Every year, we send out a (now digital) Christmas card and letter to friends and family! In some ways this tradition feels a little outdated — after all, we can easily keep up on each other’s lives through social media these days! However, I know it’s difficult to keep tabs on the lives of all your loved ones that way, so this is how we provide a detailed update to our loved ones each year. It’s also a fun practice for me to look over the last year!
Here’s our card & letter for 2021 :)
And just like that, another year of loving, growing, and building our life together has passed. Taking the time to look back always shows me what a wonderful year we’ve lived together!
Holly (2 this month) is so much fun. She finds endless reasons to laugh and smile, and we can’t get enough of it! (She also likes to *scream* when things don’t go her way, and we could do without that ) She learns new words every day (our favorite is how she says “guggle” for “snuggle”), she wants to pet every dog she sees, and she dances every time she hears music. She’s fearless when it comes to slides, and she’s generally pretty curious and daring when it comes to physical challenges. She’s also so sweet, giving a high supply of hugs and kisses, and saying “sad!” and offering consolation anytime she sees someone crying.
Ada (5) is inquisitive, silly, and full of love. She enjoys her all-outdoor preschool and her weekly dance class, mostly because she loves playing with her friends at each of these activities! After an unplanned encounter with Star Wars IV, Ada fell in love with the movie, and specifically with Princess Leia. For months and months, she wanted to watch the movie nonstop, and she even requested a Star Wars birthday party, Star Wars family Halloween costume, and now she’s asking for a Star Wars bedroom. She’s obsessed! As she gets older, she asks more questions, and I love to see the wheels turning in her head as she grasps more about how everything around her works.
The girls certainly have their moments of fighting and sibling rivalry, but mostly they’re becoming the best of friends! They play together so well, and it’s such a joy to see.
I stay home with our girls full time, and I fit lots of just-for-me things into the cracks of time I have. I joined an adult hip-hop dance class this fall, and it’s been so fun to dance again! I host a girls’ night with different people each month, where I try out cake recipes and cake decorating techniques and get some adult interaction; I call it Cake & Conversation. I still work as a child sleep consultant, so I spend a lot of my downtime producing content for my business and learning more about how to use social media effectively. After living in our house for nearly 6 years, I did some redecorating this year. I thought it would take a month or two, but it’s taken the whole year, and I still have more ideas for changes, much to Russ’s chagrin! My constant battle in life is wanting to do all the things and not having the time or capacity to do them all!
Russ has developed many new hobbies this year. He’s always loved eating sourdough bread, but this year he learned how to make it! We’re major fans around here, and so are many of our neighbors, as his recipe makes 3 loaves. Then, after finding a smokin’ deal on a used Traeger grill (pun intended ), he took up smoking meats. He’s made many yummy meals this year! Finally, he picked up photography, and eventually zeroed in on astrophotography – photos of the night sky. You can often find him looking up YouTube tutorials on how to improve his skills in each of these new endeavors. He still works as a Team Lead at Duncan Aviation, while trying to figure out what his dream job might be. He’s done several house projects this year (installed new flooring, built a mantel and cupboard doors for our TV stand), but he informed me he doesn’t want to be involved in any other house projects for a very long time. He hates that kind of work, but he does such an amazing job that I have a hard time refraining from asking him!
Our family made travel a real priority this year. We joined my entire family (12 adults and 18 kids!) for an unforgettable trip to Kauai this summer. Ada was thrilled to spend so much time with cousins! We fit in a girls’ trip (for me) and a getaway trip (for me and Russ) back-to-back in Oregon. Date night is great, but it was especially nice to have a few days all to ourselves! And we also went on several weekend trips here in Utah – camping, cabins, rental properties, hotels – we’ve done them all this year! We’d love to say we used that travel trailer we bought last year for some of these explorations, but that hunk of junk didn’t even survive the winter! After it collapsed under some heavy rain, we had to simply chalk it up to a life lesson learned. Hopefully we’ll renovate one in the future, but we’ll make sure it’s much sturdier, first!
Our wonderful life is so easy to see in retrospect, but in the coming year, I want to be more present and joyful in the small moments as they happen. Our hope for our family and yours is to more purposefully enjoy these “good ol’ days” while we’re in them!
We wish you a merry Christmas, and a joyful new year!
Love, Russ, Ashley, Ada, & Holly Holmes