What are your biggest challenges?

Apparently, one of my biggest challenges is remembering to take pictures with my family on the holidays. It is regretful. Next year, there will be no photo that will pop up in my memories on my phone from a year ago. No photo memory of today – January 1, 2025.

The morning started with Joe washing 20 big beautiful baker-sized Idaho Potatoes, wrapping them in foil, and placing them in the electric roaster oven while I showered and get ready for the day.

He readied the 14-lb prime rib, gathered all the seasonings and other fixings, and placed the three pies we made yesterday (blueberry, cherry, and mincemeat) into the back of our pickup.

We drove around the block to my sister’s house, where we arrived at about 11AM. Joe seasoned the prime rib and had it in the 500-degree oven by 11:30AM. Ten minutes later, he turned the oven down to 325⁰ and it was perfectly done to medium rare at 2:45PM.

While the meat and potatoes cooked, six of us played Farkle. Have you ever played? It is a fun dice game for two players or more. I had never played until last week. Joe and I like playing it together in the evenings.

At one point, I noticed our teenage grandchildren were gathered at one end of the table with their phones in their hands, mostly lost in their own worlds, but every once in awhile sharing with each other a funny video they saw or some other new discovery.   At the other end of the table, the adults were visiting with one another. I wondered to myself what the grandchildren had ever taken time to learn about my mom, their great grandmother.

My first question to them was if they knew where she was born. I was a little surprised so many of them knew the answer. Then I asked what year she was born and how old she was when she and my dad were married. I asked if they knew where. Did they know how many siblings my parents each had and could they name them all. It was impressive to me that they knew so much. We then asked about my husband’s family and pulled out some photos we had of them.

We had a great day filled with fun, laughter, reminiscing, and good food. My dad started this tradition of prime rib with the family on New Years Day. We missed him for sure. But today’s time spent with family was a great start to the new year.