Christmas Letter 2024

Enjoying the Seattle Christmas Market this December

Merry Christmas, friends and family! 2024 was a whirlwind for the Rusek household. We started the year off on a cruise and we ended the year on a cruise. I'm not sure we know how that happened, but I blame my travel agent sister for our increase in cruises and fun! Last Christmas we were at my sister's home in California celebrating Rodney's first Christmas. This year we will be in the same place enjoying some California sunshine.

Escape room near Joni & Greg's last Christmas

Before we went on a cruise in January we managed to squeeze in Rodney's baby dedication at our church. Rodney is our little miracle baby and we are grateful for a supportive and prayerful church family. Abbie had a first in January: her first haircut! I took her to a special kid's haircutting place rather than attempt cutting her hair myself to ensure her first haircut looked very cute!

Our first family cruise left out of Galveston which isn't far from where Korben and I used to live. We went out a week early to see friends and family in the area before hopping on a Royal Caribbean cruise to Roatan, Honduras, and a couple ports in Mexico. My parents came, my aunt and uncle as well, Korben's mom, and my sister (the travel agent, Joni!) and we had a great time. Royal Caribbean is very kid-friendly. We had a balcony view of the inside of the ship right where the carousel was (yes- a carousel!), which Abbie made sure to ride multiple times each day. It had an ice skating rink where Abbie tried out ice skating with all her family members who have much better balance than I do! Rodney had just learned the bum-shuffle as his preferred means of getting around and he enjoyed scooting all around different areas of the cruise ship. Our main dining area was three stories high and we were always seated on the top floor. Rodney sat in his high chair near the balcony with a view to the floors below and chucked a butter knife over the balcony. Luckily it fell onto a ledge on our floor and didn't stab an unsuspecting victim two floors below! On days off of the ship we were able to snuggle sloths, get robbed by monkeys, have parrots perch on us, do some snorkeling, and swim with manatees and dolphins. It was quite an amazing adventure and we weren't ready for it to end!

The carousel on the cruise with Gam Gam

We celebrated Rodney's first birthday in Texas with my side of the family and Korben's mom came as well. There is a city park not far from my parent's home where we invited family and friends to join us. Rodney wore a little astronaut outfit and had an outer-space themed cake to celebrate his first trip around the sun! We arrived a little early to set up for the party and Abbie ran off to play on the playground. Right when the party was supposed to begin, Abigail was screaming and crying because she had slipped on some playground equipment and gashed her forehead open! Korben and his mom took Abbie to urgent care while the rest of us ate pizza and salad and tried delaying the cake as long as possible. Abigail returned just in time for cake, her head bandaged up and no stitches! I asked Korben to go over and take some pictures of the playground equipment Abigail had cut her head on. Nothing about it looked out of the ordinary- she must have just fallen strangely. About half an hour after Korben took the photos, a police officer came up to Korben and said Korben matched the description of a shady man taking pictures of kids on a playground! Korben, slightly panicked and slightly amused, quickly took out his phone and told the officer he could look at all the photos he took and explained the situation. The officer, seeing our three year old with a bandaged head, and glancing at the pictures of Korben's phone, decided that Korben wasn't a creepy pervert and let us enjoy the rest of the birthday party!

It's also worth noting that Rodney very wisely took his first steps on his first birthday, right in front of three of his grandparents who were thrilled for him! Rodney was less than thrilled about it and decided he would go back to bum-shuffling for another month.

Spring cherry blossoms at University of Washington

In May we had decided that for Korben's birthday we would go up to Victoria, Canada and have a nice long weekend there. Korben's mom and my sister, Joni, and her husband, Greg, flew to Seattle to join us on our ferry ride over to Victoria. We packed up the car, just barely fitting all of us inside, and had a soft-top cover for the extra suitcases. The mall in our town has a little food truck inside that we really love so we decided we'd stop there for supper before heading on the two hour drive to the ferry terminal. While we were inside eating, our van was targeted by thieves who broke a passenger window and grabbed five backpacks out of our van. One of the backpacks had Korben's, Rodney's, Abigail's and my passports in it. Another bag had Korben's mom's passport in it. Abigail's cute little backpack was stolen and all it had inside was her tablet. Korben's laptop and tablet were stolen and his mom had two tablets stolen. Abigail was unconsolable when she saw the smashed window and we explained to her what happened. Thankfully, and I mean, really, truly with all the thankfulness I can muster, Meow Meow (her favorite kitty stuffed animal) was not in her backpack-- the stuffed animal was left right in the car to witness it all happen, although it's rendered speechless from it all. Joni and Greg didn't have anything stolen, but they weren't planning on going to Canada without us so we all pivoted our plans.

