I’ve made so many of these monthly videos that I can create them pretty quickly. I usually sit down and pull an entire video together in one sitting (maybe 2 hours of work).
But the December video is ALWAYS an entirely different story.
During a typical month, I take about 45-50 total minutes of video that I cut down and edit into a 10-12 minute film.
But when I sat down with all of my December 2025 footage, I had just shy of 3 HOURS worth of footage (if you strung it all together and watched each clip back-to-back).
Needless to say, I’m proud of myself for cutting it down to 24 minutes (but WHEW, what a process, it definitely took me more one-sitting of work!)
I love the look at our month though and all the memories we created. December brings so many beautiful traditions and fun – and of course, Christmas is the cherry on top of the entire year!
And with this video being wrapped up, that officially marks FIVE FULL YEARS of our daily life documented in monthly video-form! WOW, that doesn’t even seem real – it’s just such a normal part of what I do now, that I literally cannot imagine life without these little videos every month. I can hardly believe that I’ve cataloged 5 entire years this way! These videos have become absolutely precious to me (the kids go back and watch random monthly videos all the time and WOW have they grown and changed so much!) Watching these back remind me of just how incredibly blessed we are!
December starts with Leander’s birthday – our sweet boy turned SEVEN years old! We celebrated with a Jurassic World themed birthday party. As usual, that gets an entire video all to itself – HERE.
We also visited Hersheypark for their Christmas Candylane event the first weekend of December – that vlog is HERE.
Moments of note this month:
(0:01) The kids had a 3-D printed animal and a building block Christmas countdown that they opened every day, Braelynn built a Christmas puzzle (that you open a section to each day), and of course, we opened Christmas books that we read every night before bed leading up to Christmas!
(0:13) We got a great snow-storm the day before Leander’s birthday – and it was snowman-snow! The kids were SO excited!
(1:33) Happy birthday, Leander!
(3:19) The annual gingerbread house day at Grandma’s house
(4:05) We always put our Christmas tree up in November, but the rule is: no ornaments until after Leander’s birthday!
(4:35) Sledding! It was BITTERLY cold!
(7:00) If you can’t tell, Leander got a TON of Lego sets for his birthday, so building them all kept him quite busy leading right up to Christmas!
(7:08) Every year, my Mom goes “Sheetz shopping” with my sister Emma (who works at our local Sheetz) where they shop for local kids in need. Braelynn went with her this year and they had so much fun!
(8:18) We broke Christmas with my family up a bit this year and had a pre-Christmas celebration the Sunday before Christmas to exchange “sibling” secret Santa gifts, play games, and eat food!
(10:00) The annual Christmas Eve breakfast at Meme’s house (made EXTRA hilarious this year with some fun TikTok games!)
(15:23) Christmas Eve evening at home after church – the kids exchanged their gifts to each other, we ate cookies and watched Star Wars, and read ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas under the tree.
(17:13) Christmas morning! I’ll never get over the MAGIC that December 25th brings!
(21:19) Christmas evening we went back to my parents for dinner and so Grandma and Grandpa could give the grands their gifts.
(22:37) The kids have been SUPER obsessed with Star Wars recently (so far, we’ve watched all of the movies, up to Episode 7), so Derrick dug out a box of old Star Wars toys that used to be his and gave the to the kids – they were in heaven! It felt like Christmas Round 2!
(23:16) Christmas with my Mom’s extended family
(24:24) Happy New Year!
Just in case you’ve missed what I’m doing – I decided that I wanted to create a curated “home video” for our family every month (remember those old “home movies” our families used to create? with the giant video recorders that an entire VHS tape fit in?) Those videos were fantastic, but if you’ve ever sat down to watch one (does anyone even own a VHS player anymore?) you very quickly realize that you do a lot of “fast-forwarding”.
So, my goal, is to take all the little videos I take of our family over the course of a month & create a short (my goal is to be around 10 minutes) video of my favorite snippets. I am SO excited to finally have a dedicated place to chronicle my family videos & keep them safe & accessible.
Enjoy a little peek into what our December looked like!
