The Year That Was 2024

Our Year In Review, A Few Months Late

 I like writing a year-end post that highlights the things our family did in the previous year.  For some reason, I forgot to do one for 2024, albeit a few months into 2025.  Let's take a quick peek backwards.

Travels

We were a relatively boring family for the first half of the year.  Jennie made a trip to Maryland in April to visit a college friend.  She saw some Catholic shrines, visited Colonial Williamsburg, and DC.  Ryan and I went straight from his graduation from high school to Seattle to catch the Discovery Princess in Vancouver, BC.  I had told him that we would take a trip to celebrate his graduation, and he wanted to visit Alaska.  We spent a day in Seattle before setting sail on a one-way cruise to Alaska.  We visited Ketchikan, Juneau, Skagway, and two scenic cruises through fjords to see glaciers.  After the cruise ended, we spent 5 days in a cabin, outside of Anchorage.  

    While Ryan and I were cruising to Alaska, Jennie and the girls took a cruise to Catalina Island and Mexico.  They drove to Los Angeles to catch the Carnival Radiance.  They celebrated Jennies birthday on the ship, explored Catalina Island on a golf cart, and braved the walk in Ensenada.  

In July, Jennie and I drove to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon and spent a couple of days there.  They had availability in their Frontier Cabins.  We had a great time there, even though Jennie was a little suspect of the cabin lifestyle.

    In August, we visited Flagstaff twice.  Ryan moved into the dorms at NAU on August 20th, and I did a quick trip to get him moved in.  Jennie and I went back to Flagstaff the next weekend, where we visited the Flagstaff Arboretum and took Ryan out for food.

    October brought a few trips for us.  I went to Tucson for St. Melany Byzantine Catholic Church's 50th anniversary celebration.  This was the parish I found in 2008 that brought be back to the Catholic Church, brought my Mom into the church, gave Ryan all of his Sacraments of Initiation, and the place where we had Theresa's funeral Divine Liturgy.  It is a special place to me.  

    Jennie and I headed back to Flagstaff to scout out places to take Emma's senior pictures.  During this trip, we scouted locations, did a little Route 66 trip out to Winslow and Holcomb, and found a great hotel called La Posada in Winslow.  We settled on senior photo locations in Aspen Corner and Route 66 in Williams.  

    We headed North once more in October for Emma's senior photos.  As we were driving to our AirBnb, we started running into snow and ice.  By the time we arrived, there was almost 4 inches of snow on the ground.  We headed out the next morning and drove to Aspen Corner where we were greeted with a beautiful mixture of yellow aspen leaves and white snow.  Afterwards we drove out to Williams to take the Route 66 photos.

    We made one more trip after Christmas to Tucson.  We had dinner with Fr. Rankin, visited a nature preserve in Tucson, and visited Nogales, AZ.  In Nogales we found a beautiful Catholic Church and stayed for the Saturday night Vigil Mass.  

Home Improvements

    I decided that I was going to update the bedroom that Ryan stayed in once he headed off to college.  It was quite the transformation as we moved from purple colors to a calming blue.  I didn't let any grass grow under my feet; I started this project the day after he moved into the dorms.  Towards the end of the year, Jennie wanted to paint the kitchen cabinets blue.  I wasn't sure about this, but they turned out great.  We bought a bar to put in the kitchen area, replacing the little coffee bar that we had.  I put a fresh coat of paint on that wall, and we put up some pictures.  It really transformed that space.  The last issue for the home was self-induced.  While driving a post into the ground to hang a hummingbird feeder on, I drove the post through the PVC pipe that feeds the pool auto-filler.  It took about 15 seconds to realize the error of my way.  I had to dig up around the pipe and replace it.  

Work

    There was a major change in our house regarding work.  I became retirement eligible in January and had planned on staying put until I was forced out in 2027.  However, I came across a job posting on LinkedIn for the accounting firm BDO.  They were looking for a Manager, Digital Forensics and I decided to apply for it.  I had three rounds of interviews and they made me an offer towards the end of November.  I decided to put my retirement paperwork in and take the job. My last day with the FBI was December 31st.  It was a very strange day.  I walked into the office and was able to access all of the FBI spaces prior to my being briefed out of my security clearance.  Once that happened, I had to be escorted everywhere I went in the building.  By 1130AM, I walked out the front door for the first time as a regular citizen.  My start date with BDO was January 6, 2025.

