Beginning 2026

Jade and I started out the new year with a soccer tournament in Atlanta! Sadly the weather was rainier and colder than we had hoped for, but still had a great time! Her team fought hard against some very tough competition.

 

We had Jade's 8th Grade Family Orientation night at her future high school, Naperville Central! This was basically an event to showcase all the different extra curricular clubs and activities as well as sports offered for students to get involved in their freshman year! We didn't escape without a visit to the merch shop!

  

The girls had their winter band concert at Wentz Hall, which is on North Central College's campus! 

The girls also performed at their school's solo and ensemble festival! Jemma did a solo, a duet with Jade and a duet with her friend Olivia! In addition to her duet with Jemma, Jade did a woodwind quartet and duet with her friend Kylie.

Jemma kept busy during the winter months with both basketball and volleyball leagues! So fun to watch her improve throughout the season!

Here is a little clip of her playing basketball!

Here's a little snippet of volleyball!

We celebrated Nate's 41st birthday with cookie cake! 

His mom had us over the following weekend for a corned beef and cabbage dinner! We got to sneak in another birthday celebration! :)

We also got a fun bonus visit with my sister and niece Cora when they were in Chicago for a dance convention! We enjoyed some mall time and Giordano's pizza for dinner!

Nate and I celebrated our 17th Anniversary with dinner at Ruth's Chris Steakhouse!

Jade's soccer team started off their spring season with a win in Wisconsin!

Christmas Things

 We put up our Christmas Tree the day before Thanksgiving! The process goes much quicker these days as the girls are so helpful! We had our traditional feast of snacks for lunch!

We did our traditional sushi dinner in downtown Naperville and looked at lights! Can't forget our stop at Cookie Dough Creations afterwards. :)

We went to dinner in downtown Frankfort with Nate's mom and then drove around to look at lights. It was freezing outside, so most of the looking was done from the car (except for this crazy display across several yards in Tinley Park).

Finally did our drive around Naperville to look at lights with our traditional stop at McDonalds for chocolate shakes.

Jemma hosted a Secret Santa party at our house with her friends!

We celebrated Christmas with Nate's mom at our house on the 22nd! We had a great day together and wonderful dinner at Texas Roadhouse. Unfortunately, Jemma began not feeling well that evening and ended up with a fever the next day.

We decided to take it easy Christmas Eve and joined church via live stream! We did still make it out for dinner at Little Italian! The girls wanted to put out milk and cookies for Santa. :)

We had a great Christmas morning at home! We were supposed to go to my parent's house earlier in the day, but in an effort to best keep everyone healthy we waited until the evening! We were so happy to get there in time to visit quickly with Aunt Mar.

The next day my sister and her family arrived. We had Portillo's for lunch and hung out all day. The kids had a blast doing their gift exchange which includes playing various games to win cash! The following day we did more gifts and dinner at Nick's Pizza! We even squeezed in a quick visit with GeeGee.