Happy 10 year anniversary of me sitting down and writing a “traditional” Christmas letter! I’m not sure if this officially makes me an old lady or not, but I love this tradition.
I remember as a little girl, getting Christmas cards in the mail. I’d sit down with the letters my family would receive and read all about my parent’s friends and what they’d done that year. In many cases, I didn’t even know them, but I loved getting a small glimpse into their lives.
In a day and age where it seems people slip further and further from the “traditions” of the past, this is one tradition that I really love, look forward to every year, and refuse to give up.
And so, I invite you to take a peek into our lives! Sitting down and reflecting, thinking, and remembering the past year as a family – it’s one of my favorite Christmas traditions!
2024 Letter // 2023 Letter // 2022 Letter // 2021 Letter // 2020 Letter // 2019 Letter // 2018 Letter // 2017 Letter // 2016 Letter
If you follow along with my blog, my Facebook, my Instagram, or my YouTube channel on a regular basis, you probably have a pretty good idea of what our year looked like, but in an effort to give a complete overview of the year 2025 in the Abbey house, I’ve put together this Christmas letter (and hopefully at least a few of you are here reading this because you got the note in our Christmas card! If so, welcome! I’m so glad you’re here!)
All I can say is: thank goodness 2025 was not 2024.
(In case you missed it, 2024 was a rough one – you can go back and read about it here.)
As we opened the calendar on a new year, I honestly was just so thankful to put 2024 in the rearview mirror and we began to get excited as we looked forward to a fresh slate and brand new year.
Traditionally, we plan a week-long trip down to Florida in the spring, but in 2024, we had switched things up and gone in the fall. We learned very quickly that we MUCH prefer Florida in the spring than Florida in the fall, so we decided that if we were going to go back down south, we wanted to plan a spring trip.
As always: Derrick is a mastermind of planning our trips and he began putting the crazy jigsaw puzzle together that is our adventures – making all the pieces fit together just perfectly. Every few days, he’d present a new, slightly different, set of ideas to me and we’d hash out what we liked, what we didn’t like, and what we actually wanted to get out of our trip. (This isn’t anything new, this is how we tackle planning all of our “big” trips – it’s quite the process.)
While we were in the midst of planning a big trip to Florida, we also finally pulled the plug and got all four of us our passports – because we knew we wanted to travel up to Canada sometime this summer as well.
By the end of February, we had our Florida trip pretty much locked in. We booked our hotels, Derrick requested his time off work, and a trip for mid-May was set.
There’s just one problem: we were going to be headed down to central Florida just as Universal’s brand new park (Epic Universe) would also be opening.
If we’ve never met before (which, hi, how did you stumble across this blog post of all posts, if we’ve never met?) Derrick and I are roller coaster and theme park enthusiasts. Most of our travels center around riding roller coasters and we (along with most of the world) had been anxiously watching the construction of a brand spankin’ new theme park over the last few years in Florida. As construction came to a close and soft opening and previews and grand opening dates were announced – we wanted to visit Epic Universe in the absolute WORST way.
There’s just one problem: at the time we were planning our trip, the only way you could get tickets to Epic Universe was to buy a 3-day pass to Universal and you could only visit Epic one of those 3 days.
Now, don’t get me wrong: we LOVE Universal and Derrick and I would happily spend 3 days across the Universal property! But we knew that our children would NOT love the legacy Universal parks (there are just too many dark, scary rides and characters they are unfamiliar with). We knew they’d love Epic Universe, because half of the park centers around characters they REALLY love (How To Train Your Dragon and Mario!) – but we knew they weren’t really ready for Islands of Adventure or Universal Studios quite yet. The last thing we wanted to do was spend a heaping amount of cash, just for our kids to be miserable the entire time.
So, literally hours of debate and discussion later, we planned our Florida trip to NOT include Epic Universe. (Yes, it was painful.)
But as our trip in May crept closer, as the park had it’s soft opening and it’s preview days for passholders, things began to change. That 3-day ticket requirement was quietly rolled back and disappeared. Then they started offering a limited amount of tickets, during the preview days, to non-annual passholders. And that’s when the mic dropped. Suddenly we realized, we might be able to buy our family tickets to just Epic Universe, during their preview event (when crowds would be lighter) before the grand opening of the park.
