Christmas Letter 2025

 

Merry Christmas to you all! We kicked off 2025 in Iceland where we celebrated my (MB's) 50th birthday with some of our closest friends and their families, which was a blast. Highlights include arctic snorkeling (not me), hot springs, snowmobiling on a glacier, amazing meals, skiing on New Years Day and northern lights and fireworks at midnight on New Years! Throughout the year, we enjoyed going to some amazing concerts as well as hosting some amazing house concerts. We also hosted a few screenings for the film "Sentenced" created by the Children's Literacy Project (and produced and narrated by Stephen Curry). (For those local in Ft. Myers, there will be a screening at the Alliance for the Arts on Jan 17!) And we were with about 30 of my extended family at our farm over the summer, which was lots of fun. We are also very thankful to have had a quiet hurricane year. According to the local weather man, this is the first time in 10 years where there hasn't been a Gulf hurricane or US hurricane landfall. 

L is 16 and driving! He is a junior in high school and is balancing prepping for and taking the SAT/ACT, taking multiple AP classes, and thinking about college and possible college majors. In his free time, he's working on finding the right first job, playing on the drum line in the pep band, and volunteering weekly at a nearby senior retirement home doing tech support. And he's also working hard to finish his Eagle rank in Boy Scouts by senior year. He has an amazing group of friends that we love and are thankful for; a huge group of them went to homecoming this year!

H is a 14 and a freshman back at Canterbury with L & R. She's having a great year with a growing circle of sweet girls. She plays the trumpet in the band and is enjoying all of the regular freshman year things...going to the movies with friends, the occasional sleepover, school football games and dances (homecoming!). She's enjoying easing back into clubs and school commitments. So far, high school is lots of fun (with some learning in there too)!

R is 11 and having a great 5th grade year at Canterbury as well. Middle school has been the best experience. (Better lunch options too, apparently!) He loves playing Minecraft and building Lego (the age 18+ sets) and playing in person with friends as much as humanly possible. He started taking golf lessons with some friends twice a week and (usually) likes it. We'll see what sports await in 2026. He went on his first overnight field trip to Kennedy Space Center where they got to sleep under a space shuttle!

K is still busy in every good way with Ball Project and just finished launching a new and improved website. He's also working hard on launching Pray For Peace. Check out the site and join the movement! He had great trips to South Africa and Egypt where he was able to connect with lots of friends and Ball Project partners. He restarted the Saturday morning paddleboard group over on Sanibel and is enjoying that.

 

I (MB) am enjoying watching all three kids thrive in this new season and am excited about a few new ideas of my own that are percolating. I'm restarting my master's degree program in Library and Information Science at Syracuse University. It's been fun to take some baby steps into these next "circles of light" (as Anne Lamott says) and watch what God does. I'm also really enjoying being a part of book club with a group of lovely ladies. 

Gus and Ginger the Wonderdogs are happy and healthy. They continue to amuse us with their antics, and we find such joy in their expressions and cuddles. For those who may be wondering about the guinea pigs, alas they are with a new family and are happy and doing great.

We celebrated 24 years of marriage this August, which feels surreal. We are entering a new level of connection and steadiness in our marriage that I am so grateful for. We are thankful for a church we love as well as deepening friendships with some amazing humans. The hurricane three years ago put us on a difficult yet beautiful path of healing. Some adventures you would never ask for but, if we let them, can lead us closer to God and each other. These last several adventurous years have been full of lots and lots of waiting. And waiting is hard. It's uncomfortable. It feels like a waste of time. (We need to be DOING something, right??) But the reality is we are always in a state of waiting, really. From first days of school to the first school break of the year, for braces to go on and come off, for all of the "firsts" in life, for sleep to come, for courage to keep moving forward... The list goes on. 

 

Henri Nouwen wrote a powerful piece called Waiting for God that I am linking here. I encourage you all to read it. Nouwen states that active waiting "means to be present fully to the moment, in the conviction that something is happening where you are and that you want to be present to it. A waiting person is someone who is present to the moment, who believes that this moment is THE moment." This is so hard for me. And yet, it's in the present, in the waiting, where life is most fully lived. In this advent season as we await Christmas and the promise of Christ's arrival, may we all have the courage "to trust that something will happen to us that is far beyond our own imaginings. [To] give up control over our future and let God define our life, trusting that God molds us according to God's love and not according to our fear."

 

These days, we are focusing our attention on loving God, loving others and ourselves, and being present in the moment. We love you all and pray abundance and blessing upon you in 2026!

 

 

 

Christmas Letter 2024

“Tears. You never know what may cause them. The sight of the Atlantic Ocean can do it, or a piece of music, or a face you've never seen before. A pair of somebody's old shoes can do it. Almost any movie made before the great sadness that came over the world after the Second World War, a horse cantering across a meadow, the high school basketball team running out onto the gym floor at the start of a game. You can never be sure. But of this you can be sure. Whenever you find tears in your eyes, especially unexpected tears, it is well to pay the closest attention. 

