My 2025 Year in Review ☀️

Some rambling thoughts about 2025 that I want to remember before we get too far into 2026…

First and foremost, 2025 was a year of personal growth for all four of us whether we liked it or not. Boy did each member of our family go through some stuff. It was year of highs and lows for our crew and a lot of stripping away of old to make way for the new.  If not this, then better was the theme of the year. It’s been tough but without a doubt we have made it through better than we started.

Here are some of the things that I learned about this year…

Growing a garden

Making pickles and salsa from the cucumbers and tomatoes we grew in the garden

Making beeswax candles

Learned to make tortillas, bread and some pretty good muffins

Weight lifting

Take care of and train a puppy

Baseball and how to be the dug out mom for my son’s team

The southwest and planned a two-week road trip for our family

Anxiety and OCD and took a class for college credit

How to homeschool a third and sixth grader

At the end of September we got a new member of the family this year. A Mini–Australian Shepard named Lucky. Full name Lucky Bandito Steve Chipper Cox. Wow did we need this little guy in our life, more than any of us knew. I’d been thinking about getting another dog since Tweak passed away two years ago…honestly since Rocky died six years ago…but when I saw Lucky online, he was it. Whether all four of us were ready or not this guy needed to be in our life. It was the same feeling I got when I felt the nudge to move home to Maine.

Our family met him and knew at first glance we’d met our family dog. The dog that the kids would grow up with, the one that would be their best friend and be as obsessed with them as they are with him. And boy is this puppy obsessed with us. He fiercely loves his family like nothing I’ve ever seen before. He is confident, playful, funny, passionate, extroverted, dramatic and so so so smart. He’s so much work and completely exhausting but also brings us comfort and joy without trying…just by being him. He doesn’t hold back one bit.

We started our fourth year of homeschool this year and it has hands-down been my favorite year yet. My confidence in my ability to educate our kids has peaked. I know this is the best choice for OUR kids and OUR family and we are thriving. I love that I am able to plan, coordinate and execute my kids’ education based on their interests and abilities. The amount of time we get to spend together as a family is another perk. Also the flexibility and freedom that this life provides.

We spent the first two months of the school year learning about the Southwest: the geography, history, and science before taking our two-week long road trip seeing the places in real life. Then we moved on to studying mammals while we navigated life with our new puppy. Currently, we are doing a deep dive into early U.S. History and Government as we are constantly bombarded with political ads and the kids want to understand what its all about. Our life is fluid and learning is involved in so much of it.

We have an amazing homeschool network of other homeschooling families and I’m just so grateful we took the leap and are living this life.

Homeschooling is definitely not the best fit for everyone. Traditional education can work well too and is the best choice for many families and kids for so many reasons. It’s fantastic we live where we have options and can do what’s best for our individual families.

Our family went on two incredible trips this year.

The first was in February to an old favorite, Folly Beach South Carolina. Our fifth visit to this place and it was lovely to return to a familiar spot.

The second was in November, a two-week long road trip through the Southwest. We flew into Arizona and road tripped through the Grand Canyon, Zion and Bryce National Park, Las Vegas, Hoover Dam, Route 66, Flagstaff and Sedona. This was a dream trip and so grateful we were able to do this.

Besides these incredible adventures we spent a lot of time exploring our home state; the pretty without makeup, down to earth, authentic Maine. She’s natural beauty at its finest and the best state I’ve ever been to. The more we travel and see what other places are like the more I realize how lucky we are to live here.

We camped this summer on Moosehead, Rangely and Sebec Lake. Weekends we didn’t camp we went on day trips exploring towns within an hour or two away from us using the Maine State Passport Book and Reny’s Passports Stamp books as guides. We’d pick a place in the book as our destination and then explore the surrounding area too.

It’s been almost four years since we moved home to Maine. I love this state so much. Out of the 12 months of the year there are only two in Maine that I dislike. November because it’s just brown.  It goes from gorgeous fall colors to nothing and then there’s a lull before the white comes. Also March because I’m over the snow and cold and very much vitamin d deprived. That’s it. The rest of the time I’m obsessed with this state and don’t want to leave because I don’t want to miss a thing. We’ve hacked the system in 2025 and planned our vacations for those time of year.

Other than loving this state itself, I love our family that lives in it. We’ve gotten lots of quality time with them this year and so grateful our kids are getting to spend time with their extended family. We had numerous sleepovers during warmer weather months at my mom and stepdad’s. My dad (whose surgery to remove his pancreatic tumor was four year ago now!) is a frequent visitor and always stays with us when Jamie has to be away for work. We’ve gotten to spend a lot more time with Jamie’s family this year too. At Jake’s baseball championship game he had a fan club of all these people cheering him on and it was everything that I hoped for when we moved home to Maine.

2025 was a big year for us for sure, with a lot of ups and downs and growing (not just the garden)…whether we liked it or not.