2025 Christmas Card and Newsletter

It seems that every year I receive fewer and fewer Christmas cards.   While I totally get that Christmastime is an exceedingly busy time of  many commitments;  I consider Christmas card sending and receiving as one of my favorite parts of the season and you should worry if the day ever comes that I don't send them.    I enjoy thinking about aspects of my upcoming Christmas cards in snippets all through the year.   I consider all sorts of questions, like what picture(s) might I use, what tidbits might I include, how to structure the newsletter, who  I should purge  from my list after I haven't heard from them in a few years, how I can make it more interesting, etc.    In all fairness, I don't usually DO anything about my Christmas cards until late November, but I usually already have a good idea of what I will do by that time.   

This was another entire year with one of our family members on a mission, which meant no whole family photos to include.   Other missionary years included 2017, 2021, 2023, and now 2025.  I've approached this in different ways before, like the year we just put in a part-family photo and included photos of the missionary on the back, and the one time we commisioned an artist on Etsy to create this artistic version, but I knew early on that we would just do a collage this year.  I found this template on Canva and from there it was just a matter of finding the right photo for each person. I changed up the design a bit too and had it printed at a local print shop.      

Here's a little about each photo and why we chose it.   
The photo of Glen and I was taken at the Cliffs of Moher in Ireland. I think the background is lovely and it's a cute photo of us.  
The photo of Spence and Kiwi was taken by his request one day when he needed a photo for a work spotlight.  I knew instantly that I would include that one in the Christmas card.  
The photo of Cam and family was taken by a photographer friend of theirs near their apartment in Birmingham shortly before they moved.  I love how these turned out.   
Graduating from BYU was definitely one of Emma's big highlights of the year, so using a grad photo was a no-brainer for me.  
Adam had A LOT of mountain climbing selfies in the camera roll, but I like this one of him at the Provo City Center temple the best. 
There were other pics I liked better of Ellie, but I wanted one of her by herself that showed a little glimpse of the beautiful area she's serving in.  This one standing at Ventura Harbor (I think) fit the bill perfectly!  

The photo of me with Lucie and Oliver was taken in Rhode Island on Halloween.   It was one of my favorites that included them!  
I love this photo of Ellie and her companion, Hermana B, who is from Australia.  They get asked all the time if they are sisters.  
This photo of Glen and I was taken in the Dolomites.   
This *almost complete* family photo was taken this past summer when Cam came to town.   I was super sad that Glen and I didn't hop in the picture as well, otherwise that one may have ended up on the front of our card.  It's also missing Garrett and Ellie though, so it's all good.  
I like how this photo of Adam, Glen, and I at a BYU football game this past fall shows a glimpse of how much of our life is currently spent down in Provo!  

For the newsletter, I just ended up purchasing a template on Etsy, when I couldn't find anything I liked on Canva.   I included a quick rundown on each person and also had it printed at a local print shop.   

  I have been gradually whittling my list down over the years as I've been receiving fewer and fewer cards in return and this year I'm down below 200.   It makes me sad taking people off my list, but when I don't hear from them for a few years in a row, or if I know they've moved and make no effort to give me their new address, I usually take them off.  Good friends and relatives being the exceptions.  I leave them on regardless of whether they send anything or not.  

 I had so much fun making my own cards, that, once again, I volunteered to design and print some for my Mom as well.   The background in this photo with all of us siblings and Mom  in the Dolomites almost looks fake, it's so stunning, but I can attest that it's 100% real!   

So, in other words, my obsession is still going strong and you can find me excitedly running to the mailbox every single day to see what the haul is.   

What are your thoughts on Christmas cards?  I know many people choose not to send them and don't really get that excited about receiving them.    If you don't send them, why not?  I'd love to hear what you think!  

 Click here to see Christmas cards and newsletter from past years.   

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO YOU AND YOURS!  

The Current Happenings

 So what's been happening lately?  

You know besides having a houseful of people for Thanksgiving...

having a miserable stomach bug on either side of  Thanksgiving  that raged through everyone but Ellie and Glen...

sending off a missionary in two weeks....

and you know the minor task of  getting ready for Christmas...

oh yeah...just an emergency appendectomy for Glen CAUSED by the colonoscopy he'd had the day before.    Apparently it's a very rare side effect, but one that his doctor acknowledged as the likely cause of his appendicitis.   So to sum up, that was him fasting/purging on Monday, his colonoscopy on Tuesday, sending Cami and crew back home and appendicitis symptoms on Wednesday, and emergency surgery on Thursday.  