    Jennie continued to work at ACS and hit her ten years with the Diocese of Phoenix.  She picked up some tutoring over the summer and ran Camp Invention for the second year.  

Medical Stuff

    After the crazy medical year we had in 2023, we hoped for a quieter 2024.  Unfortunately, we had another crazy year.  We managed to make it to June before things blew up this year.  Jennie woke up one day with a very sore throat and a plugged ear.  She visited Urgent Care, where they did an ear wax flush.  Unfortunately, that was not the real issue.  We ended up at the Mayo ER where they diagnosed her with a bad case of cellulitis.  One of the side effects of her medicine is a weakened immune system.  She ended up spending a couple of nights in the hospital and a couple of days in a home treatment program.

    

Because I was tired of Jennie getting all the attention, I decided that I needed to have my own hospital stay too.  Towards the end of July, my middle finger started to itch and burn while I was at work.  There was a white spot in the middle, surrounded by a red ring.  By bedtime, there was some black spots starting to form in the middle.  The next morning I woke up to a giant mess on my finger.  I went to the ER and they diagnosed it was a brown recluse spider bite.  They gave me some IV drugs and sent me home.  The next morning I woke up to some red streaks running up my arm, all the way towards my shoulder.  When I went back to the ER, they decided this was going to be a stay.  After enough antibiotics to choke a horse, they finally stopped the infection and sent me home.  

    In September, Jennie got a call from Notre Dame Prep that Emma had passed out and cut her chin open.  They called the Scottsdale Fire department and transported her to the ER.  They did a head CT scan and determined that she had broken her jaw.  The ER doctor was able to get her into an oral surgeon the next day who fixed her jaw and wired it shut. After several weeks, he removed the wires in her mouth and sent her on her way.  She will need an implant to replace a tooth that broke during the fall.

    The final dental event of the year was another dental emergency for Jennie.  She realized something was wrong in her mouth and had me look at it.  I was a huge white bump on her gum.  She made contact with a friend whose husband is an oral surgeon, and he said that she had a major infection.  To make matters worse, our dental insurance was in a dispute with our general dentist.  She went to the Periodontist, who pulled the tooth and packed it with replacement bone material for another implant.

    Finally, Jennie had been having shoulder issues for a few months to the point where she could not lift her left arm above straight out.  She was diagnosed with a condition called "Frozen Shoulder".  They gave her a cortisone injection and sent her to a physical therapist to work it out.  Up to this point in my life, I had never heard of Frozen Shoulder.

 Kids

    Ryan graduated from Gateway Academy with a 4.0 GPA.  He started his college career in August at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff.  He planned to study computer science, but switched out of the major to criminal justice.  Math is not his strong point and the computer science degree was full of math.  He worked full-time at Kiwanis in the summer and during the Christmas break.  They plan to keep him on next year when he is home.

    Emma started the college application process and was accepted to Northern Arizona, Seton Hall, Manhatttan College and St. Thomas Aquinas.  She really wants to go out of state and was leaning towards Seton Hall.  She continued to work for a family taking care of their child after school.

    Charlotte started the 10th grade at Notre Dame Prep and started taking driving lessons in November.  She is obsessed with driving, and that obsession might be driving her Mom into taking anxiety pills.  Having tried to drive with Ryan when he was first learning, I totally get it.  She progressed towards her Eagle Scout rank, and continues to be active in the school choir.  She and Emma went on a choir trip to New York City.

    Amelia started the 8th grade this year, and when she graduates in 2025, Jennie will have no more children of hers to teach.  She was accepted to Notre Dame Prep, where she will graduate from in 2029.

Looking to 2025


    Much like looking towards 2024, the new year plans to bring changes into our house.  Come Fall 2025, we will have two kids in college and two at home.  We have started to think about changes that will happen once we have three kids in college.  We might end up selling our house and downsizing depending on what is happening in the housing market in 2026.  I will be starting post FBI adventure with a new company.  Jennie will be pushing another kid out of middle school and will get to experience teaching without one of the students being her child.  

This is also the year that Jennie is going to look at tapering off of her medicine and see what happens.  Whatever comes our way, it will always be an adventure!