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!
Not only is “liminal” a lovely word to say and feel on the lips, reminding me a bit of that scene in Donnie Darko, about “cellar door” being the most beautiful combination of words in the English language, but I love its meaning too.
My old red dictionary defines it as “of, pertaining to, or situated at the limen,” and limen means threshold.
My online dictionary defines it as “occupying a position at, or on both sides of, a boundary or threshold” or “relating to a transitional or initial stage of a process.”
Other words and phrases that come to mind when I think of “liminal” are…
on the verge
between
blurring edges
borders
having a hand in two worlds
transition
transformation
possibilities & potential
fleeting
almost and not quite and soon
Liminal makes me think of twilight, one of my favorite times of day, when the air can be purple or yellow or pink or just a calm cozy shadowy gray, when the crows go to sleep, when the opossums wake and crunch through the leaves looking for snacks, when the first stars appear, when the question pops into my head—“Do I want a campfire tonight?”—when I sit on the porch and look and listen and don’t want to come inside because I might miss something.
Liminal makes me think of witchery. When does a tea become a potion? When does a thought become a prayer? Where is the line between admiring a tree and worshipping it? What’s the difference between writing a poem and casting a spell? Is there one?
Liminal reminds me of this whole time of year, the weeks between October and January, transitioning through Halloween, Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Winter Solstice, Christmas, and New Year, giving treats and thanks and gifts and blessings, watching the trees change color and making resolutions.
I think LIMINAL will be my word for 2026. Maybe I’m on the verge of something. A new identity? A new project? A new path? Or maybe I’m finally just recognizing how “liminal” life is in general, always changing, always balancing between one direction and another. I’m turning fifty in the upcoming year—the start of my own personal twilight?—so perhaps that’s the threshold inspiring me to embrace hazy boundaries and be open to unexplored territories.
Speaking of unexplored territories, I’ve never actually celebrated the solstice before, which I feel a bit strange admitting since I love nature and feel a strong connection to the earth this time of year. However, it’s never too late to start a new tradition. Tomorrow, on the first day of winter, I’ll build a fire and… see what happens. I may make some nature-inspired crafts or do a tarot reading for the new year or write some poetry by the light of the flames.
Care to join me? I don’t mean literally. This year I’m craving some quiet time to myself amongst all the social gatherings and holiday travel, so I’ll be celebrating the solstice solo. But there is power in community, even from afar, and I believe that collective positivity can light up the world, even on the darkest night of the year. So, consider taking a moment or two tomorrow to appreciate nature and honor the Earth and offer up some affirmation to the atmosphere.
If you don’t have time for a full solstice ritual, I encourage you to spend a few minutes listening to this hauntingly beautiful choral rendition of Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” composed by Eric Whitacre. I had the pleasure of hearing my friend’s choir perform this piece at their Winter Solstice concert last week, and the experience has stuck with me. The song itself is an embodiment of the word “liminal,” a balancing act between poetry and music, walking the line between eerie and enchanting.
Whatever you do tomorrow, do it with intention and appreciation for the world around you.
Happy Solstice!
May the yuletide bring many moments of peace and joy to you and your loved ones.
Happy December! I just told this story to a friend over the weekend and decided it needed to be shared publicly again. I originally posted this tale to my previous blog in 2012, just after I quit teaching the first time. At that point, it had been thirteen years since “the incident.” Now, another thirteen years have passed, but the whole thing still cracks me up. Ah, the things we do when we’re twenty-three… Enjoy!
Confessions of a Former Teacher #1: I Stole the Baby!
[The last part of the title should be read in the voice of the brownie in the movie Willow. If you missed that on the first read, try again. If you don’t know what I’m talking about (sigh heavily) then check out this clip before reading on.]
As you know by now, I have quit teaching. Now that the dust has settled a little… the three-hole punch is packed away and the glue has dried on the “about me” collages… I feel it’s time to let you all in on a few choice secrets from my thirteen-year career. Prepare to gasp.
This first shocking tale of mayhem comes from my very first semester as a teacher. I was twenty-three years old and teaching 7th grade language arts in Cedar Park, TX. And I warn you, there are so many things wrong with this story, your judgmental brain won’t even know where to begin.
Let me set the scene.
It’s December. The chilly Texas air keeps threatening to drop below 40°F. It’s nine school days before the holiday break. The students are restless. The teachers are restless. Tacky Christmas sweaters are being donned with no irony at all. And then, quite suddenly, it appears in the break room: a nativity scene made out of chocolate.
Chocolate Nativity Scene. Just as you pictured it.
I don’t know who brought it. I never heard anyone say a word about it. But there it was. Every day as I ate my homemade peanut butter sandwich or my cafeteria-bought chicken nuggets, out of the corner of my eye, hovering in my periphery, making a comfortable nest in the back of my mind, it was there. Milk chocolate Mary. Juicy Joseph. Scrumptious shepherd. Cocoa camel. Mouth-watering wise men. And that sweet, savory morsel—baby Jesus himself.
