Finding Our Way Through 2025

A few weeks ago I found myself admitting to a friend that I was really missing writing this blog. "Why don't you start blogging again?" she asked and that question has been popping up daily ever since. 

I haven't blogged regularly since before my kids were born, well over six years ago. And while it is way too overwhelming for me to cover all that ground in a post, what felt more manageable and meaningful to me, was to put together one of my old annual recap posts and to at least capture what I've been up to most recently, for the past year of my life. 

And 2025 was... a doozy. 

January

• Ryan, the boys, the dogs and I rang in the new year at our house with our friend Bonnie and then walked into town for New Year’s Day brunch at OB Surf Lodge. After, we put our feet in the ocean to welcome the new year. 

• A mostly slow month of dog cuddles, walks along Sunset Cliffs (where I saw my first wild Osprey), playgrounds and park time. We did make it out to a USD Women’s Basketball game which was a lot of fun and a great way to spend an afternoon with kids in SD.

• I went up to Hemet for a day to visit Bonnie while she took care of her dad during his in-home hospice. 
• After Ryan got me a Kindle for Christmas, I started reading again and finished 3 books, my first reads in years. 

February

• We headed to our friends' Lindsay and James' beautiful home for a fun Super Bowl potluck.
• For Valentine's Day, we took advantage of a Parent's Night Out event at a local kid's gym and went to dinner at Stone in Liberty Station while Linc and Russ watched a movie, ate pizza, and climbed around a gym for 4 hours. 
• Linc turned 5!

• Got my second paddleboarding session of the year in the books.

• Along with a few friends, I got to see the USWNT take on Japan at the SheBelieves Cup at Snapdragon (and unfortunately lose in an upset).

• After years of building my business, I finally got to offer a full-time position to a friend who I'd hoped to work with and she accepted!
• I chaperoned Linc's class trip to the San Diego Zoo. 
• The saga that was trying to get our stove fixed through the extended warranty service company was in full swing. 

March

• In early March, after a months-long testing process and waiting for appointment availability, I received an ADHD diagnosis from UCSD's ADHD Clinic. This diagnosis was so eye-opening, validating and transformative for me.
• We had a great time at our friends' annual Holi party.
• I took a quick trip up to LA with Bonnie to attend the Garden State 20th Anniversary soundtrack concert at The Greek. We stayed at The Adler, ate brunch at The Clark Street Diner and went to Erewhon for the first time. 

April

• We kicked off April with a house issue that forced us out of our home for a week. So we loaded the dogs up, found a last minute dog-friendly AirBnB near Joshua Tree and took the family for a spring break to the desert and Joshua Tree NP.

• The first half of April was packed with activities around San Diego: strawberry picking at Stehly Farms, volunteering at Russ's school to help plant their new pollinator garden, catching Nikki Glaser's Alive And Unwell Tour at the Civic Center, and going to our first Padres game of the season, after our friend Jostin gifted us a game from his season tickets. 

• I celebrated my last birthday of my 30s with a little bar crawl around OB and a Cameo from Andrew McMahon, an incredible present from my brother and sister-in-law.

• I chaperoned another field trip for Linc's class, this time to Pizza Port where the kids got to make their own pizzas.
• At the end of April, Ryan flew to Mexico for a surf trip and I went camping in the Anza Borrego desert with the boys and Bonnie, while the dogs sat this one out at home. 

May

• There was a Masai giraffe calf born at the San Diego Safari Park in April and we headed up to see him while he was still only a few weeks old (but already 6 feet tall!). 
• My dad and I got to see James Taylor at The Rady Shell. 

• We celebrated my mother-in-law's retirement at a retirement party in her honor.
• For Mother's Day we packed up some deli sandwiches and picnicked in our old favorite spot in Balboa Park then wandered around the renovated Botanical Building. 

• We took the boys to see some legends, Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson, at my favorite* venue in San Diego, the Cricket Wireless Sleep Train Mattress Firm North Island Credit Union Amphitheatre. *by favorite, I mean my favorite venue to complain about

• After almost 10 months of not having a stove top, we FINALLY got our stove fixed!
• As the days got longer, we spent more time outside, helping out friends plant some flowers, picnicking in the park, and strolling around SeaWorld. 

June

• During the first week of June, I went on a solo trip to Maui for the completion of my ANFT certification to become a Nature and Forest Therapy Guide: a 4-day immersion retreat at the Lumeria Maui Retreat Center. It was my first time in Hawaii and my first solo travel to a new place in a long time!

