December Part 8: New Year's Eve

In November, we made plans with our friends, the Bertilsens, to party together for New Year's Eve. On Christmas, Lea and Shayne invited us to join in with them and their plans, but we declined due to already having plans. Unfortunately, the Bertilsens started getting Strep throat at their house, so they had to cancel. We decided that it wasn't going to really work for us to join with Lea and Shayne's crew either due to what we thought would be a late night with them (turns out that it didn't end up that way, but we didn't know), so we decided to just do our own thing together that night so Gabe could go to bed on time. 

Earlier in the day, I had a presidency meeting, and Brian went to the gym. When I got home from my meeting, I watched President Holland's funeral. President Jeffrey R. Holland passed away on December 27, and I don't know that I've ever been so sad to lose an apostle. He's been my favorite conference speaker for years, and I will really miss him, though I am happy for him to be back with his wife. 

Brian was hard at work on drawers for our kitchen cabinets for most of the day, and I was trying to update the blog. At some point, Brian and I were at Smiths picking up some New Year's treats and checking out New Year's party stuff,  and Rachel texted, "Can I borrow some jewelry?" We came home to find her all decked out in a black shirt and skirt, dangling earrings, and my giant Swarovski crystal around her neck. She said, "I feel like black is a New Year's Eve color." So, following her example, I went up to my closet to see what kind of black outfit I had that matched the tone Rachel set. I pulled out this old dress from college (that was actually my roommate's bridesmaid dress), threw on my own Swarovski necklace, a little bit of lipstick, and came downstairs. We turned on our party light and turned on some music and started dancing. Soon Brian came in from the garage and, catching onto our vibe, went and changed into his tux. Gabe came and we told him to go change into something black. 

Michael even joined us before he headed out to be with his friends. He danced with us for maybe five minutes, and it was so fun. We haven't had a family dance party in so long. (And bonus: Michael was already wearing all black). 

I made everyone pose for a picture before he left. 

Happy New Year!!

We got a fountain from Smith's, and we lit it off before Michael left. The pictures of the thing really turned out great. 

Brian and I took more pictures. 

And Rachel was so cute in this New Year's outfit That I wanted to take more of her as well. 

We wore ourselves out dancing and then played some Jackbox. I don't remember what this game was called, but we thought Aunt Lara would get a kick out of these competitors that we drew. 

We watched the New York Ball drop live (10 p.m. our time), toasted the new year with sparkling cider

and blew some party horns.

Then we sent Gabe to bed. We took some more final pictures since I was ready for pajamas. 

We didn't do much between then and our actual midnight. Honestly, we were all quite spent. We rallied closer to midnight, and shot off three confetti canons to bring in the new year. 

More pictures, this time with confetti and pajamas! 

We kept trying to take a picture of falling confetti, and each one had someone making a weird face of blocking someone else. So we tried several times to get a good one. 

This is where we look the best, but the confetti is lacking. 

2025 was a great year, a hard year, a fun year, a successful year, a year of shortcomings, but mostly, it was a year where we spent a lot of time together,  made lots of memories, saw so many amazing places, and hit some pretty big milestones. We're so grateful for another year together, living in our little version of Eden, with these amazing kids. We're excited to see where 2026 takes us.