In other words, he is exhausted and in pain, but thankfully recovering well.  

Now back to our regularly scheduled Christmas chaos and ugly festive sweaters.

Adventure in Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands

Glen had a few days off of work as he transitioned from one job to another and we decided to go on an adventure.   We found some great last-minute deals and ended up in Ecuador--our very first time in South America!  It's hard to capture in a blogpost how amazing our trip was, but here are a few highlights.

1. The epic birdwatching in the Galapagos and outside of Quito!   We visited the nesting grounds of waved albatrosses and the blue and red footed boobies,  fed hummingbirds from our hands, and saw an incredibly diverse array of tropical bird species (including flamingos).
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   The blue and red footed boobies were among our favorites! 
   
   
   We also really enjoyed watching the waved albatrosses. 
   

   

   
   We found this hawk feather and wish we could have taken it home for Adam, but we weren't allowed to take ANYTHING natural from the Galapagos, so I had to leave it behind.
   
   
2. Seeing so much native wildlife in the Galapagos.  For how dry and scrubby the Galápagos Islands mostly are, it’s crazy that they have the variety of wildlife they do and how different the variety is from island to island.   We explored by hiking, snorkeling, and kayaking.    I look forward to reading a book more about Charles Darwin's travels there. 
   
    
   
   
   
   
    
   
   
   
3. Meeting Elder Rasband (a modern day apostle) in the lobby of our hotel in Quito.  He was in the middle of a 4 country South American tour and was on his way to play pickleball when we ran into him!  He was kind and easy to talk to.
   
   
4. Visiting the equator and getting to stand in the northern and southern hemispheres at the same time.   I get surprisingly geeky about this type of thing!   We also enjoyed the science experiments they demonstrated at the equator.
   
   
   
   
5. Ecuadorean chocolate!  I had no idea Ecuador (one of the smallest countries in South America) supplies 50% of the world’s chocolate!  We enjoyed sampling different varieties!
   
   
   

   
   

   
6. The Ecuadorean food in general.  I was able to find good authentic Ecuadorean food that was also gluten free.  Yay!
   
   
   
7. The people we met!  We loved our native tour guides, the people we interacted with around town, and the interesting array of  people on our cruise. 
   
   
   
8. The whole city of Quito is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and we loved learning about the culture.  The architecture is a cool mix of European and indigenous style and visiting a museum featuring pre-columbian art was one of our favorites!   The following were scenes we found wandering around Quito.
   
   
   
   
   
    
   
   
    
    
9. Sending postcards from a country with no postal service!  I literally dropped them in a barrel on a deserted island in the Galapagos and future visitors will pick up postcards addressed to people who live close to them and hand deliver them.  It’s a tradition going back to the 1700’s and I am totally geeking out about it!  I took the only two addressed to people in Utah and I’m excited to deliver them in the next few weeks!
   
   
   
10. We love how open people are about religion here.  We had some great conversations with a few different Ecuadorean natives who clearly love Jesus too!   This photo is of the Virgin Mary at the top of El Panecillo Hill right in the middle of Quito.
    
    
11. Doing a session at  the Quito temple!  We had hoped to get to the temple while we were here, but the weekday hours were too limited and we gave up on being able to go.  Then….our flight home was canceled and we got a bonus day.  It was too perfect!    The temple has been open since November 2022 and it's clear that non-Spanish speaking tourists doing sessions is a rarity.  We wore the headphones and loved seeing that temple filled with locals! 
    
    
12. The stargazing on the cruise was epic.   I took this picture with my i-phone from a moving boat! 
    

13.  The views!   Quito is situated at 9300 feet above sea level and the surrounding mountains tower to 15,000+ feet.   We took a gondola up to Telerifico (about 13,500 feet).  We took a hike around there and ended up at this epic swing overlooking the city of Quito!    The alpacas (I think) were also hanging around up there at Telerifico. 

14.  The hiking in general!   One of the days, we went into the Cloud Forest near Mindo and did some hiking there.   Nambillo Waterfall certainly wasn't the most exciting waterfall we'd ever seen, but it was a pretty beautiful hike, so we enjoyed it anyway! 

Pretty much the whole trip was a HUGE bucket list item crossed off our list and we loved every second of it.     Here are a few more random photos to finish up....

Now, we're back home to reality, struggling with jetlag after spending a night on an airplane,  trying to get the house put back together, and daydreaming about our next adventure!