Korben's birthday is right around Memorial Day weekend which means everything was completely booked up. Luckily everyone had planned on staying for a few days longer than Memorial Day Weekend so we spent a calm weekend at out home and then after the weekend we stayed for a couple nights at the fun indoor waterpark, Great Wolf Lodge (even got a discount thanks to travel agent Joni!), and had a blast. Abigail is very fixated on going to Canada since we didn't get to go but I'm a little concerned that she thinks that Canada is another Great Wolf Lodge. Korben's mom was understandably stressed about her stolen passport because she was supposed to go to Europe in a few weeks, but thankfully Seattle is one of the few places in the country where you can get same-day passport service if you have plans to go on a trip soon so we were able to get her a new passport right away. Our family took much longer to get passports replaced, but we eventually did. The cops called Korben a couple weeks ago to tell him that they found his laptop in a a stolen vehicle. Nothing else that was stolen has been recovered despite the fact that we could actually track Korben's mom's tablet for a long time. The cops couldn't do anything about it.

This shave ice in Florida with MaRu was the BEST!

When summer arrived we flew to Florida to visit Korben's stepmom and show off the grandkids. It was really nice to see her for a few days before we headed off to Branson, MO for a Dickerson Family Reunion (my side of the family). Branson was really great, Abigail LOVED the alpine slide near where we stayed and somewhere in the air there you can probably still hear an echo of her screaming, "FASTER, FASTER!" While in Branson, Korben and I celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary! It was really great to see family and cousins and see the next generation of kids meet each other. Next time we meet up I'm hoping for a different souvenir to take home, though. Over half of our group caught norovirus and Rodney threw up all over me on the long flight back to Seattle!

The Dickerson Clan

My parents came out to visit us during an amazing PNW summer, but after only a couple days my dad needed to have emergency eye surgery. Since you can't fly on an airplane for weeks after getting eye surgery and they live too far away to drive back, they reluctantly decided to fly back home to get the surgery instead of getting surgery here in Washington. It was for the best and my dad ended up not being able to fly for a couple months, so we decided we would fly out in August to visit them in Texas which is probably the worst month to visit Texas, but it was a fun trip nevertheless. While there we went to a fast food place and my mom commented to me that it was a good thing I was driving because she had no idea how to get around. (I was driving her car in her own town, but if you know my mom this statement isn't surprising in the least bit). Abigail, in the back seat, was shocked at Mumu's statement. "Mumu, do you even know your stuff?!" she asked earnestly. Well, Mumu, Abbie's on to you!

A beautiful PNW day with my parents!

Korben's sister Ann and her family came out to visit us in September which was a nice treat! Her kids and our kids really enjoyed playing together and seeing some of the beautiful sites in Washington State. Korben's other sister, Sonja, also came out in September and we were thrilled to meet her husband and her new baby!

A summer hike with Mt. Rainier in the backdrop

In October, Abigail celebrated her birthday at a park nearby with a friend of hers who is 10 days older than she is. They celebrated turning 4 and Abigail's one request for her birthday was that she could have an Octonauts cake and that she could dress as Kwazii. If you don't know anything about Octonauts or who Kwazii is, just ask Abigail, she can fill you in. Once we got to the park she caught a peek of her Octonauts cake and absolutely refused to play on the playground-- she was completely mesmerized by her cake. Kwazii is an orange cat in Octonauts who happens to be a pirate. Nobody sells a costume of an orange cat who is also a pirate. So she was dressed from head to toe in orange long underwear with an orange beanie cap on her head and a pirate eye patch on her eye. She also dressed like that for Halloween. Most people assumed she was a Jack-o-lantern! Rodney, for Halloween, was an orange shark because Kwazii, the orange pirate cat, happens to drive a submarine that looks like an orange shark. Absolutely nobody made this connection, nor did they immediately think Rodney was a shark since he was orange. So Rodney also got called a pumpkin, but he didn't mind. Rodney's teeth grew in the front and the back with gaps in the middle and he was definitely sporting a Jack-o-lantern smile so he was a cute little pumpkin that day. Halloween was also the first day he said, "Thank you!" when the last house we stopped at handed him some candy. Except it sounded like, "Doot doo!"