I’ll never forget standing in our kitchen, as Derrick jumped into the virtual queue to try to get us tickets, and we got the green light that we could purchase tickets during the VERY LAST DAY OF PREVIEWS for the four of us. (There was quite a bit of screaming and jumping and dancing around – it was a dream come true.)
And that means, with just a month left before our big Florida trip, we were suddenly re-arranging everything. We booked two nights on Universal property (so we could take advantage of all the Universal perks), we adjusted our other plans and days – it was a whirlwind (but the happiest kind) for sure.
In the middle of all that – we did take a long weekend at the beginning of April to visit Kings Dominion (and ride their new roller coaster: Rapterra) and Six Flags Great Adventure (and ride their new roller coaster: Flash Vertical Velocity).
We also traveled to north-central Pennsylvania to spend Easter weekend with Derrick’s Aunt Dot and Uncle Jim and their family.
Unfortunately, that weekend did not go as planned. Leander ended up being so sick that he and I spent almost the entire weekend hiding away in the guest room. He had a fever and just did not feel well.
When we came home, we realized that he was not improving – in fact, he was deteriorating even further. And suddenly, he couldn’t walk or put any weight on his legs at all. Derrick and I rushed him down to Children’s Hospital and after a ton of tests, they diagnosed him with the flu – and as a result of the virus, they also diagnosed him with Viral Myositis (which is why he couldn’t walk). In a nutshell, the virus caused the muscles in his legs to be so inflamed that he could not walk. (Talk about terrifying – as a parent, all the thoughts were running through my head.)
The staff at Children’s were AMAZING (Leander was absolutely traumatized by them having to put an IV in his hand, but they were incredible). Thankfully, the treatment for Viral Myositis is very simple: lots of fluids to flush the muscles and rest. The doctors told us – you’re going to be amazed, but after we give him a bunch of IV fluids, he’ll likely be able to walk out of here in a few hours – and incredibly: he did! It was such a relief to see our running, jumping, climbing boy, who we literally had to carry into the ER – WALK out just a few hours later.
Thankfully, he made a full and fairly easy recovery – and just in time too, because two weeks later was our big Florida trip.
I’ll just leave it at this: Florida was AMAZING in every way – the perfect start to our summer. We visited Six Flags Over Georgia, Sea World Orlando, Busch Gardens Tampa, Epic Universe, and then visited Busch Gardens Williamsburg on our way home. We spent a whole day relaxing at a resort called The Polynesian Isles and also a day and a half at the beach at St. Pete’s. It was the perfect blend of roller coasters and relaxing – hands down one of our favorite weeks in Florida EVER.
We came home from Florida and rolled straight into glorious SUMMER.
Derrick’s Mom came to visit us, Derrick did a bunch of traveling for his job (more on that in a few minutes), and I worked a bunch of weddings.
In June, Derrick and I were able to snag tickets to a special preview night at Cedar Point as they were opening their brand new roller coaster: Siren’s Curse. We left our kids with my parents for the night and jetted off for a 24-hour getaway! It was a crazy experience (we’d never purchased tickets for a new-ride-preview before), but it ended up being absolutely incredible. We rode the brand new roller coaster five times that night (which was way more than we were expecting) and we had so much fun.
We had made plans to use our newly delivered passports to visit Canada the first week of July (Canada’s Wonderland was opening a brand new roller coaster and we were so excited to check it out, plus visit Canada’s Wonderland for the first time), but as July loomed closer, we realized that the coaster was not going to open as projected and so we pulled the plug on that trip.
We kept an eye on things though and when AlpenFury’s grand opening was announced the following week, we literally took the MOST SPONTANEOUS trip we have ever taken and jumped in the car just a few hours later to head north into Canada. What a whirlwind of a trip that was! We loved Canada’s Wonderland and definitely will be heading back there soon (it’s only a few hours away, and now that we all have our passports, it’ll be an easy long-weekend trip to take in the summer!)
The rest of our summer looked like lots of random visits to Kennywood, more weddings for me, I got to take Braelynn to her first concert ever (a whole group of us went to see Brandon Lake and Phil Wickham in Pittsburgh), and we once again conquered a week of VBS at church.