“They are not only telling you something about the secret of who you are, but more often than not God is speaking to you through them of the mystery of where you have come from and is summoning you to where, if your soul is to be saved, you should go to next.” (Originally published in Whistling in the Dark by Frederich Buechner)

I’ve never had trouble crying. Happy tears. Sad tears. They come easily for me, especially the longer I live. So much goodness. So much sorrow. And I’m learning to pay attention and be curious about those tears. We are learning to get familiar with vulnerability. We are learning that for God to do His marvelous work, we sometimes must get deeply uncomfortable. In this season of Advent, we remember that the angel Gabriel appeared to Mary and told her “Do not be afraid!” right before he told her about this really difficult thing God wanted to do through her. And she said yes.

Our family motto has always been to “say yes to God and adventure.” We’re learning that this requires more courage than we originally thought. Adventures aren’t always safe & happy. Things like hurricanes happen that turn your world upside down and require you to completely reorient on a new adventure, the kind you would never ask for. And if you allow it to, these adventures unlock parts of yourself that you didn’t even know were there, parts that need compassion and attention. So, with eyes wide open, we continue to say yes to God and adventure in a way that says yes to the present, to what God has put before us, trusting all along that God is Emmanual, God with us.

Below is a photo of a painting our friend Kyle Ragsdale painted for us after Hurricane Ian. It hangs across from where I sit and work, so I see it every day. It’s a picture of us in a boat during a storm with our dogs, our chickens, and our guinea pigs. Jesus is at the helm commanding the storm. The sea creatures are swimming below. The brightest part of the painting is the white fish that R is grabbing. When we asked Ragsdale about it, he told us the fish is a reference to the Book of Tobit and is about “surprising provision.” So every day, I am reminded of God’s surprising provision.

We pray God’s blessing and provision on you all this holiday season and in the new year. Merry Christmas!!

 

k+mb+l+h+r

UPDATES & PHOTOS: (Special thanks to our talented friend, Bobbilee Tanner at Bobbilee Tanner Photography, for taking our family photos this year here at our home in Ft. Myers! For those who don't know, we are selling our Sanibel home. If you need our new address, please just let us know!)

L turned 15 this year and is now driving. He got his learner’s permit in July and is diligently working on fulfilling the numerous road hours required before taking the test for his license next summer. He’s an excellent driver! Canterbury continues to be a great school for him. He’s in 10th grade, has a great group of friends, and is doing well academically. He’s giving track & field a try for the first time in the spring. He’s finishing up the requirements for his final badges for his Eagle Scout rank in Boy Scouts. We’re proud of him for sticking with the Scouts all these years! We are in the beginning stages of college planning, which feels unreal to me. He’s an amazing young man, thoughtful, insightful, loyal, curious and diligent. L's highlights from the year include "Daintree Rainforest in Australia, Hobbiton and caving in New Zealand, getting my driver's permit, getting my braces off, going to Universal Studios, seeing sea life while snorkeling at the Great Barrier Reef, snorkeling in Turks-Caicos, waterpark at Baha Bay in Nassau."

H turned 13 this year. She is continuing to homeschool for 8th grade, attending a great homeschool program in Naples once a week with her best friend here. It’s crazy to me that she’ll be in high school next year. She is strong and smart and beautiful inside and out. She cares deeply for her friends and her family and pets, always looking for ways to bless them/us and make us smile. She is back in gymnastics and enjoying that. And she continues to challenge me to look for ways to not “let schooling interfere with [her] education” (Mark Twain). H's highlights from the year include "the Taylor Swift concert, my 13th birthday with friends and cousins, Great Wolf Lodge, getting to go to school with A, the Turks-Caicos trip."

R turned 10 this year. Double digits. He is spirited, an amazing friend & helper, committed to doing his best, and loves to be outside. We’ve stepped into YMCA rec sports with some of his classmates this fall, just finishing soccer and getting ready for basketball, which has been a lot of fun. He enjoys playing Minecraft with his older cousins, whittling, and Ripsticking to decompress. He is an avid reader, devouring every Rick Riordan book written. And he ran 17 laps in the school fundraiser for the American Heart Association! R's highlights: "Great Wolf Lodge, Weta Studio and Hobbiton in New Zealand, coral reef in Turks-Caicos, the duct-tape weapon battle with my friends."

 

K+MB
We have enjoyed a year full of amazing travel and great music and have been fortunate to include good friends and family with us for much of that. Our travels took us as far as Australia and New Zealand by way of Seattle/Whidbey Island as well as Turks-Caicos to celebrate K's parents' 60th anniversary (four years late). And we're heading to Iceland over New Year's to celebrate my 50th birthday. The world is such a beautiful place. We feel grateful to be able to share it with our family & friends. We celebrated our 23rd anniversary in August. And we've loved having house concerts in our living room again!

New Zealand

Australia

 Turks-Caicos

Misc Photos!