Year in Review: 2025

January

We celebrated three years of marriage this January. We stayed home and wrote each other love letters and made a wedding cake. It was lovely.

We started reading to each other this month. We had read a couple of books together in our relationship, but we talked about reading to each other before bed every night and it quickly turned in to reading everywhere. It's been one of the best decisions we've ever made.

February

We started a new sourdough starter and named him Larry. Larry is the best thing since sliced bread. We have been able to make the actual best bread we've ever made this year.

We went and visited one of our favorite creeks to look for cool stuff while the water level was low. We got some lovely pictures on this particular trip, including some of the moon.

March

We went to Pojo's and while we were there we played around on a claw machine for a minute. A little girl came over and asked us what we were trying to get and we said we were just having fun. We walked away and about 3 minutes later that little girl ran up to us and gave us a little toy she had got from the claw machine.

That experience alone would have been so wholesome, but then she kept following us secretly and seeing what claw machines we went to (and not get anything) and then she would catch up to us a few minutes later and she would have caught something. The photo below is of Lexi with only about half the things we ended up with from this girl.

What a fun experience that was! What a sweet little kid! She seriously made our whole day.

April

We had been talking about doing it for a while and we finally started writing in our journals every day. It was hard to start the habit, but it's been very helpful in unwinding at the end of the day.

Brandon went in for eye surgery (again). He had scar tissue from the last surgeries that was making his vision wavy and they wanted to remove some of it. He also still had oil in his eye and they wanted to remove that, too.

We went to the surgery center at 10:30 AM and his surgery was scheduled for noon. The surgery was supposed to take up to an hour and a half. There were several technical difficulties, however, and he ended up being wheeled back for surgery at 1 PM and Lexi wasn't called back to see him until 4 PM.

Basically, the scar tissue wasn't where they thought it was, and it ended up being much more difficult to remove.

When they removed the oil in his eye, they put in a gas bubble. This meant that Brandon had to leave his head facing down for three days, and he hated every minute of it. He had to try several ways to comfortably do so.

We found some people out in Eagle who had a bunch of raspberry plants they were getting rid of for pretty cheap, so we went and bought a bunch. They let us have whatever else we could dig up on our own for free, so we ended up with at least 100 plants. we planted them all around our garden, but most of them ended up in the same row along the side of our house. We're excited to see how they grow in next year.

Lexi left Reddit in April. She had been off all other social media since the previous summer, and it ended up being another one of the best decisions we've ever made.

May

Brandon, inspired by several documentaries, tons of research, and Lexi leaving it, left Reddit. He'd been off all social media since a few months prior, but Reddit was the hardest for him.

We've been making some massive lifestyle changes over the last couple years, and we've seen progress, however slow and steady that may be. This year, though, with leaving social media and trying to spend more time outdoors (along with the other changes we made this year), it's felt like living in the brightest patch of sunshine. Our stress levels have dipped down significantly and Lexi's migraines went from daily to less than once a month. We've been getting better sleep, mostly due to the fact that we read instead of looking at our phones before bed now and it's much easier to get to bed earlier. Don't even get us started on the amount of free time we have now. It was really easy to feel like we never had time to do things when we couldn't get off our phones, and now we feel like the amount of free time we have has doubled (and that's not including how much more time we feel like we have for actual work!). We even started saving a bunch of money, which was an unexpected but welcome benefit.

We also decided to start getting a newspaper delivered. We realized that most of the news we were seeing was causing unnecessary stress and anxiety and most of the news was just things we could not do anything to fix. It was another really good decision for our family. The news we see now actually impacts our lives, and we get to choose to look at news instead of it popping up on a feed. It's amazing.

We started spending tons of time outside this month. We did lots of gardening. We got to talking about how it feels like all we've ever really done is work and clean and feel tired. We set a goal for ourselves to put ourselves out there and really feel like we lived this summer. We tried to get out and do something actually fun at least two weekends a month all summer, and of course, it was a fabulous idea.

Here are some pictures of our garden starting to come to life in May.

June

We went and visited the zoo. It was very hot. We got to (attempt to) feed a giraffe.

We went to the circus. They had some pretty neat acts.

We found a kitten under our back steps while gardening. She was really sick but none of the shelters could take her for several days, and we couldn't keep her. Luckily, we found a really nice lady in Meridian who was more than happy to take her and nurse her back to health.

Pun of the month: Lexi showed Brandon this blanket she was crocheting. She was halfway done with the word she was adding, which was "one". Brandon's response: "It's one half!"

July

Lexi found Hucklebeary at Trader Joe's for the first time in her life. It was very important and had to be documented.

We took a day trip to McBride Creek and Succor Creek and found a massive crystal rock on the side of the road. Lexi found a rock that looks like a house with a little rock person living in it.

We went to the botanical gardens. They were beautiful.

This random dog just walked into our house and let us pet him. We found his owner down the street, turned around, and found this praying mantis.

We harvested our first garbanzo bean from our garden.

August

We did a few puzzles. One of them we started last Christmas and then never had time to finish. The other was just for fun and some of the pieces were hilarious.

We went on a juice fast, during which time we cleaned out and organized our pantry.

Lexi stepped on a massive piece of glass.

The lady who took the kitten sent us update. Here she is, all better.

Here's Brandon next to some flowers we grew.

September

We visited Leslie Gulch for a day trip. It was gorgeous. It was so peaceful and sunny and we found some cool rocks.

We found this cute little striped rolly polly in our garden.

This is the part where September got crazy. It all started when we decided to go camping for Brandon's birthday. We planned to be gone for 1 week and stay at Succor Creek. It felt like everything was going wrong on this trip. Nothing seemed to work out right.

Our plan was to take family pictures the first day there and then spend the rest of the week hiking and swimming and looking for rocks.