We wrapped up our summer by spending a long weekend at Cedar Point (we finally stayed on property at the legendary Hotel Breakers) and then the very next weekend we spent a long weekend at Legoland in New York.
If you ask our kids what park they loved visiting the most in 2025, they’ll tell you two parks very emphatically: Epic Universe (because How To Train Your Dragon and Mario are both huge lands in the park and those are two IP our children are VERY much obsessed with) AND Legoland.
A long weekend at Legoland turned out to be our family’s most expensive trip to-date (yes, more expensive than two-nights at Universal and tickets for us to visit the brand new Epic Universe), but it was worth it. (We just won’t be going back any time soon!) We stayed on property in an incredibly themed Ninjago room and our kids had a BLAST. Turns out: 10 and 6 years old are the perfect ages for Legoland (not too old to be bored, but not too young to not understand where they are). Braelynn and Leander have been obsessed with Legos and a lot of the characters Lego has created for a very long time, so visiting Legoland was their equivalent to visiting Disney. It was a dream come true trip.
Legoland officially wrapped up our summer and fall kicked off with my cousin Nate marrying his lovely bride Tai’Asia! Family weddings are simply the best and we all had so much fun!
Fall brought more weddings for me, more traveling for Derrick, and school starting back up (hello 5th and 1st grade!)
Fall also brought the return of sick season – but this time Derrick and I got taken down. At the beginning of October, we both picked up strep throat somewhere and it was awful. I thought we both just had really bad colds, but Derrick couldn’t take it anymore and went to Urgent Care where they quickly diagnosed him with strep. An hour later, I made my way down and the same nurse/doctor team diagnosed me with strep as well. I ended up having a horrible reaction to the antibiotics (extending my sickness out more days) and had to get a new prescription called in. Then (in an eerily similar call-back to Leander’s flu-virus debacle earlier this year), I woke up and could barely move my legs.
Strep scares me – I can handle just about any other sickness, but the strep virus can morph into too many scary things, so I found myself at the Emergency Room. Similar to Leander’s diagnosis, they told me I had Reactive Arthritis (a flair up courtesy of the strep virus) and there was nothing to do but wait for it to clear itself out of my system (a process that could take anywhere from 2-8 months).
After being on the antibiotic, I wasn’t contagious, so I somehow pulled it together to shoot a wedding that following weekend, and let’s just say: that was an adventure. I still physically could not squat down and by dinner, my legs just ached. (But that’s all part of being a wedding photographer – you can’t just “reschedule” – the show must go on!)
The fun wasn’t over though because Derrick’s strep throat came back and he had to take a second round of another antibiotic – guys, those few weeks were awful. Thankfully, our kids never got sick, but they were very much left on their own while Derrick and I laid on the couch and fought to get better.
Thankfully, with the help of my Mom dropping off some meals, a few Instacart orders, and lots of time watching TV, we finally got better – and just in time too, because we had one last big trip planned for the end of the year!
The first week of November took us back out to Arizona to visit Derrick’s parents for the third year in a row. By this point, our kids are pros at flying and navigating the airport – and this time, we did it all without a stroller (which was both fun and not-fun – it was great not dragging it around, but that also meant we couldn’t use it to pile all of our stuff on!) We had an incredible trip out west (which ended up being right in the middle of the government shut down – thankfully it didn’t effect our flights at all!)
We spent Thanksgiving at home and celebrated a giant dinner with my family, hosted at my sister’s house. And then the following weekend we took our last trip of the year out to Hersheypark to check out their Christmas Candylane event.
What a wonderful and busy year we’ve had!
Derrick still works for the same company, but that company has gone through MANY changes this year. In the fall of 2024, Shred-It/Stericycle were purchased by Waste Management, so with the new year came so many changes. The “bones” of Derrick’s job have remained basically the same, but a lot of little things have changed in his position and a lot of people around him have been let go or had their positions drastically changed. Toward the end of spring, Derrick learned that his territory would be changing and he would no longer be responsible for the branches he’s been leading for the last few years – but would instead inherit a whole brand new territory. He used to manage branches that were mostly in Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio, and West Virginia, but now his territory encompasses Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and even North Carolina. Remember when I sad that Derrick was traveling a lot? Well, he not only had to wrap up his obligations with his old branches, but had to head out and begin to meet his new branches (a task he still hasn’t fully finished as a travel freeze went into effect before he could personally visit every single new branch under his leadership).
