Friday, January 17, 2025
HAPPY NEW YEAR, EVERYONE!
We hope that your holiday season was GRAND in every way!
Welcome back to our readers and friends!
WE’VE MISSED YOU!
It’s the new year and we are ready for all that 2025 brings our way!
We are especially excited to kick things off here!
For those new to our blog,
WE’RE SO GLAD YOU ARE HERE!
We first began writing this blog - our passion project - as recently retired kindergarten teachers and newbie grandparents! Fast forward two years, and we are now each a Grand to two sweet Littles! During this time, we’ve come to rely on each other and, often, this community, as we offer our thoughts and ideas about this new stage of life and the joy we find these days in creating memories with loved ones!
Our ongoing vision for Our Grand Lives is to share what we’ve found meaningful, especially with our Littles (our grandkids) but also with our Middles (our own grown children). We often add our Grand Tips and suggestions for success based on our many years of experience spent with Littles of all ages! At the same time, we use this platform to document and share happenings in our own GRAND lives with family and friends!
For our first blog post of 2025 we want to take a look back
at both of our holiday seasons…
the GRAND moments that shaped our days from Christmas to New Years,
with lots of favorite highlights sprinkled in along the way!
When we last signed off a few days before Christmas 2024,
we were all set to embrace the holiday season and the magic that awaited!
Laura’s Middles and Littles had just arrived for a few days of holiday fun
and Laurie was preparing for a family gathering!
The past few weeks away from this blogging world,
were filled with lots of cherished memories for our family!
From celebrating Christmas a few days early with our Wisconsin crew
to a quiet and relaxing Christmas Eve/Christmas Day spent with our youngest
to our New Year’s trip to Madison to ring in 2025 and to celebrate our Little L…
There were so many favorite moments that were captured along the way!
Little L and Little P were ready to experience all the wonders of the season
when their family arrived at our house the week before Christmas!
Our holiday adventures began with a trip to the theatre!
Thank you, Laurie, for suggesting that we see Rudolph, the Red Nosed Reindeer!
Little L loved taking her own Rudolph to the show.
but she wasn’t completely sure what to think about Rudolph and friends
at the “meet and greet” afterwards!
Later, we all needed to stop for an ice cream treat when out shopping,
Including Rudolph, of course!
Over the weekend, we met up with cousins (my brother’s grandkids)
for a longstanding family tradition…
a sing-a-long with Santa and his elf, Albert!
We celebrated our “Christmas morning” a few days early!
This yummy breakfast burrito casserole was a hit
as were our very own Rudolph noses
and our Christmas stockings, of course!
Before we knew it,
we were saying our goodbyes
and our Wisconsin loves were headed back home!
Hubby, Daughter A and I then had a quiet Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.
A few Christmas faves included
our beautiful church service filled with glorious music on Christmas Eve,
a festive cocktail (or two),
puzzle time while watching The Holiday
(definitely one of our faves),
and, for Hubby, sampling one of his favorite gifts!
While definitely more quiet than usual,
we must say,
our Christmas was simply lovely!
A few days later, we were off to Madison
to celebrate New Year's AND Little L’s birthday!
Our favorite New Year's Eve espresso martinis to celebrate...
CHEERS!
Little L woke up on New Year's Day - her third birthday,
to discover that the Christmas Tree had been transformed
into her Birthday Tree!
Her expression was a fave!
Our gift to the birthday girl?
Her mama and auntie’s treasure from 25+ years ago!
Little L is loving her “new” dollhouse!
YIPPEE! Little L is three!
We love you BIG sweet girl!
❤ And that wraps up our holiday highlights! ❤
Our holiday started out with a bang!
Pre-Christmas parties with both sides of our extended family
meant lots of memory making was about to happen!
Our traditional Dinosaur Photo with my family
and a rousing Bunko play-off with Hubby’s side were a few of the highlights!
OH! NO!
Christmas week brought THE virus
to Little P, Little D, their mom, dad, and BaBa (Grandpa)!
So a quiet Christmas was had by all!
Thankfully, Hubby was well enough
to celebrate our 39th anniversary on the 28th!
We went out with friends to our favorite distillery!
❤ Happy Anniversary to us! ❤
We are happy to report that by the weekend after Christmas,
everyone was healthy once again (YAY!)
and our Son and Daughter-in-Law were back in town
following time away with her extended family.
It was then that I got the best gift of all!
We got to celebrate our little family Christmas with a wonderfully full day spent together!
Breakfast, matching Target flannel pants (my son works for Target Corporation), presents, games, the pickle search, wild dogs, dinner and the Vikings game…
It all made for a perfect day!
We even squeezed in Son D’s 32nd birthday with the traditional cheesecake!
On New Year’s Eve,
Hubby and I were lucky to have both Littles overnight at our house
as their parents celebrated a well-deserved night out!
We ripped up confetti, blew noise makers and played New Year’s Eve Bingo!
We celebrated at “midnight”
and we were in bed by 8:00 pm!
❤
Happy New Year!
Can’t wait for more GRAND memories in 2025!!
Thanks so much for scrolling through our Life Lately post
as we shared our holiday highlights from the past few weeks!
While each of our holidays were filled with some ups and downs
and quiet moments intermingled with hustle and bustle,
Christmas 2024 will definitely be one to remember!
After all, as many of you know,
creating memories that the heart holds forever
is what we’re all about!
We welcome your thoughts!
If you'd like, please leave a comment at the end of this post
or you can always email us directly at ourgrandlives@gmail.com.
While taking a holiday break these past weeks from blogging new content,
and Laura updating and sharing a few favorite posts from years past online.
If you are a longtime reader, you may remember these…
Are you interested in learning more?
YES, we thoroughly enjoyed our time away,
but now we are eager to get started once again!
We’ve got lots of fun content to share in the weeks and months ahead!
Beginning next week,
we’ll offer posts each Thursday and regular “Friday Faves” as well!
We know that much of the country has been blanketed in snow recently,
but here in Minnesota, we’ve only had a few inches of the white stuff fall
and we know that we're in it for the lo-o-o-ong haul!
Next Thursday, January 23, we’ll be back
with brand new ideas for winter fun with Littles!
If you don’t want to miss out, you can always subscribe to our site!
We’d love that!
Finally, we would be remiss if we didn’t take a moment
to lift up our prayers for those in southern California
whose lives have been forever impacted by the devastating wildfires taking place!
Our thoughts are with everyone who has lost so much
and with the first responders who continue to amaze us day in and day out!
SPECIAL THANKS TO
The Hearth & Soul Link Party from April J Harris
Thank you for featuring this post on your sites!
❤ We love our blogging community! ❤
💗 We are delighted to join the following link up parties and blog hops! 💗
MONTHLY
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THURSDAY
FRIDAY
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This looks so wonderful and festive and fun. I love the birthday tree idea!! Love it. And, yes, we're praying for California, too. Thanks for sharing this with us at the Will Blog for Comments #54 linkup. We hope to see you again at #55 next week!
What a fun idea to take the Christmas tree and transform it into a Birthday Tree. We have a couple of Christmas Eve birthdays in the family and what a great way to make their special day shine. Melynda @scratchmadefood!
It looks like you all had a wonderful time together. So many great memories made. Thank you for sharing at The Crazy Little Lovebirds link party. Wishing you all a beautiful 2025!
Steph@crazylittlelovebirds
Happy Christmas, Birthdays and Anniversary and I love the balloons on the tree, what a fab idea.
What beautiful families. Here's to a happy and healthy 2025
Lovely photos - it does indeed look like a grand holiday season with family. #MMBC