Every day for two weeks, I walked past this gaudy display and three thoughts occurred simultaneously to my brain. Is a nativity scene really allowed in a public school? Isn’t it kinda sacrilegious to cast our Lord and Savior in chocolate? Why can’t I stop salivating?
Every day for two weeks, it sat there, getting a little drier, a little more chalky in appearance, a wise man or two wilting just a bit. Taunting me.
Then school was out for the holidays. Students fled the campus, half-eaten candy canes hanging from their smile-stretched mouths. Teachers sped away in their sensible sedans, the gleam of freedom shining in their eyes like starlight. The campus would be a ghost town for two full weeks.
Except…
Two days after school let out, my Crazy Cousin Kelley came to visit me and brought along her friend Matt. Proud new teacher that I was, I wanted to show them where I worked.
Matt, Crazy Cousin Kelley, Me
Since the tour of my classroom (an extremely unimpressive space in a portable building with chalk boards and fake wood paneling) only took about a minute and half, I decided to wow them with a trip into the school building itself. I showed them the rows of maroon lockers and pointed inside locked classrooms at the dry erase boards. (Look! Look at the fancy stuff the INDOOR teachers get!) I pointed at posters advertising upcoming dances and demonstrated how my key unlocked both computer labs AND faculty restrooms, and my fans oohed and ahhed appropriately.
After I showed them the cafetorium (a fantastical place where people can both eat fish sticks AND enjoy off-key choir performances) and pointed out my favorite sign in the whole school (handwritten, hanging over the gym door, proudly proclaiming Do Not Take Balls Out—good advice by the way), we finally found ourselves in the break room. And IT was still there. In the rush to disperse at the last bell of the year, the chocolate nativity had been forgotten.
And, come on, from that point on it was really a no-brainer.
The heavenly dessert
Yes, Crazy Cousin Kelley and I stole the baby chocolate Jesus from the candy nativity scene in the break room of the middle school where I taught. Matt, bless his pious little heart, cannot be blamed. He tried to talk us out of it. He said it wasn’t right. Later, when the conquest was complete and Kelley and I indulged in our very guilty pleasure Matt adamantly refused to participate. His soul remained pure. His teeth remained free of the devilish brown stain left by the sweet baby Jesus.
However, my Crazy Cousin and I were beyond reasoning. Satan had a hold of our taste buds and he wasn’t letting go. We barely made it to the parking lot before we had to satisfy our craving and taste our victory. And our victory tasted like… a two-week-old piece of chocolate that had been sitting out in the germ-infested air of a school. Ah well. We were in our twenties. Our immune systems were strong.
The first sacri-licious bite
After the giddy drive home, Cousin Kelley and I celebrated our baby-Jesus-stealing in the obvious way: we wrote a song about it. Borrowing the tune (and quite a few of the lyrics) from REM, we commemorated our triumph with a ballad. The lyrics are found below. [Beware: Once you read them, you may never be able to listen to “Losing My Religion” in the same way again, so if you wish not to sully that sacred musical experience, I suggest you use the utmost restraint and stop after the next paragraph.]
So, there you have it. Confession #1. The sweet, caring, hard-working young woman you trusted to educate the next generation is nothing more than a thief, a heretic, a baby Jesus eater. It feels good to admit it.
“Losing Our Religion”
Lyrics by Carie and Kelley
Music stolen from REM
[Note: I have no doubt that I could do better than this today. I believe my musical spoof skills have improved considerably in the past thirteen years. But I am resisting the urge to revise. This is the song, unchanged, as it was written in December of 1999. Don’t hate.]
[2025 Note: Another thirteen years have passed since I wrote that previous note, but I still stand by it.]
Oh Christ, is smaller Smaller when molded Into chocolate The lengths that I would go to To see it in bite size Oh no, I've said too much I set it up
That's me in the break room That's me in the bright light Stealing baby chocolate Jesus Trying to sneak it out with you And I don't know if I can do it Oh no, I've said too much I haven't said enough
I thought that I felt it melting I shouldn’t be doing this thing I think I heard Matt start to cry
With every swallow I’m waiting to devour I'm losing to temptation Trying to keep my mind off it Like a hungry and sinful fool, drool Oh no, I've said too much I set it up
Consider this Consider this Jesus is calling to me Consider this I bit It brought me to my knees STALE Now my whole theology has Crashed to the ground Now I've bit too much
“STALE!”
I bet that it was fattening I shouldn’t have eaten this thing I think if asked I will deny
I wish it was a dream CHOCOLATE NATIVITY SCENE
That's me in the break room That's me in God’s light Stealing baby chocolate Jesus Trying to sneak it out with you And I know now that I can do it Oh no, I've said too much I think I’ve said enough
I bet that it was fattening I shouldn’t have eaten this thing I think if asked I will deny
I wish it was a dream Try, die, cry, why CHOCOLATE NATIVITY SCENE Caused a scene Just a scene, seen
[For more confessions and other stories from my teaching career, check out this page.]
Carie Juettner 