Travel, Family, Festivities & Tacos: The Holidays 2025
Each holiday season is very different for us. Each year, we swap between going to my family’s home in Montana and Amity’s family’s home in Missouri. This year, we spent our Thanksgiving up in Montana and headed to Missouri for Christmas. With the way that Amity’s contract was structured, we were not able to stay through New Year’s in Missouri, but we were able to find a way to celebrate it in the most Arizona way—a Taco Drop! Factoring in our holiday travel, the marathon Christmas in Kirksville, and the fact that you have to stay up past midnight to actually celebrate New Year’s Eve, we will need a solid recovery from this holiday season.
Mile: 79,213
Quote of the Blog: “Remember that Christmas is found in your heart, you wont find it under a tree.” - Charlotte Carpenter
Song of the Blog: All I Want For Christmas Is You - Mariah Carey (J.D. Remix)
Prior to heading to the Midwest to clebrate with the family, we found a couple holiday activities in Tucson to do. The first was for us to go to the Tucson Ballet’s performance of The Nuttcracker. I have never been to any performance of the Nuttcracker before, so it was pretty cool and entertaining. Amity was very excited to partake in this holiday activity! She has been going to the Nutcracker with her sister and their kids for years, so it was not her chance to share this with me. She said they weren’t as good as Kansas City is,. That is exciting, as I will have a chance to see a better performance. In my opinon, it was done really well. so bar was set fairly high for me. I enjoy live classical music, and having people dance to it is a major upgrade for me! The next activity was to go do some house decoration peeping. There is an area in Tucson called Winterhaven, and they go all out in this area. We met up with one of Amity’s co-workers, Katie, and set out to see the lights. Overall, it was slightly underwhelming. That being said, there were a couple houses here and there that were next level decorations. My personal favorite was the Star Wars house. I think that a Darth Vader holiday set would have kept me off the naughty list as a kid! It was fun to walk around with another traveling healthcare provider. Katie has some great insights into her experiences, and it was fun to share stories. All of the Christmas decor did a great job reminding us that it was really December, and that Christmas was only a couple days away! They don’t go as hard here in Tucson as they did over in the Buckeye area of Phoenix, but we did see the classic Arizona Christmas decorations we love, the lights on the rocks in front of their house. The tone was set for a fantastic Christmas adventure!
Flying from Phoenix to Kansas City is as smooth as it gets. Having a direct flight makes it so much easier. To maximize our time in Missouri, we decided to take a later flight out of Phoenix after Amity finished work. This put us into Kansas City just after 1 a.m. We were surprised by the simplicity and ease of getting our rental car that late at night. We quickly sped off to the Early’s house to get some sleep. What the kids didn’t know was that we would be there in the morning as a kind of “surprise” to them. They always do their family Christmas a couple days before the actual holiday. This has allowed them to kick off the Christmas Marathon that would last until the day we left. The comedy came in the fact that as they all came into the room with their gifts, only Briley was stopped in her tracks by the surprise that Amity was there. We shared a good laugh, and they went on with their holiday celebrations and unwrapped gifts. Not too much later that morning, after the dust had settled from the gift exchange, we piled back into our rental car and headed north to Kirksville. This time, we were two bodies heavier, as Atticus and Finley wanted to ride with us. We made sure to get all the snacks, Starbucks, and goodies we needed for the three-and-a-half-hour drive.
Once in Kirksville, the marathon really got going! We had a room full of gifts we had shipped to Kirksville that we needed to wrap, and we helped Julie finish some gift shopping for the kiddos. We met up with Mike for a nice afternoon walk and spent the rest of the night chilling, knowing that it was going to be the only chance we got to do this while we were there. After a long night of flying and driving, and only getting a couple hours of sleep, we were happy to crash out as early as we could. The next day, we both got a little run in and enjoyed another nice walk with Mike. We then met back up with him over at Woody’s for a couple beers. It wouldn’t have been a trip to Kirksville if I didn’t make a stop at Woody’s to see our Kirksville bar friends and the owner, Dan! They love to hear our stories, and we have a good time with it too. While I was at Woody’s, Amity was with the kids and her mom decorating Christmas cookies. Christmas Eve in Kirksville is always at Rick & Lisa’s house for their annual holiday celebration with Amity’s dad’s side of the family. Mike, and his freshly new wife, Karen, drove with us. Lisa loves Christmas, so spending some holiday time with her is always a good time. We had a nice gift exchange and played some Left, Right, Center. This is a fun dice game where you can win some cash! A couple years ago, I took the lot all night. This year, the kids were the big winners! We spent that night over at Mike and Karen’s house. It was a great way to spend Christmas Eve with the family!
On Christmas Day, we had a relatively slow morning. Our major event for the day started with a gift exchange at Mike’s house, followed up with some family time there. We wanted to do something special for the kids, so we came up with a hot chocolate bar that was a hit! We had all kinds of cookies, sprinkles, whipped cream, and chocolate to give anyone who had one a proper Christmas Day sugar rush! Around the middle of the day, everyone made their way to other events and planned activities. This gave us some time to hang out with Karen and Mike alone. The Chiefs were playing, but no one really cared, as they were already eliminated from the playoffs. It’s been a rough season to be a Chiefs fan. There were no emotional investments in this game, so the outcome couldn’t ruin anyone’s Christmas celebrations. That night, we headed over to Julie and Jeff’s house to continue the holiday marathon! Amity got her crafting on by helping place some sequins and gemstones onto one of Finley’s dance outfits. After a couple hours, her fingers hurt and she was feeling the effects of the potent glue she was using. We all did another gift exchange, which is crazy to think that this was at least the fifth time the kids had unwrapped gifts in the last couple days. I am a one-and-done kind of guy, but I know they loved everything they got! Following gifts, we had a nice Christmas dinner with everyone. Asa had cooked some prime rib and nailed it! Julie did the rest, and it was all fantastic! I had to give Baylor a hard time because he was nearly done with his dinner before Grandma even sat down at the table. He’s a growing young man, so you can’t give him too much crap—especially when everything smelled so good! That night, the Early’s left, and it was just Amity, Asa, Kelsey, baby Seger, Julie, Jeff, and me. They played some card games, as Seger and I played with his balls, cars, and toys. He is a hoot! He never caught on to my hide-and-seek game with his cars and always found them! Right before bed, I took a little personal time to soak in their new hot tub. Can’t complain that we now get to do a little soaking any time we are back home in Kirksville! It was a really long day, and the R&R was well received.
