Traditional Christmas Letter – 2022 Edition

Happy 7 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 refuse to give this up. 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. I remember, as a little girl, getting Christmas cards in the mail and sitting down with the letters my family would receive to read all about my parent’s friends and what they’d done that year.

And so, I invite you to take a peek into our lives! I love this part of the year! I love sitting down and reflecting, thinking, and remembering – it’s one of my favorite Christmas traditions!
2021 Letter // 2020 Letter // 2019 Letter // 2018 Letter // 2017 Letter // 2016 Letter

If you follow along with my blog, my Facebook, or my Instagram 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 2022 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!)

Well, Derrick set up our year of 2022 perfectly at Christmas last year.
Completely unknown to me, he planned a vacation for us – complete with dates requested off at work, a rental condo booked, and tickets purchased.
And this wasn’t just ANY vacation – this was a trip we’d be dreaming about for ages.

He did it in 100% stealth-mode, and then presented me with a Disney Magic Band on Christmas morning.
Needless to say, I still get emotional thinking back to that huge surprise. I had no idea (I mean, we had been talking about going to Disney forever and knew that a trip was going to be coming sooner rather than later, but I was shocked that he went ahead and planned the entire thing without me knowing!) Let’s just say, Christmas 2022 has no chance of living up to Christmas of 2021 (and I’m okay with that!)

So, the biggest news of 2022? We went to Walt Disney World!
It was the most magical, wonderful, spectacular (and expensive) trip we have ever taken. It was perfect and amazing in every way. Words simply cannot describe how I felt walking into Magic Kingdom and down Main Street for the first time in 13 years. We had so much fun on that trip – it’s one that we’ll remember forever.
(If you’d like to watch the vlogs I created on that trip, you can start here!)

To be honest though: our trip to Florida and Walt Disney World was just one of three “major” trips we took this year.

In fact, looking back, I’m not even sure that 2022 was real.

In February, Derrick and I left our children behind (our first time leaving both kids, only our second time going away without Braelynn!) and hopped on an airplane for a whirlwind 3-day trip to Universal Studios in Florida! (Yes, we were in Florida twice in 2022 – I told you, this year was a dream!)
We missed Braelynn and Leander terribly (I cried over my Starbucks the second morning we were away), but we took full advantage of not having the kids with us to wring every last drop out of our days at Universal. Up to that point, we had never spent more than 8 (maybe 9?) hours in an amusement park in one day, and we spent over 14 hours at Universal on one day there. It was exhaustingly wonderful to say the least. And as much as we missed our kiddos, we knew that they would have hated Universal (too many dark and scary rides) so we soaked up every moment of a “Mom and Dad only” trip.

We’ll keep up the “is this real” theme –

The third major trip we took was in June (over Derrick’s birthday) – we rented a big SUV and took my Mom and sister, Ruby, with us out to Silver Dollar City in Branson, Missouri! We have dreamed of visiting Silver Dollar City forever and being able to take my Mom and sister with us was the whipped cream and cherry on top.
Just in case you’re wondering: it took us about the same amount of time to drive to Branson, Missouri as it took us to drive to Orlando, Florida – just some perspective there.

We loved Silver Dollar City and had a blast there! We toured around Branson and went to Silver Dollar City’s waterpark, it was an amazing trip!

So yes, if you’re wondering what all of these trips have in common, it’s ROLLER COASTERS.
We visited a total of 18 different amusement parks this year, plus 2 waterparks.
Needless to say, riding roller coasters and visiting amusement parks play a huge part in our lives.

Derrick’s XscreamThrills brand continues to grow by leaps and bounds (and he took some pretty massively huge leaps this year!) His YouTube channel is about to crest 16,000 subscribers (by the time you read this, he might have reached that number!) And his Instagram account sits at over 161,000 followers (yes, that’s one hundred and sixty one thousand). We’ve watched as so many goals that Derrick had for this year have been blown away and the expectations he had for 2022 have been obliterated by crazy growth. I am beyond proud of all the hard work Derrick has put into his content creating, his videography skills, and his brand. We just finished working on and (finally) published Derrick’s website for XscreamThrills – which sets us up for some very exciting things in 2023!