Waste Management has also flown him out to Chicago three times this year for trainings and so he could be on-site as they roll out new software. So, needless to say: Derrick has spent more time traveling this year than ever (and we’ve really missed him while he’s been gone for usually 4-5 days at at time, sometimes 1-2 times a month!)
While WM remains his “real” job – XscreamThrills remains his passion. While we were at Six Flags Over Georgia (at the very beginning of our big Florida trip), Derrick’s YouTube channel hit 30,000 subscribers – a huge and very exciting milestone! I’m so proud of the hard work he consistently puts into his channel. (And yes, it does pay for a good portion of our travels and why we are so blessed to be able to travel the way we do – I know a lot of people wonder about that!)
Speaking of YouTube, my biggest goal of the year was to get my channel (The Adventuring Abbeys) to the point where my videos could be monetized (and YouTube would send me a check every month too). It’s definitely been exciting to watch my channel grow from around 750 subscribers in 2023, to 1,400 subscribers in 2024, to over 2,500 subscribers in 2025!! There are several metrics a channel has to hit in order to be monetized, and I’d hit every single one with one exception going into this summer. Needless to say, you can imagine how excited I was to finally receive notice that I’d officially met that last metric in September and to watch my little channel start to make some YouTube cash!
Other news about me: in 2025 I officially split my wedding business in half – I still photographed weddings (both with weddings I’d booked on my own and as a second shooter to help my friends) but I also did a lot of Wedding Content Creation. After this year (my wedding season officially ends this coming weekend), I really want to do even more Wedding Content Creation and let my photography take an even further back seat. It’ll never go away completely – I’ll never be able to fully give it up, but I really love this new avenue that continues to grow in the wedding world! (In other words, if you want a little sneak peek into my biggest goals for 2026 – I need to completely overhaul my website and put Content Creation more front and center!)
I still co-lead a networking group for creative entrepreneurs with my sweet friend Tiffany. We actually just re-branded and re-named our group to now be the Tuesday Creative Collective and we’re really excited about the upcoming year and what we have planned! (We used to be under a larger, worldwide organization called The Rising Tide Society, but they completely dissolved about 6 weeks ago, so now we’re off into the great unknown on our own!)
I still teach on Wednesday nights for the kids’ program at our church.
And I still create monthly films of our daily life (when I put together the December film at the beginning of January, I will have FIVE full years documented in video form – it might be my proudest accomplishment EVER).
When I mentioned that I visited the ER after having strep throat this fall – that wasn’t my only trip to the ER since the last time I wrote a Christmas letter – in fact, right after I published last year’s version, I took my first trip to the ER (it’s a roller coaster of a story). I was diagnosed with a small Vertebral Artery Dissection – basically a tear in an artery in my neck. Thankfully it was small and caught quickly – I was put on a baby aspirin every day and given strict instructions not to do any strenuous exercise for three months while it healed. Talk about crazy!
Needless to say: we’ve checked “the ER box” quite thoroughly this year and I’m good not going back there for quite a long time.
Derrick & I celebrated our 15th wedding anniversary this past spring, which means our 16th wedding anniversary is just a few short months away! (I have no idea how that’s even possible.) We still have our weekly “wine and cheese” nights (something we both really look forward to!) and we enjoyed a 24-hour getaway while we were out in Arizona. We had traveled enough this year to earn us a free stay at a ritzy resort and we had such a wonderful time (while the kids were having the time of their lives with Papa and Nana).
As I mentioned: Braelynn is in 5th grade and will turn 11 years old next month. She’s always been a very artsy person, and still very much loves to draw, but this year her love of crocheting has really exploded. I can’t even begin to count the number of creations she’s made (from little animals to scarves and blankets). She mostly crochets without a pattern – she can just look at a picture and go to town! But she did use a pattern to create a large Stitch and Angel stuffed animal set (which she entered into an art display at the library) and most recently, she has crocheted the entire Toothless family from How To Train Your Dragon (Toothless, the Light Fury, and their three babies). It’s absolutely incredible what she can create and I’m so proud of the hard work she puts into it! (She’s currently dreaming up what it would look like to create a small business with her crochet things and maybe do a little pop-up sale this summer – so stay tuned for that!)