The next morning, we lounged around and slowly cleaned up, making sure we unpacked everything we were bringing back from Arizona and got our new things packed back up to head out. It is crazy to think that we had only been in Kirksville for three days, as it seemed like we had done so much! That is the way of the Kirksville Holiday Marathon—can’t stop, won’t stop, until it’s done! We are both so happy we got to spend some time with our Midwest family this Christmas. This was our first Christmas back in Kirksville after Autumn passed. It is really hard at times to swallow the lump in our throat while being supportive and taking care of our own mental health. Amity not having her sister there was very hard on us, as it all felt so fresh again. We are grateful for everyone coming together to be supportive of each other! Big props to Seger for the smiles, laughs, and little baby energy! We will continue to grow and love with Autumn forever in our thoughts and directing our moral compasses. We will forever miss you, Autumn!!! It is very hard to do holidays without her, and I know that Amity misses her sister more than anything in the world! With many tears, hugs, smiles, handshakes, and moments of gratitude, we said our long Midwestern goodbyes and got back into the car headed toward the Kansas City airport. Just before getting to the airport, we had one last thing on our to-do list, and that was to go get the best frozen custard on the planet at Andy’s Frozen Custard!!! It may be winter, and it may be slightly cold, but a jackhammer or a concrete from Andy’s doesn’t know seasons—it just knows DELICIOUS! Following the ice cream stop, we returned our rental car, made it through the airport, and got on our flight back to Arizona.
Now that we had navigated the chaos and marathon of a Kirksville Christmas, we wanted to take our one day off before the work week to relax and play some golf. We headed just south of Tucson to Green Valley, AZ. This city is entirely a 55+ community and has a population of around 22,000 people. Thats a lot of old people! We played at course called Haven Golf Course. It was a really nice course, and was very quiet. Great way to get back into the summer activities in December! As the week progressed, we were looking down the barrel of New Year’s Eve. We have never been in a place where there are a lot of options for New Year’s Eve. Over the past couple years, we haven’t done much and typically didn’t even make it to midnight. This year, we made a goal to find something exciting to do. We ended up going downtown to Tucson’s “Taco Touchdown” party. This is a lot like a ball drop in other cities, but in Tucson they drop a gigantic Taco Bell hard-shell taco at midnight. We initially went to a tequila moonshine bar but did not realize that they closed at 10 p.m., even though they gave us reservations for 10 p.m. Good thing we got there a half hour early and were able to at least try one of their delicious cocktails. We found another cocktail lounge nearby called the Zebra Unicorn. We ended up seeing our bartender from the tequila spot enjoying herself at the bar. She must have closed up fast and gotten out of there! We also ended up sitting next to a couple from Montana. They had some common Whitefish connections, which led to some good laughs and story sharing. Not much longer after that, we headed out to the downtown square where the taco festivities were taking place. We laughed and enjoyed the Taco Touchdown! What a wacky, but very on-point, way to ring in the New Year! We didn’t want to stay out later than that, as we had plans to start 2026 with a quality hike!
We found a trail called Romero Canyon that took us up to some waterfalls and pools in the desert mountains of Catalina Mountains State Park. It was a beautiful day in the desert. There had been a good amount of rain in the last couple weeks, so the entire desert was lush and green! The hike took us up over a couple ridgelines and into the back canyons of the mountains. As we got up to the pools, a light drizzle started. We found a good tree to hang out under and enjoy a trail snack and some rehydration. The drizzle turned into rain, and we were forced to make the decision to leave earlier than we wanted to. We didn’t want to get stuck in a flash flood and knew that the hike down was going to be really dicey if it started to rain too much. Fortunately, we were able to get to drier land relatively quickly. We loved spending the first day of the New Year connecting with the natural world! After a long holiday season, it was nice to get back to what we love and shed off some of the chaos as we “played in the dirt.” Desert hiking will always blow me away—twenty- to thirty-foot-tall saguaros, so many mica crystals on the ground that the trail shines like it has glitter on it, and the raw beauty of desert mountains. It really does hit differently! Before we knew it, the sun was back out and we were back at our car. We are very lucky to have this so close! Although we were back at the car and driving home, Mother Nature was not done giving us a show. As we drove into the northern part of Tucson, a beautiful and vibrant rainbow appeared to our west. There is something special about seeing a rainbow like this any day of the week, let alone on New Year’s Day! We both took this as a sign of good luck and prosperity for us in 2026! We wish you all the happiest New Year and hope your holiday season was meaningful and full of family! To the Marcials up in Montana, we missed you 1000%!!! Better be ready for next year, because the Live Rad & Travel Train is headed your way! Until then, we hope that everyone Lives Rad in 2026!