Goodbye, 2025

The last half of 2025 included some new beginnings and adventures for us. 

Felix passed his driver's test and began racking up experience as a Licensed Driver. So far, so good (knocking on all the wood)... He finished up his Legion baseball season shortly after my last post. And then broke off a piece of his femur while sprinting the following week. 😬 Ibuprofen took care of the pain, his body took care of rebuilding the bone, and PT this fall has helped get him back to full strength and usage. He did very well in his first term of Junior-year classes; he joined DECA, and has recently joined Mock Trail and has been doing weightlifting at school. His current goal is to study business at UW-Madison and get a law degree to become an attorney like Nick. 

Iris has been busy, as usual. At the end of July, her softball team competed in a national tournament in Peoria, IL. The weather was hot, and so were the girls, finishing 2nd in their division! Their team went to three fall tournaments, finishing 1st in two of them. In the first of these tournaments, Iris consecutively pitched the semifinal (no-hitter) and championship games. So proud of her for that accomplishment! She also turned 13, played libero for her school volleyball team (while developing a wicked jump serve), and started taking French. 

Nick's firm finally moved into their new office space in October. He's very happy with how it turned out, though he's so busy he doesn't have much time to admire it. Cara's been keeping on with her job and juggling the family's schedule. That schedule included trips back to GB to see Nick's sister and grandparents.

We decided to take a much-needed vacation over Thanksgiving (one of the few times we all were free). Iris requested going somewhere with teal water where she could snorkel. We ended up in Riviera Maya, and you can read about our trip here. 

We hope you and yours have a prosperous 2026!

First Half of 2025

We're just about midway through summer, so it's time for an update.

Our winter was pretty quiet. No big trips, no big events. Both kids prepared for their spring ball season. And suddenly, things were not quiet at all. 

Felix had his baseball tryouts over spring break, so we stayed home for that. He made the JV team this year, and the team had a good amount of success. Felix pitched a five-inning no-hitter during the season, which was fantastic! He's now over halfway through his Legion baseball season.

Iris had a difficult season of school softball. Too many players, too few innings to go around, too big talent differential made it challenging. The nice thing was playing against her tournament teammates. She was very happy to have a few tournaments this spring. Her tournament team has been very good in their four tournaments so far, finishing 1st, 4th (out of 9, playing up against 14U teams), 2nd and 1st. She also played with the 14U team for two tournaments.

Both kids did well overall in their classes and finished the year strong. Iris received a few awards from WRAMS, such as "most improved musician" in her band class. 

Felix just turned 16 on Saturday, and we had the grandparents over for a nice dinner. I waited until now to publish this post: he passed his road test today! He can officially drive the car all by himself. And he'll be running Iris around where she needs to go. (The downside of having a car at his disposal is it's also at our disposal. ;D )

That's all I have for now. We'll catch up again later this year.

Awesome things: Time Team episodes, Ologies podcasts