Abigail's mesmerizing Octonauts birthday cake

For Thanksgiving we went to Pennsylvania to be with Korben's family. A few days before we flew out we had a "bomb cyclone" that sent winds charging through the area we live. A fir tree in our neighbor's yard fell down on our house. Korben and I had just gotten the kids to bed despite the power being out and were relaxing in our bedroom when, "BOOM!"-- the loudest sound came above our heads. I freaked out and took off running through our completely dark house. Korben followed right behind me. We both knew a tree had fallen on our house but I was concerned it had fallen on Abigail's room because her room is on the second floor. But Abigail was sleeping peacefully, she didn't hear a thing. When we came back to our bedroom, we could see that a corner of the ceiling's drywall had fallen down, there were cracks in the wall, and one of the windows had popped out! The tree had fallen, mostly in our backyard, but one section of tree trunk had a direct hit on the corner of the master bedroom. It thankfully didn't hit Abigail's room because the upstairs sits back a little from the downstairs.

This picture was taken from our backyard just days before the tree fell down on the corner of the shed, the back porch, and the far corner or our master bedroom

The days leading up to us traveling to Pennsylvania were a blur. A contractor that we have been working with because we are planning on remodeling our kitchen drove from a couple hours away to temporarily fix our roof and keep rain water from pouring in. Friends from church came over to help chop up the tree in our backyard and clear it out. The tree smashed a corner of our shed and completely demolished our entire back porch. The tree was so tall that it even managed to hit the neighbor's garage who live on the other side of us! We put up temporary fencing to keep the dogs in our yard since the tree crashed through two different sections of fence. We probably would have had to cancel our Thanksgiving travel plans if not for the good Samaritans who came to help us get our house and yard secure!

A view from the other side of our backyard. It's just tree everywhere!

On our flight to Pennsylvania, wouldn't you know it, Rodney threw up on me simply because he gagged on a piece of fruit. I passed Rodney over to Korben so that I could clean up the vomit all over me, but Rodney wasn't done throwing up so he threw up all over Korben, like a LOT! We had already changed Rodney into his spare set of clothes because of a diaper blow-out situation an hour before so Rodney had to travel the rest of the way in just a diaper. When we landed we had to haul all our luggage into a family bathroom at the airport and change, much to Abigail's frustration as she had stayed vomit-free the entire trip. I had brought along exactly one coat which I had been wearing when Rodney vomited so I had to buy a new sweater in the airport. But we eventually made it out of the airport and to Korben's sister's home.

A view of the master bedroom from the outside all smashed up.

I celebrated my birthday there- Korben's family generously watched the kids for us so that Korben and I could go out and enjoy a meal just the two of us! And Thanksgiving was really nice. We did a turkey trot 5k that morning and Abigail walked and ran the entirety of it. Korben got 2nd place for his age group in the race. It was a lot of fun watching the cousins play together during the week of Thanksgiving. We also visited Gettysburg and even though our children went screeching and squawking through the museum so that our educational learning was limited, it was still a very fascinating place to see and visit.

Gettysburg!

We flew back home for almost a week- enough time for me to get a scheduled colonoscopy done! They gave me pictures when it was over (and I'm healthy!) but I've decided not to include them in the Christmas letter. And then off we headed to Florida for a cruise with Gam Gam, MaRu, Grandpa Bill, and Aunt Joni and Uncle Greg! This group was great for trivia games-- we won 3!-- but the prize was always a bottle of white wine which nobody in our group drinks! We went to the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, and the last stop was supposed to be MSC's private island in the Bahamas but the weather was going to be bad so the captain changed it to St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands and WOW, I would definitely go back there! The cruising experience is nice with kids because you can still travel, see just a little bit of a place you've not been to before, and everything you need, especially with small children, is available to you. There is also an entire staff to clean your room twice a day, cook and clean your dishes, watch your kids if you like, and entertain you. It's the kind of spoiling experience you want your young children to experience so that they know-- this is as good as it gets-- it's all downhill from here!

MaRu poses with Korben and the kids at the Dominican Republic with Mt Isabel in the back

We had a lot of other short visits with friends on weekends. We went to Walla Walla in the spring to see several friends there, we also did a Walla Walla University alumni weekend at Rosario Beach with friends at the beginning of fall which was really beautiful. We drove up to the Everett Children's Museum north of Seattle a couple times which is by far the cutest Children's Museum I've seen in the state. And I had a weekend visiting a friend with our kids in Coeur d'Alene while Korben had a boy's trip in a town nearby. And we are looking forward to spending Christmas with my family in California this year.

