Dear friends and family,

For us, 2025 has been a year of constant change, weekends at the park, the infectious laughter and defiant tears of a toddler, quiet evenings, loud mornings, bad decision-making by the president, hikes in the mountains, and even a little bit of travel. Joe and I allow our world to be dominated by a now-almost-2-year-old Lukas. We spend almost all of our evenings at Joe’s parents house, where they live across the park from us. And, we continue to love living in our little mountain town in the Land of Enchantment.

Luke

At the beginning of this year, Luke turned one and quickly took on the role of toddler. He started walking, and running, and reaching, and climbing. Language development started with his first word: “WOW,” which he used aggressively for many months. He managed to say “Mama” soon after (on my birthday!), but then quickly dropped it in favor of Dada (Joe) and Daddy (me) until very recently. Midway through the year, his words really took off and we’re now getting to the point where he understands meaning behind the sentences we say (“we can play with that in the morning”) and he responds with real expression (a very disappointed and/or sarcastic “okayyy…”). He’s great with colors and animals, but would prefer it if counting was just 1 and 2.

Also midway through the year, he started going to daycare. We have run the usual marathon of back-to-back illnesses and sadness at being left there instead of staying home, but now he happily runs in to hug his teachers, whom he really loves. His being in daycare is how we learned that he is an especially tall kid: I walked in about a month ago, and his class of 12 toddlers was preparing to go outside, and he was standing in the middle of the group, a full head above the rest of them. He loves the color yellow, the TV show Bluey, the movie My Neighbor Totoro, colors (crayons), grandmas of all kinds (his own, plus the ones he finds in the wild), and the swings and the slide at the park. We’re looking forward to celebrating his second birthday in January!

Joe

Joe continues to plug away at the things he enjoys. He does his daily run to and from work, and it’s uphill both ways, but he has finally acclimatized to the 7000 foot altitude here in Los Alamos. He was able to take a short vacation to participate in his 8th Texas Independence Relay run after taking a year off to look after little Lukas.

Joe has really taken to coding this year. With Lukas now sleeping longer stretches overnight, he is able to squeeze in a coding session most nights. Joe attempts to make improvements to the house on the odd weekend we have some time, the biggest project being building a deck. Other than that, he is just enjoying his full, if routine, life: getting outside, baking bread, and participating in Lukas’ life wherever possible.

Andrea

The first half of my year was focused on work in the morning and parenting in the afternoon. I’m still working remotely, part-time out of Houston, and I traveled back in April to take pictures of the city and visit the office there, and I also visited Washington, DC for work at the beginning of June. (If you’re wondering, yes! My job got a lot less fun and a lot more serious when this president re-entered office in January.) That same week that I was in DC, we gave Luke’s babysitters, his grandparents, a break and put him in full-time daycare. This has been a revelation for me, because Luke stays at daycare until 4pm, and I have time to work later if I need to and get things done around the house.

In July, after years of atrial fibrillation and/or superventricular tachycardia (doctors can’t really agree on what it was), a condition where my heart would beat irregularly at random moments, I had a surgery that has essentially stopped this problem altogether! I had electrical pathways in my heart that were firing off-beat, so the surgery ablated (burned) some of those pathways. They also found I’d had an undetected congenital accessory pathway—an extra electrical pathway since birth—and got rid of that. As a result, I’ve been able to get back to running and hiking and yoga and picking up Luke and even just turning over in bed without having my heart go out of control. What a relief!

Other Fun Things

My parents came to visit us in Los Alamos several times this year and Lukas is just obsessed with them.
We attended the Turquoise Trail Run in a little town south of Santa Fe, and saw runners racing with donkeys at their sides! I want Joe to do it next year.
Joe’s sister, Katie, and her family, came to visit New Mexico from Georgia! Lukas met three boy cousins (for the first time that he actually remembers) and was totally overwhelmed by the experience. I think we showed them some of what makes our little corner so wonderful, with a trip to Valles Caldera National Monument and our local brewpub.
I got to see my friend Mandy twice this year. The first was a brief visit to Baltimore during my DC work trip, and the second was a weekend in New York City to see some Broadway shows (Beetlejuice and Operation Mincemeat) and to spend a day in Central Park, complete with brunch at Tavern on the Green.
I met up with my parents and sister Katie in Albuquerque to see Paul McCartney! It was my second time seeing this exact concert but it was still thrilling, and special to share it with them. As an added bonus, I got to see my step-sister Heather for the first time in many years the next morning, now that she’s back in New Mexico!
Our friend Jen came to visit in October. I was sick the whole time! Luke absolutely adored “Den” and missed her when she had to go back home.
We qualified for universal childcare coverage through the State of New Mexico and are really excited about this unexpected perk of living here (even though Luke’s daycare won’t accept state payments until the spring)!
I continue to take photos and would love it if you checked out my 2025 in Review photo album on Flickr or Facebook!