12 Joys of 2025

I’m grateful that 2025 gave me so many reasons to celebrate. I’m even more grateful that I’ve learned to look for celebrations everywhere—in the small, the everyday, the unexpected. Here are 12 moments that I celebrated this year. There are many more, some larger, some less noticeable. It is not a competition. These are the ones I want to share with you.

January

In January 2025, it snowed. As a person who has lived in Texas all my life, I can’t imagine snow ever not feeling magical. My favorite part this time was finding animal tracks in the dusting of white.

February

In February 2025, my husband and I rescued a young mama opossum who was stuck in a tree. She spent a couple of weeks recuperating at North Texas Wildlife Center before being released back into the wild.

March

In March 2025, we fostered the sweetest little black cat (who found a loving forever family in May). It was so fun watching her explore the house and play with our two boys.

April

In April 2025, we got to watch seven adorable, funny, rambunctious fox kits play on our property. This was so special to get to see. I spent a solid week just staring at the footage from my trail cam.

This is my favorite video of the fox babies:

May

In May 2025, we celebrated our 15th wedding anniversary with a lovely nature hike.

June

In June 2025, I took my hubby and my parents to meet my friend’s one-week-old baby donkey.

July

In July 2025, I went on a thoroughly enjoyable trip to Northampton, Massachusetts, to visit two good friends. There, I got my fill of good food, beautiful art, coffee shops, bookstores, gardens, nature walks, and great conversations.

August

Hubby and I went on a wonderful trip to Bar Harbor, Maine, and Acadia National Park. I especially loved hiking the trails around Beech Mountain.

September

I watched the garden I planted earlier in the year start to thrive.

October

I found a new hiking trail with beautiful, unique trees that I really love.

November

I sat on the floor to do crafts and stayed up late making creative, artsy messes (with a little help from my cats).

December

You all know how much I love found poetry. I enjoy making found poems out of magazine collages, book titles, and Wordles, just to name a few. Well, in December, 2025 a lovely little found poem found ME with absolutely no effort on my part, and I’m still tickled about it.

On December 27th, my family got together to celebrate Christmas. I had stepped outside for a few minutes (probably to pet a cat or look for a fox) just as everyone else was gathering to take a group photo. My dad called to ask where I was just as I stepped back into the house. I declined his call (since I was ten feet from him), but he didn’t hang up, so his phone stayed on, leaving me a garbled two-minute voicemail of my fourteen family members debating how to organize ourselves for the picture. When my phone helpfully translated that voicemail into text, this is what I received:

I love it. I genuinely love it. I couldn’t have described the scene better myself. What a fabulous little unexpected delight!

***

There they are… 12 of my joys from 2025. When I sat down to write this post, I didn’t know yet what I was going to include. For each month, I looked back through my planner and goals and accomplishments and photos and chose something that stood out to me. Now that I’m done, I’m not surprised by what I see: wildlife, cats, nature, travel, creativity, and a little poetry. These are the things that make me happy, after all. Here’s to more of them in 2026.

Care to share? I’d love to hear what moments you celebrated in 2025!