Derrick has reached somewhat of a “celebrity” status in the “roller coaster community”. It’s very rare that we go to an amusement park and someone doesn’t recognize him. People come up to him in parks all the time – they want to say hi, chat, and take a selfie – it’s so much fun and equally so humbling. We’ve met so many amazing people simply by them coming up to talk to us in parks – it’s a whole, weird, wonderful thing. And it’s not just park guests! Park employees recognize Derrick and will shout him out on rides too – it’s absolutely mind-boggling (okay, that mostly just happens at Kennywood – our “home” park – but it’s still cool!)

Outside of traveling to ride roller coasters for fun, we attended several media events at Kennywood this year, plus a media day at Hersheypark. When we visited Silver Dollar City, Derrick met with the social media team there and they gave him some exclusive access to a few rides (talk about amazing!)
Derrick and I also started a new “show” on his YouTube channel called “ERT with Derrick and Kara” where we both sit and talk about roller coasters and park stuff. (“ERT” is a roller coaster term meaning “Exclusive Ride Time”.) It’s kind of like a podcast – we’re still figuring out the logistics of it and fine-tuning things to make it the best we can – it’s fun!

Derrick and I talk about this all the time, but I absolutely love the fact that Derrick’s passion is something that our entire family can enjoy together. We all LOVE traveling and visiting new places and riding new rides. Braelynn is now over 50″ tall, which means she can ride so many “big” roller coasters now (she’s ridden roller coasters over 300 feet tall, coasters that go upside down and backwards, and this year she rode her first launching roller coasters!) Leander hit 40″ tall just as we were gong to Disney World, which meant he could ride almost every single ride at Disney World! Getting to experience all of these fun things together as a family is so much fun and we really truly do love it.

Derrick does (believe it or not) still work full-time at Shred-It – 8 years there and counting! He would love for roller coaster/theme park content stuff to become his full time job, but it’s just not there yet. XscreamThrills does foot the bill for us to travel the way we do, but it’s not enough to support our entire lives (yet). Without Derrick’s brand and content, we would never be able to visit these incredible parks and have the fun that we do! Needless to say, Derrick is a super busy guy.

Braelynn is 7 years old and is about to turn 8 (her birthday is right around the corner)! She started 2nd grade this fall and is a little learning machine. Her reading and math skills have grown exponentially this year! It’s absolutely mind-blowing to know where her reading level was last year at this time and to see where it is now! I’m so proud of her! Math and science continue to be her favorite subjects.

Braelynn still wants to be an artist when she grows up. She is constantly drawing/sketching/coloring something. We go through more paper, markers, and colored pencils than I ever knew was possible. She has recently started to get art books out at the library and loves drawing new things from those books. I bought a book about great artists for school this year and we’ve had a lot of fun diving in deep to a few.
Her creativity and imagination doesn’t just stop with her art though – she seems to always be making up stories, building forts, and going on adventures. She is constantly thinking through something (and talking a mile-a-minute to get her thoughts out).
Her stuffed animal “collection” continues to grow – I’m pretty sure she owns more stuffed animals than anyone else alive (it’s a bit crazy).
Her best friend is her cousin Cameron – but Braelynn has friends everywhere she goes. We started attending our church’s Wednesday night program at the beginning of this year and she loves it. She adores her cousins Alethea and Layla and she loves to talk to our neighbors over our fence, she’s just a very friendly, social person.

Leander just turned 4 years old! His big news of the year is that he FINALLY conquered potty training this year!! What a roller coaster that process was (we started potty training last December and he didn’t “get it” until late this summer – talk about the longest 9 months ever.) But he’s got it now and I couldn’t be prouder of my big boy!

I feel like Leander’s really changed this year. He’s started talking so much more – and the things he thinks about and asks us really blow our minds sometimes! He’s always paying attention, even when we don’t think he is, and he’s really tapped into this adorable sense of humor this year. He loves to build, is super imaginative, and adores anything with wheels and a motor. Leander would live outside if I let him and the kid is obsessed with water. If you ask him who his best friend is, he’ll tell you, “Way-lah” (his cousin Layla).
His blankie continues to be his most prized possession and he has a rotation of “favorite” stuffed animals.

