and a half. Let's see if we can get through one trip without vomit!

currently, march ed.

reading: 2024 is the year I get into fantasy, and I have to be honest--I did not see this one coming. Tell me some good books I can download on my kindle--I have a lot of traveling coming up.

feeling: overwhelmed, stressed, like the dog meme saying this is fine while everything is on fire. Currently prepping for a month long trip to California to help with multiple crises on both sides of the family. Several relatives with cancer, one family death, an estate to settle, and two homes to get ready to go on the market. My kiddos will be with me the entire time (but James has to stay home unfortunately) and then my girls and I will road trip home with my mom. California to Illinois. PRAY FOR US. It will be good to see family and the ocean again, but it will be a sad trip too.

celebrating: birthdays! Because what is a family crisis and month long trip without everyone's birthdays and Easter thrown right in the middle?! Mine was two weeks ago, Gracie's is on Friday, Easter is on Sunday, and Clara's is two weeks from today. And in the midst of this I am still homeschooling and teaching piano lessons and trying to learn music for church on Easter. In the words of Ross Gellar: I'M FINE.

thankful: for my neighbor who must have sensed my stress from afar and brought us dinner!

loving: my neighbor happens to be a ballet teacher and taught an adult ballet class every Monday evening in March in her basement studio. I LOVED it. Mondays are my long and difficult days, and every week I would consider not going, but then the music would come on and I'd dance and feel like a whole person again. I haven't danced in about 15 years (and never took ballet) and it felt SO good to move in that way again. It was my weekly therapy. 

very into: spring colors. Making travel plans made me realize I need some major wardrobe upgrades. I bought a few things and all my shirts are lavender or hot pink. I literally have no clue who I--the girl who lives in black & white striped shirts--am anymore. I turned 35 and just transformed into an entirely different person. Bright pastels, fantasy books--I don't even know.

listening to: Brice Davis. He does folksy worship music and hymns. It's so, so good.

Happy Easter everyone! 

currently, february ed.

reading: Digital Liturgies and The Wisteria Society for Lady Scoundrels. Both excellent. 

I recently read Hey Hun by Emily Lynn Paulson and I can't stop thinking about it. She was at the top of a pyramid scheme MLM (Rodan + Fields) and wrote an entire expose on everything wrong with MLMs. I might have to write a whole thing about it. 

eating: girl scout cookies. One of my piano students is a girl scout, so now I have a dealer. I still can't believe they charge $6 now for arguably subpar cookies (they either do not taste the same or I've gotten bougier). 

thinking: about social media, the internet, and my place in it. Just casual things for a Tuesday afternoon. I logged back into my social media accounts and have been extremely underwhelmed. I also read this post by Erin Loechner  about how she feels about the internet after staying away for 3 years. I have read it probably 5 times and cannot get enough of it.

"You can share sourdough knowledge without creating a masterclass. You can move off-grid without launching a YouTube channel. You can tell your stories without a paywall."

I want to embroider that on something. If I see one more sourdough masterclass going for over $100, I swear.

watching: we watched Oppenheimer this weekend. I loved it. I stayed up late Friday or Saturday night googling a million questions about radiation in Japan and reading stories of the survivors. 

deep diving: this YouTube channel. He hooked me with a documentary about West Virgina and won me over when he filmed a dinner with an Amish family in Holmes County, OH (where I used to go to church camp!). 

playing: my new piano! This is a nearly 30 year dream fulfilled. My old piano that's been passed down through my family is tired and literally falling apart. It has been moved all over the country more times than I can count. It needs to retire. James spent months searching for a good secondhand deal, and we found this one. The moment I saw it was like putting my wedding dress on for the first time--I knew it was meant to be mine. We got a ridiculous deal on it because apparently no one else wants a walnut grand, the sound and quality are incredible, and the guy we bought it from (in Georgia!) delivered it and set it up for us and even moved our old one to the basement. I would never ever ever tell someone to buy a grand piano online, but this particular circumstance could not have gone better.  

buying: these pajamas because clearly they are required, especially now that my oldest is playing as well. I always used to say that I'll homeschool but will for sure pay for someone else to teach my kids piano because I have to outsource something. And then I became a piano teacher and can't imagine sending them to anyone else. 

laughing: at the fact that we finally decided to cancel Netflix (subscription ends at the end of the month) because there is never anything we or the kids want to watch/we’re trying to not be much of a screen family (I say this as my youngest is watching Netflix for full disclosure)—-and then a new season of Love is Blind hits. 

I'm out of the meme loop lately, but these two have had me giggling all week.