Ok, folks!! Here you have it – all the highlights of this last year rolled into one collage post!!! This is always a fun one for me. Its quick but informative, and tends to hold a lot of memories. For me and for the reader!! So if you haven’t followed for terribly long, no harm done! Here is our year, all laid out for you to see!
January was kind of huge, haha! Thats a not a secret. Right off the bat, we started with a baby surgery. Thankfully, it was simple enough and recovery wasn’t too terribly long. The weather got BRUTALLY cold, so naturally, we chose that time to move! It was a HUGE ordeal but we finally got into the new place, aaaaand within two weeks, Brady had his seizure that changed the course of the whole year!
Ooooo! Three nice pictures of Brady in a row!
February is always a big month over here. We celebrated our fifteenth anniversary a little bit before the day because that day is now shared with the birthday of a pretty precious member of our family! With feeing therapists on board, our baby ate brownies soaked in pudding and whipped cream! That was a pretty exciting thing! We continued to pick away at some house projects, knowing we didn’t have a ton of time to do them before big things would take us down a peg or two 😬 Wavy lost her first tooth in there, and Rowan turned nine!
March was a big one. One of the BIGGEST! Brady worked to get our pantry built beforrrrrrrrre he went for brain surgery. That was a whole thing. He only stayed in the hospital for two nights before coming home to recover. At the same time, we have a very unwell baby on our hands, so between the two of them, meds rolled around the clock. Who sleeps anyway?
April was better. April felt like progress. Spring poked its head out of the ground! Brady got his head staples out. That was gnarly and kind of awesome. Brady made his first appearance back at work. It was so hard for him to recover at home and not be at work! Meanwhile, my counsellor came back to Saskatoon for a few months and I got to have a few more appointments with her, which couldn’t have been better timed! We crossed “kid needing stitches” off of our list of firsts in April, and Rowan started his first season of soccer!
April showers brings May’s camping season!! Thats how the rhyme goes, right? We got back to Kinasao this month, and as that began, the girls’ ballet wrapped up. I got my Bosch mixer in May, which feels like a silly thing to add but it was truly a game changer over here! The month wrapped up with Solly turning eight!!
Juuuuune!! June was a fun one. The kids had their track and field days, and somehow, Wavy came out with a medal for being basically being the most athletic girl in Kindergarten, so that was a fun surprise!! Meanwhile, Rowan’s soccer wrapped up. As town things finalized and closed up, camp opened up!! I crocheted a blanket for the camps fundraiser auction, and it ended up bringing in over $700 😳 Who saw that coming?! It was a pretty beautiful month.
July got us into full swing of summer! Wavy turned six right off the bat! That same day, Brady began his six weeks of radiation, with chemotherapy running simultaneously. Kids started going to their weeks of summer camp, and FINALLY, Brady regained his license since losing it in January!!! 🥳 To top off that off, he got a promotion to sales manager at work 💜 And I had a birthday. 36, baby.
August had a lot of things to note as well. Our tube feeder went anti-tube! 🥳 I removed it at the lake, which was bonkers and also SO exciting! Speaking of exciting, Brady finished radiation this month 💜 We were not sad to see that go. We spent some time with my siblings and all of the nieces and nephews, which we haven’t done in years, and we wrapped up summer days.
Fall camping is always on the docket for September, however. Between our weekends at the lake, everything else got into full swing. School. Ballet. Parkour for Rowan. And Laela turned 11! She pees in the lake, if that was unclear…
October is when it really starts feeling fallish. We took some very flattering family pictures 🤣 Don’t worry, we got good ones too. We got Rowan connected to a paediatric psychiatrist who finally really changed the game 💜 Quality of life went UP for him in October! Thank you Lord!!! Cher and I had a great date to celebrate our friendaversary this month 💜 Brady birthdayed with me finally – also 36. And we spent a night at the Travelodge with our dear Dahlsjos. The amount of times Dekker rode the water slide could not be counted.
November already felt pretty Christmasy. At least at camp, it did! The Christmas baking began. The lights went up at Kinasao. We attended a Christmas retreat at Kinasao as well, and at least for me, the matching jammies were a highlight! Also noteworthy, at least for me, was my discovery of grocery delivery! WOW how that has simplified my life!!! And this was the month Wavy really got into writing and testing out her own spellings of things, which I’ve mentioned before is my FAVORITE thing about her age. I LOVE grade one spelling! Ack!!!
December carried a theme. Can you tell? Two themes, I suppose. Food, and wrapping things up for the year. This particular collage shows the tomato soup I made, the ghost jamjams (perhaps ghostghosts?) and the sushi bowls. As well, it shows the recitals for both ballet and piano. And lastly, Dekkers youth Christmas parties were a total highlight. I’m not going to pretend I don’t LOVE being greeted by an inflatable penguin every time I go into Dekker and Sollys room 🤣
And now, here we are, at the end of the year. It has been a gigantic year. I can’t believe we navigated BRAIN SURGERY 🤣 Even just typing that out makes me tired, lol! Yet God has been consistently good, carrying us through absolutely every single thing, with no forgotten details or issues. We are ALWAYS safe under His wings. And I don’t mean comfortable. But He doesn’t promise us comfort. If we were always comfortable, who would need faith?! So, we willingly receive His protection, and keep on trucking forward!
Thank you God for bringing us through 2024. We trust You, and we live for You. Going into 2025, we trust Your will! 💜 Thank you for never leaving or forsaking us! Amen.
Onto the next!! Let’s see where this one takes us!!