December 2025

 

Happy 12th Month of the Year!!

We started off the month with a visit from some of our favorite friends!! We enjoyed a Christmas Train, local shopping, breweries, Chriskindlemarket,

and a sleepover :)

All month we had visits from our Elf, Elizabeth, and agreed that this was our favorite!

Also these cuties have continued to grow and, if possible, become even cuter :) They have all hit the magic two pounds and will be getting surgery and finding their forever homes in January...stay tuned for our failures ;)

We love them all, but there is definately a favorite ;)

Justin and Rose played some bird videos and the kittens were very interested. 

Nana surprised Rose with a early Christmas gift for the kittens

It's been a hit with the kittens

I sent Justin and Rose to the movies so I could enjoy some quiet present wrapping time. Rose got to see Wicked for Good, Justin ate popcorn, and I had most of the presents wrapped before Christmas!! It was a win for everyone ;)

Due to winter weather Rose got to have a work day with her dad...she finds cats wherever she goes.

We also enjoyed Rose's winter concert where she got to play with the Jazz band for the first time. She has had this goal for years and started playing the trombone 3 years ago solely for this moment and it was awesome :)

Rose also continues to play clarinet with band and violin with orchestra and chamber orchestra. 

We usually get the grandparents gift cards for places to eat...the up side for us, is we usually go out to eat to get the gift cards :)

Rose and I got to make some cookies for Christmas and they were just as delicious as they looked ;)

We had Christmas Eve with extended family

I love watching how excited little kids get for presents...big kids too :)

And enjoyed a relaxing Christmas morning at home 

Before heading out for another round of extended family Christmas with our fun shirts :)

We also kept the tradition of an annual Rose ornament...you can see some others in the background, they are filling up the tree!

We took off on the final Saturday of the year for one last extreme day trip!! We probably should not have...but Justin was deteremined and after New Jersey the roads got better. Rose picked the New England Aquarium, so up to Boston we went!!

We found a fun bookshop with a cafe for lunch and then headed over to the aquarium. 

Rose loved the penguins

We all loved the turtles

Rose got to practice taking photos of animals

Mom's favorite are the jellyfish

Lots of colorful fish

Rose touched a shark

Coolest stingray we've ever seen!

And some manta rays

It was a great (cold) day in New England!

We ended the road trip with a stop at a brewery with a cool name (Space Cat Brewery) and great beer/cider/kombucha and food.

The kittens and mom had breakfast while Rose slept....a total of 11 hours!! After our big trip :)

That's ok because mom and the kittens didn't want to do too much all day either :)

Here are some of mom's favorite books of the year

We ended the year by making it all the way to midnight!!

Here's to 2026!!

November 2025

 We love spending time together, so when November brought chilliness we just snuggled more :)

When we had to leave our warm cuddlely couch, we did some fun things too.

We all went to our first professional hockey game with some of my coworkers. Thanks to an inside connection we got really good parking too ;)

Our biggest adventure of the month (and maybe most spontaneous of the year) was flying out to detroit on a Saturday morning to bring home a new work truck for Justin :)

We made the most of our roadtrip with some fun stops of the drive home. 

We found a great brewery in Toledo

We then kept going until we reached the US's largest candy store in Cincinnati 

We also went to the Cincinnati Zoo to see their Christmas lights and saw a few animals too :)

After spending the night we drove home with a quick stop at the Fiestaware factory and one of our favorite breweries outside of Pittsburgh. 

We weren't done with surprises for the month though...we have been trying to find a good time to foster kittens again and decided now was good :) We brought home 5 cute little kittens to love over the holidays until they find their forever homes (spoiler, Rose is hoping that a couple of them call this their forever home!).

Thanksgiving was a nice quiet day with a yummy meal, these fun shirts :) AND

while most people saw the other movie, I was really excited at Zootopia 2 and my family humored me, by taking me to see it (but I think everyone enjoyed it!)

We spent the rest of the weekend getting ready for Christmas. 

We decorated, someone was not so helpful...