Like many midlife couples, as children marry and move farther from home, we’ve reached the moment when long-held traditions must bend. We will still be together—just not on Christmas Day. And as I look back on 2025, I see that this wasn’t an isolated change. It was a year marked by a difficult parting, unusual holidays, shifting rituals, and moments that felt almost unreal. It all began on Day One.
Read MorePour yourself your yuletide drink of choice, snuggle under your favorite comfy throw, and enjoy our annual “Christmas Letter”, a.k.a. Year in Review, which is to say: LOTS of photos and news you can’t use. (But I promise, no artificial intelligence.)
Read MoreMy name is Migizi, but you can call me McGee, Gizi, or just Gee. My purr-son, Linda, has been moving slowly after hip surgery, so she enlisted my help to get the Christmas letter done. I’d rather wrap purr-esents, but because I want to remain her fur-iend, I agreed to write the annual Hanstra Year-in-Review.
Read MoreOur annual "Christmas Letter" (a.k.a. Year in Review) is brought to you by the blizzard of 2022. When blizzard warnings, bomb cyclones, and plane delays/cancellations foil Christmas plans, there is still one thing you can count on.
Read MoreTo every season, there is a thing (or two, or three…).
Before we get too far into 2022, it’s time for my year-end review of 2021. To recount the difficult things we’ve survived. To remember the good things we’ve enjoyed. But mostly, to give thanks for all the things.
Here are All the Things of 2021, as they unfolded for our family, season by season.
Read MoreJust as we begin each new year with goals and resolutions, it’s transformative to end an old year well; to reflect on what we’ve learned and how we’ve grown. We don’t always see blessings in the midst of challenges, but events become clearer as we look back.
As the saying goes, hindsight is 20/20.
Read MoreWhether or not you’ve followed our earlier episodes, I hope you’ll take a moment to sit down with a bowl of popcorn (or Gummi Bears, Junior Mints, etc.), and catch this latest blockbuster! Trust me, there’s no need to review, or even know the characters, and you’ll find the plot easy to follow.
So here goes…(cue Star Wars music).
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away...
Read More...with so much energy focused on our new president, politics, and protests...I thought you could all use a little stress break! Pour that cup of coffee, that glass of wine, and get comfy...here we go again.
Read MoreWhat is it about the end of an old year and beginning of a new that makes us reevaluate our lives, our homes, our organizational systems, our BMI, our sugar addictions, our finances, our spirituality, our parenting, our marriages, our passions, and everything else under the sun?
Read MoreThe holidays are over, the blizzard of '14 has come and gone, the polar vortex has settled in...but we're home, safe and warm, enjoying the first snow day of the year. My mind woke up at 5:30 a.m. today...right on schedule, as if it knew that winter break had ended and it was time to go back to school.
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