• Russ had a graduation ceremony at his preschool and I started to really anticipate the grief of formally leaving that community and safe space for our babies once Russ started TK in August.
• Ryan and I marched with friends and thousands of other San Diegans in support of basic human decency and the America we want to see. 

• We headed to the Del Mar County Fair with the boys and a few friends. 

• I saw Moulin Rouge for the first time at the Civic Center.

• We noticed Brewer really starting to slow down and we started to spend a lot more time at home with him. 

July

• We celebrated our Russ man turning 4 (!!!) with a barbecue at our place on the 4th. 

• We welcomed in the summer nights with some Point Loma Summer Concerts and another Padres game with friends.
• After years and years of showing Ryan rescue puppies around San Diego, and after months of following Mission Bay Puppy Rescue, we were finally both on the same page about putting in an application for a 6 week old puppy called Dale, who had been rescued from a swap meet, brought to Bonita Animal Shelter and then made his way to MBPR. With a face this cute, we were sure the competition would be stiff, so we honestly didn't expect to hear back.

• In the middle of July, I noticed a wet lump on Brewer. I took him into the vet, assuming it was a fatty cyst that had bothered him and maybe he'd licked at it. Instead, we found out that he had two ulcerated tumors that were likely cancerous. We scheduled him for surgery as soon as he cleared his labs. 

• During the peak of our health scare with Brewer, we got the call that we were the first family selected to adopt Dale and we had to pick him up while Brewer was in surgery. It was an insane day, but I knew that "Dale," who we named Camper, was meant to be a part of our family. 

• Linc lost his first tooth!
• The rest of July was spent homebound, nursing Brewer through his recovery and caring for Camper through his puppyhood and involved very, very little sleep.

August

• We had a bonfire at the beach before Bonnie began her move to Austin. Camper joined for a few hours and it was his first time at the bay before heading home to hang out with the dog sitter for the rest of the night. At night, we paddled under the fireworks with the boys and it was magical. 

• Russ had his last day at our beloved preschool and I was super emotional about it. 
• I got an afternoon off puppy duty to go see Shucked at the Civic Center. 
• The boys started their school year, TK and Kindergarten respectively, in early August.
• After a couple of promising weeks of healing, Brewer's pathology report finally came back confirming he had aggressive, terminal cutaneous lymphoma. Shortly after we noticed several new tumors had come in and were on the verge of bursting and we started to understand that we were firmly in hospice care.

• Camper and I spent a couple of days helping Bonnie to pack up her apartment for her big move.
• We managed to squeeze in family photos with all three dogs on one of Brewer's final good days.
• After a brutal final week, we said goodbye to Brewer and I was destroyed. 

• In the midst of devastating heartbreak, there was also great joy: some of our closest friends welcomed their baby and I got to meet their beautiful new addition to the friend group. 
• Shortly after Brewer's passing, it was time for Bonnie to fly out with the cats to her new home. I flew out for the night to help with cat transport and see her new city, then spent 2 hours crying at the Austin airport to a stranger for the first of many post-Brewer breakdowns in public. It maybe didn't help that I had also just moved my best friend to a city that was a full plane ride away.

September

• Ryan and I went to a beautiful, fun wedding for our friends and that took our minds off of all the loss and heartache of the past month for a night. 

• Russ and I went to a Wave game to catch Alex Morgan's jersey retirement and to see his teacher recognized as the Member of the Match!

• A week after Brewer passed, I noticed Banjo wasn't eating much. Thinking he had depression and needed meds, I brought him to the vet only to find out he had a tumor the size of a mini basketball in his spleen and needed emergency surgery. We scheduled it for the very next day. During surgery we found out it was actually a liver tumor and terminally cancerous. There was nothing they could do, so they stitched him up and sent him home, warning us that he wouldn't make it through the weekend. We were devastated and in shock and immediately back in hospice mode.

• Somehow Banjo made it through that weekend and the next and suddenly he was eating again and back to his old self. He kept getting better and better and we started to wonder what his prognosis really was.
• Meanwhile, the boys both tried Little League and started another round of 6 weeks of swim lessons with My Baby Swims.

• Ryan and I spent a weekend building Ikea furniture and upgrading the boys' room.
• I led an offsite retreat for one of my long term clients at the The Moxy Hotel in the Gaslamp. 

October

• Rocktober began with a great trip out to Austin to visit Bonnie and head to Austin City Limits for a day to see Rilo Kiley perform for the first time in over a decade.

