Change is good. Always looking forward, taking on new challenges, and building a life with the people you love. This time of year always has me looking back on past holiday photos and videos and I can't believe how much I've grown since I met Oliver. How much both of us have grown. It must be one of the most satisfying things I can think of. Self-improvement.

And some things never change. 

This is a toast to the times in life you never want to see pass. Those times being home and opening your parents' refrigerator without thinking twice. The way your old dog plays with you like you never left. Sharing drinks and watching your friends' band play just like the past weekend...or was that 5 years ago already? 


This post is to our loved ones. You mean more to us than you know. Cheers.

I'm sitting at my desk, editing these photos while bundled up in layers of clothing and blankets. 

It's that infamous Wisconsin winter that's set in and more fierce than many winters past. I often kid myself and tell Oliver that some winter, someday, we will live in a more temperate state. This, of course, is a fleeting complaint and one that Wisconsinites casually throw around, but we know this is home. 

This Christmas was different than the others. It was the first time coming home for a string of days and staying in a house full of guests and dogs and happiness. Cooking alongside Mom. Running all over town catching up with friends from college, high school, kindergarten. Starting new traditions. Card games. Losers at cards on dish duty. Running around the woods like maniacs because we were bored. 

And carrying on old traditions. Like that Dickens Village display below that belonged to Grandpa Jim.


It was a good reunion. I hope you all had a wonderful holiday with your loved ones as well.