On a trip to see friends in the Houston area we stopped by the church in College Station where we met!

Korben has continued to work for Google. He goes into the office twice in a week and we really enjoy the fact that most of the time he can work from home. He hasn't had as much time for woodworking hobbies now that there are two little kids running around our house, but he plays online chess from time to time and does his math problems in textbooks "for fun!" He is an incredible husband and dad to our kiddos, but he did make a huge mistake this year. Rodney was in the bathtub and Korben mentioned, "You know what's interesting? Rodney has never pooped in the bathtub!" And just like that, Korben tempted fate and Rodney decided to put an end to that interesting statistic just seconds after hearing him say it.

I've continued to be a stay-at-home mom which has no pay, but I enjoy being home with my kids! It's exhausting feeling like I'm their entertainment 24/7 but the kids do often entertain themselves. I steal kisses from them as many times as I can and now sometimes when Rodney picks up his trains and plays with them, he makes the trains kiss which makes Korben look accusingly at me. But what else are you supposed to do when you are home with your kids all day? Clean? Cook? Korben wishes! I will steal as many kisses from them as I can.

Abigail has been becoming such a big girl this year. After she took a summer dance day camp she told me, "Mommy, you need to get this girl in dance!" She does a dance preschool once a week for a few hours and she desperately wants to go more often so she will probably do that starting in January. They also teach music so Abigail can now play Hot Cross Buns on the piano. She has also sang Jesus Loves Me in church and she will sing Away in a Manger for the church's Christmas concert. She's a brave and daring girl who loves the rides at the fair! She has taken bike classes through the Park and Rec center and has ridden a little bit on a pedal bike! She also really enjoys art class and she has started to sign her artwork with her signature: AbB. Because, as she explains, "My name is Ab and then B!" We also took her to her first concert, a Danny Go! concert which she absolutely loved. She was a little afraid to turn 4 this year because she said she really enjoyed being 3, but she has since decided that 4 is fun too. She declares almost every day as "the best day ever!" Abbie's favorite thing is to be a big sister and she is a fantastic big sister. She is Rodney's biggest cheerleader and she is excited that Rodney can play and communicate with her more and more. Does she sometimes attempt fratricide? Yes. But by and large she is a big sister who eagerly shares her food and toys, and showers little Rodney with lots of love every day.

Rodney, who turned 1 in March, has really started to show his personality and it has been so much fun to watch. He has shy and coy little smiles he will sometimes give to a lucky person. He has transformed from a very bald baby to a curly-topped toddler. Anything Big Sis does is absolutely hilarious to him, even if it endangers his life. He's very much into trains, planes, cars, tractors, and boats. He was absolutely thrilled when we were on a cruise this December and said, "Boat! Boat!" any time he remembered we were on a boat. He loves to do things independently and doesn't need me to entertain him all the time, but if I leave him unattended for a minute I might find him proudly standing on top of our kitchen stove! He's recently learned how to run which he puts to good use anytime I ask him if he needs a diaper change. During this year where he was learning to be more mobile he was also falling over and hitting his head, so he wore a soft foam helmet on his head to soften the blows. For a while the bumps on his head were so frequent that Abigail even drew a family portrait where she drew a large goose egg on Rodney's head! Rodney has also been able to communicate more and more this year. My favorite thing to hear him say is, "I uhv oo!" But I think his favorite thing to say is, "ABBIE!"

Rodney, in his helmet, looks a little like Toad from SuperMario Bros!

In more serious news with Rodney this year, he has had countless doctor's appointments for a few issues. He had an MRI on his brain to analyze his brain cyst, but so far it all looks just fine. Our biggest concern was that he wasn't gaining any weight. He was already hovering around the 5th percentile on the growth chart and eventually he just slipped off the growth chart entirely. We just found out that he has a genetic mutation that accounts for his lack of growth and most of the other health issues he's had. We will meet with a lot more specialists in the coming year to see how serious it all is, but for now it's not looking too severe (and we are unlikely to send him off to Professor X's School for Gifted Youngsters). We are grateful to have an answer and to be able to move forward and grateful that Rodney is a happy little toddler boy!

It's now nearly 2025 and I'm still signing dates as 2023 so I'm really not ready for it to be 2025, but here we are. We pray that you all have a wonderful holiday season and that 2025 is kind to you! 

Merry Christmas! 

Lori, Korben, Abigail, and Rodney (and our fur-babies: Kepler, Grapefruit, and Anyong)

Enjoying the Zoo Lights with Gam Gam this December