• We enjoyed local's summer with some time at the bay with friends and Ryan and I celebrated our 7 year wedding anniversary. 

• Banjo continued to defy the odds and fully recovered from surgery. Still, his condition had us in constant state of vigilance and fear of if and when things would take a turn for the worse.

• Camper started obedience training with Grant, owner of The Noble Dogs. 
• The boys wrapped up a grueling season (for me, not for them haha) of non-stop sports activities. 
• I squeezed in two more Rocktober shows, The Beaches at The Sound in Del Mar, and Rilo Kiley again in Gallagher Square. 

• Ryan and I went to Howl-O-Scream for the second year in a row and took his cousin Blake.

• We did all the fall things with the boys: Goff's pumpkin patch at Liberty Station, trick-or-treat at SeaWorld, and the Autumn Jubilee at Fort Cross Old Timey Adventures in Julian.

• I started volunteering in Linc's kindergarten classroom. 
• Blake stopped by on Halloween morning to do Russ and Linc's makeup for their costumes for their school parade: Russ was a zombie and Linc was a mummy! We had a great day of baking Halloween treats and a fun night of trick or treating with friends and the grandparents. 

November

• We went on a camping trip with friends to the San Mateo Campgrounds, which has a nice 1.5 mile nature trail walk to Trestles. It was Camper's first time camping, which was fun, but bittersweet as it was also our first time camping without Brewer and, we anticipated, our last time camping with Banjo.

• The boys baked a cake for my dad's birthday and we had a nice night celebrating his 76th birthday at our house.
• I started getting back in the mood to cook and try new recipes and tested out my new Crockpot with a yummy fall stew.
• Ryan found out that he was voted Teacher of the Year by his colleagues!
• We got to go see Jack's Mannequin for the first time in years perform one of my favorite albums of all time, Everything in Transit, at The Sound.

• Bonnie came home for Thanksgiving and Ryan and I hosted a truly lovely, cozy Thanksgiving at our house with family and friends. It was my first time making the turkey in a few years and making stuffing from scratch and everything came out great. It was a perfect day.
• We all went and picked up our Christmas tree the day after Thanksgiving and then Bonnie and I went out with friends for some festive cocktails. 

December

• We kicked off the Christmas season with one of the most festive weekends in San Diego: that Friday I chaperoned both the boys' "field trips" to the town Christmas tree to hang their ornaments on the tree, then we hit up December Nights that night. We spent the next morning getting all of our holiday cards stuffed and stamped, followed by our town parade on Saturday night. We finished the weekend by decorating the house on Sunday.

• Lincoln was one of 8 students in his class to receive a special award and my dad and I got to see him surprised with it. 
• We had a great time at Ryan's work holiday party.
• The boys' school covered a nearby park with real snow to send them off for winter break, an annual tradition. 
• We went up to San Marcos for the annual Winter Wonderland event in Ryan's mom's community and had some festive cocktails and toasted s'mores.
• Our friends came over for a Christmas Cocktail test kitchen afternoon where we spent a hilarious and super fun day testing out various holiday cocktail recipes and appetizers, telling stories and dancing in the kitchen. 

• It was a tinier Christmas this year, but nonetheless a special one, and I almost melted when Lincoln finished opening his presents and said to himself out loud, "I'm so lucky." 

• We all caught a little bug and spent most of the break resting at home, which was good, because it's also the busiest work week of the year for me and I spent most of the time working 18 hour days.
• After Christmas, Banjo started to decline again. Every time I walked into the house or the room he was in, I held my breath not knowing what I'd find. A million panic attacks followed by a million experiences of immense relief. 
• Ryan and I went out to Cesarina to celebrate Ryan's birthday, then hit up a few local bars that we had been meaning to check out, and came home early to cuddle with Banj. 

• On New Years' Eve, we went out to dinner with some friends, played and almost won trivia, then came home and watched the series finale of Stranger Things before ringing in the New Year. 

And that was our 2025.

One of the reasons I wanted to return to blogging, and to return with this recap of my 2025, is because when I look back at all the beautiful moments of the year, I am filled with gratitude. And yet, this year held so much loss for me. 

Writing about the good times almost makes it hard to remember the year behind the year, the year that was persistently underscored by international, domestic and personal horrors. The year that held so much fear, so much worry, so much pain, and so much grief, both anticipatory and very current. 

But we made it. We found our way through. And I know now that it's going to be important for me to have this creative outlet to process the year ahead. With that, I'm ready for 2026.