We were staying in a camper close to the edge of a cliff. Lexi was terrified of rolling off the cliff, but we stayed in that same spot last year and Brandon assured her there was nothing to worry about, so she didn't say anything this year.

We drove out on a Thursday night. When we turned onto the long dirt road that leads to the creek, a couple of dogs came and ran next to the car barking at us for a few minutes. They kept up with the car going almost 20 mph. It was creepy. When we woke up on Friday, Brandon's wedding ring broke. It almost seemed like a bad sign, but we brushed it off, and Lexi sewed a piece of fabric to act as a makeshift ring.

We tried to take pictures, but we could not get any good ones. The wind just would not let up. Every time we would sit down to try to wait it out, it would immediately stop, and then we would stand up and it would start up again. We finally gave up, but we got this gem.

Do you see it?

We ended up being able to go look for rocks and hang out in the creek for a little bit that day since we couldn't get any pictures. When we got back to the trailer, we were playing card games and we kept hearing this thump outside. We both felt really jumpy and we couldn't figure out why. At one point, Lexi jumped from the thud, and Brandon tried to joke, "things that go bump in the night," and then we both just felt really anxious and creeped out.

When we got into bed that night, Lexi told Brandon she missed home and didn't know why something felt wrong. Brandon was quiet for a minute and then said, "I'm mildly worried about the camper rolling off the cliff".

We started talking about it and decided to try and move the camper to the main campsite because we both just felt scared and upset. We went outside to try and lift the jacks up, and the pop out wouldn't go back in. It was a moonless night and it was dead silent. We could not see our hands in front of our faces. We went back into the camper to try and get the pop out in, and Lexi was standing by the door. We could see the headlights of the side by side we brought reflected outside the door, about 20 feet away. Lexi turned and looked at Brandon for a second and then when she looked back, she could not see the lights anymore. She said, "close the door," and Brandon did not need telling twice. He stepped all the way to the front of the camper, closed and locked the door all in one motion within 2 seconds of Lexi talking. We didn't put it together in the stress of the moment until later, but there was definitely something (or someone) outside the camper.

We slept fully clothed, with keys and phones in our pockets, ready to leave that night. Neither of us got much sleep. Lexi's resting heart rate all night was around 120 bpm. We both agreed that it just felt like something was watching us.

We woke up the next morning and started trying to hook the camper back up. It was a beautiful morning, but we were terrified, and we didn't know of what. We noticed footprints near the camper that didn't look like ours.

As Brandon was getting into the truck to back it up, Lexi looked around and thought, "It's so lovely today. Maybe we'll just stay for the day," and then immediately turned around and projectile vomited. She just knew somehow that it was unsafe.

We noticed that the camper was not resting on its back 2 jacks when we went to raise it up.

We got into the truck, made it roughly 15 minutes down the road, and the tire on the camper went flat. We had to stop and change it out. When we got back to driving, we came around a corner and passed this creepy silver car stopped on the side of the road. There was a guy sitting there, watching us. He smiled this horrible, uncanny smile and just stared and did this slow wave. Brandon did not get a good look at him, but we were both unnerved. This car was heading towards the campsite, we were heading away from it.

About 15 minutes after that, the tire on the truck went flat. We had to stop and change that one out, and while we were changing it out, that same silver car came driving by (now heading out of the campsite). He stopped and did that same creepy smile and wave at us when he passed. He went so slowly past us that it took him 5 entire minutes to go a quarter of a mile away from us.

We finally made it home safely on Saturday afternoon. We were pretty shaken up and neither one of us could handle being in too dark a room for a couple weeks after.

We ended up checking the weather at Succor Creek on Sunday and discovered that there was a massive downpour happening. The cliff we stayed on was basically just dirt and dust. We absolutely would have rolled off that cliff had we stayed.

It's interesting the way things work out, because had we stayed at the campsite instead, we would have come home in the evening when we finally left, which would have left us stranded trying to change a tire in the pitch black middle of nowhere.

September also brought Brandon's 30th Birthday!!!

October

We juiced a million and one grapes this year, resulting in a ton of grape juice. Lexi did not want to have to can more than one batch, so she filled a half gallon jar and said we would have to try and finish it in the next few days.

She's still not sure if Brandon took that as a challenge or what, but Brandon (goose that he is), drank THE ENTIRE HALF GALLON OF JUICE BY HIMSELF IN ONE DAY. He regretted it less than two hours later. I'll try to be delicate in how I phrase this, but if you're ever constipated, you, too, can drink an entire half gallon of grape juice and that will not be a problem anymore.

We went as Gomez and Morticia Addams this year for Halloween.

We FINALLY got the Stardew Valley board game after being on the waiting list for almost two years.

We soaked in the last of our garden for this year.

November

We went on a day trip to Graveyard Point to try and make up for Brandon's birthday trip. We found loads of really cool rocks.

December

Brandon will be going in for another eye surgery on the 22nd. He has a film over the lens of his eye that's basically a cataract from a previous surgery, so they're going to use a laser to clean that off.

We went and took family pictures in New Meadows that we LOVE.

We went and saw the Christmas lights at Indian Creek in Caldwell.

We also kept track of all the books we read this year! The tally stands as follows:

Brandon read seven books, Lexi read eighteen books, and together we read nineteen. All together this year, we've read forty four books!

Brandon's favorite book he read on his own this year was How to Invent Everything.

Lexi cannot decide her favorite of the books she read between The Mysterious Benedict Society and Where the Heart is.

We both agree that of the books we've read together, we cannot decide a favorite between Flowers for Algernon, The Help, Harry Potter, The Hobbit, and The Lord of the Rings.

We had a lovely year and we want to thank all of you for being a part of it! We love you all and hope your holidays are wonderful.