Sharing our annual holiday family photos (my favorite holiday tradition of all!), a huge ‘thank you’ to each and every one of you, and my own jumbled up 2020 ramblings.
Our annual holiday family photos are in and I’ve been bursting to share them with you all here! We started working with our photographer, Leah, here in Boston back when we were living in Cambridge, and I feel SO lucky to have met her. From the moment I opened these most recent photos on my computer screen, I knew she had captured something special. So grateful for this beautiful family of mine, even in this weird moment in time. 🙈
Our Annual Holiday Family Photos + My 2020 Ramblings
And let’s be honest here: 2020 has been a loooooong, rough, not always shiny, mostly relatively sucky year.
I get in my head a lot. I panic. There are stretches when I wonder whether things will ever get back to normal. There are stretches when Mike has to quarantine because of an exposure at the hospital. And we live in stunned worry and waiting until the test results come back negative. There are moments when I so desperately wish things could be different for our girls, for me, for the career path Mike chose.
I miss my family often. I call them with so much more regularity because there’s this hole where I’m used to having them – even with all of our moves – seeing them regularly on vacations was something I relied on. And I miss my friends too. So much.
I miss what I thought was normal. I long for that normalcy more than I ever thought that I could. It’s that cutting longing for the mundane that strikes me in moments where I resent the place we’re in today. Politics upset me nowadays. Ignorance all the more. I try to step back. To remind myself that those judgments are fruitless. That we’re all fighting a different battle, with our own struggles, yet we’re all still navigating the same rocky path forward.
It’s been a lot. And I’m guessing it’s been a lot for you too.
Then I look at what we have. At these girls. These two beautiful, courageous, resilient daughters of mine, who despite it all, are thriving. And I’m overcome with a sense of gratitude.
We’re okay. It will be okay.
Do I know when my kids will have their normal back? No. Will they get back to a school building in 2021? I honestly don’t know. Can I trust that my girls will be safe playing with friends, seeing their family, going back to the activities they love? I wish I knew.
What I do know, is that we’re finally, mercifully near Mike getting a vaccine. (The one time I feel lucky that he’s a frontline worker in this mess, if I’m being completely honest.) That keeps our family safe and for that I could cry (and most likely do a very nerdy “happy dance” in our kitchen the moment he gets it!)
We’ll still go on staying home and focusing on outdoor activities, because I need to mitigate risk for the rest of our little family. I fear we may be one of those families who stays in some sort of lockdown until we’re all vaccinated, and though in my head I know that that is what’s right for our own family, my heart is yearning for change and freedom and what I thought was normal.
I know I’m dumping this all out here in this post, and I should probably reel it in. 🤣
Thank You
I guess the jumbled up thoughts in my head equate to one thing: despite it all, I’m grateful. Very grateful. Grateful for my family. Our ability to keep our kids home when I know for so many families, that’s an impossibility.
And I’m grateful for all of you. SO very grateful. If it weren’t for you all, reading this corner of the internet of mine, I couldn’t help contribute to my family from the comfort of our toy-littered living room. Somehow, despite my ramblings, all of you stick around. I share the mundane and the messy and the glittery, and all of you prop me up. You read and you listen and you come back again and again.
I always dreamed of being a writer, and somehow, day after day, I live that reality, plus a lot of baking, crafting, chaotic photo shoots with tiny people chasing at my heels. It’s better than I could have imagined.
So yeah …
Thank you.
So much.
From the bottom of my complicated, exhausted, thankful heart.
So happiest of holidays to you all! I hope you’ll stick around for the rest of this year’s holiday content (and more!)
Here’s to a brighter 2021 (and all of the good memories we’ve created in 2020!)
Want even more holiday content? Right this way! And in case you’re curious, here are our holiday family photos from 2019, 2018, 2016, and 2015.
SHOP OUR HOLIDAY FAMILY PHOTO OUTFITS | CLICK LEFT & RIGHT ARROWS TO EXPLORE
Photos by Leah Jayne Productions for Glitter, Inc.