Since she spends so much time crocheting, she’s logged many countless hours listening to Adventures in Odyssey (a radio drama my parents have on CD that we used to listen to as kids) and audio books she gets from the library.
She has officially completed “Phase 1” braces – they were put on in February (specifically to move her one tooth that had come in in the completely wrong place) and she had them on all summer and fall – finally having them taken off about 3 weeks ago. She now has a retainer (which is a whole new level of training in responsibility) and her orthodontist will continue to monitor her in the coming years to determine if/when she needs to move into “Phase 2” braces. (Her smile is SO beautiful now – we look back at pictures from last year and can’t help but comment on how nice her teeth look NOW!)
She continues to GROW (she’s almost as tall as I am) and we now wear the same size shoes! She adores her friends at church and continues to foster a really sweet relationship with our neighbors. She loves to be outside, loves to ride her bike, scooter, and swim! She’s absolutely dying to get a puppy, but we (Derrick and I) still aren’t quite ready to bring a puppy back into our family – maybe soon though? We’ll see.
Leander just turned 7 years old and is officially half-way done with 1st grade. It’s been QUITE the transition for me (as their teacher) to move into spending even more time doing school-stuff. Last year, I mostly spent time with Braelynn and did a few things here and there with Leander (and he did a lot of stuff with us), but now that he’s in 1st grade, he has certain requirements that he has to meet himself. We still do a good chunk of subjects together (history, science, and geography), but now he and I sit one-on-one to do math, phonics, and writing. He’s learned so much in such a short period of time – I’m so proud of him!
Leander’s number one passtime continues to be building Legos – and wow, do people know our boy – he got SO MANY Lego sets for his birthday! He’s been in Lego-heaven! He can build some of them on his own, but a lot of times he still needs some guidance, so Derrick has slowly been working with him to build his new sets. On his own, he builds these intricate “houses” for his characters and puts so much thought into what each room or section is – it’s a lot of fun.
He had a Jurassic World themed birthday party as he’s recently had a renewed love of dinosaurs. He’s watched parts of the Jurassic Park movies (I think the 3rd one is the only one he’s seen entirely through) and he’s seen Jurassic World (just the first one). He is ALL BOY and loves to see the dinosaurs “eat people”.
Speaking of “all boy” – he loves a good fart joke and is constantly laughing and making jokes about anything “stinky”. (Can you say: 7-year-old-boy?) We’ve been working to teach him when it’s appropriate (and when it’s not) – it’s a work in progress.
I know they individually don’t claim each other as their “best friend”, but deep down, Braelynn and Leander do remain the best of friends. They adore each other and are constantly cooking up something (and when they’re not, they’re probably fighting – there really isn’t much of a middle ground with the two of them). They play hard, create entire worlds of their own, and regardless of the weather, are probably running around our backyard.
So, that’s our 2025 in a “nutshell”!
PHEW – now you know why I write these Christmas letters digitally. Can you imagine if I printed this beast out to mail to our family and friends? If you’ve read all of this and made it this far: you deserve a gold star! Thank you so much!
BUT WAIT: there’s more! I am working on the Adventuring Abbeys highlight film encompassing our entire 2025 – so that will be published soon. And I have all the other traditional “end of year” stuff coming up as well: highlights from the weddings and portrait sessions I photographed, the super popular behind-the-scenes post of Derrick and I working throughout the year, my 2026 goals – so, lots of fun to come! I invite you to stick around and enjoy!
If you’d like to follow Derrick on YouTube, here is the link to his channel.
If you’d like to follow me on YouTube, here is the link to my channel.
If you’d like to follow Derrick on Instagram, here is the link to his account.
If you’d like to follow me on Instagram, here is the link to my account.
(Following our accounts listed above and my blog here is the best way to keep up with us throughout the year! We post a lot of content and we’d love it if you stuck around!)