Leander sits and does school with Braelynn and I (most days). For the most part, if Braelynn is doing it – Leander is right along with her. He follows her everywhere and wants to do everything she’s doing. And most of the time, they are each other’s best friends. They play so well together (“the floor is lava” is a particular favorite). They are always in cahoots together over something!
I love that they love each other so much and I hope that their love only grows!

As for me? I’m still a full-time wedding photographer, even though I didn’t photograph as many weddings in 2022 as usual. I’ve had a new business idea brewing in my brain for the last 2 years, so I took my slower wedding year as a sign that I should give that a go. It was actually something I started working on mid-2020, and then at the beginning of 2021, I went all-in with it – a website, business license, social media accounts – the whole nine yards. Sadly, it hasn’t quite turned out as I hoped. Turns out, it takes a lot of time to run a photography business, start a new business, run a bunch of the behind-the-scenes stuff for Derrick’s brand, plus be a homeschooling Mom and wife. And, as we were coming into December, I knew it was time to let something go, so I let that new business idea go. Who knows, maybe it just wasn’t the right time and it’ll come back in a few years? Maybe it’ll never come back! Maybe it’ll come back in a different form – who knows. All I know is that I’m so glad I gave it a shot (I would have regretted it forever if I never had!) I learned so much through the entire process – so it might not have ended the way I was hoping, but I’m still proud of what I did.

I still co-lead the Greensburg, PA chapter of the Rising Tide Society with my friend Tiffany.
I jumped into the Wednesday night teaching rotation for the kids’ program at our church.
And I still create vlogs from each of our amusement park trips, plus a monthly film of our daily life. (Shameless plug: go subscribe to my YouTube channel!)

Derrick and I celebrated our 12th wedding anniversary in Florida this year! It would have been fun if we could have orchestrated it to fall on the day we were at a Disney park, but we were at Sea World Orlando on April 24, 2022 (I know, darn, right?)

Last year, I said that I hoped that “2022 would be the year of the renovations” for our house – and that prediction has come true! We’ve done more this year to update our house than we have since we initially bought our house and moved in 7 years ago.
To kick things off, Derrick’s Dad came down and helped us enclose our front porch and turn it into a new entryway/mudroom. It’s incredible and I absolutely love the space!
From there, we finally replaced the remaining windows we had yet to replace (all of our first floor windows).
And with that project being done, we finally had the green light to replace our roof and put new siding on our house!

Our house has always been this (awful) orangey-yellow color. We always said that “one day” we would put up new siding and well, this week happens to be that “day”! As I write this, our house is literally being transformed from the “ugly” house on the corner to one of the best looking houses on our street. We have a brand new, shiny, blue, metal roof and lovely, soft grey siding (which is going up right this moment.) Our house doesn’t even look like our house anymore. It’s mind-blowing how good (and complete) it looks.

Oh, our garage is getting a new roof too (the same guys who are doing the amazing job on our house, will be putting a new roof on our garage too – that will probably happen tomorrow!) And with that done, we can get a new garage door and finally park one of our vehicles IN our garage!!

And finally – we can’t forget about our Abby dog! She is 12 years old now and is turning quite grey. She isn’t the feisty, crazy pup that she once was, although she still loves to chase a frisbee and will swim for hours in the lake. She gave us a few “scares” this year (once to the point where we were really worried that we might have to make a really hard decision), but she’s pulled through all of it. She is fiercely loved and adored (and sat on and dragged around a little more than she probably should be).
I still take weekly photos of our sweet pup (plus our kids too). Get this: I’ve taken 433 Abby’s Saturday photos – can you believe that? If you’d like to follow along with our adventures, I post a photo plus a little update on what we’re up to every Saturday here on my blog!

PHEW – so now you know why I write these Christmas letters digitally. Can you imagine if I printed this beast out to mail to our family & friends? If you’ve read all of this & made it this far – you deserve a gold star! Thank you so much!

BUT WAIT: there’s more! I am working on the 2022 highlights film of our “Adventuring Abbeys” vlogs, plus I have all the traditional “end of year” stuff coming up: highlights from all the weddings & engagement sessions I photographed, the super popular behind-the-scenes post of Derrick & I working throughout the year, an Abby’s Saturday bloopers reel, my 2023 goals – so, lots of fun to come! I invite you to stick around & 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 & my blog here is the best way to keep up with us throughout the year! We post a lot of content & we’d love it if you stuck around!)