Christmas Letter 2024
Happy New Year, my friends, and Happy 8th Day of Christmas! (And 8th day of Hanukkah and 7th day of Kwanzaa!)
No matter how slow I am at actually posting, I love using the holiday time to look back over my year and the joys it held. And do know that it comes with warm wishes for all of you who have touched my life.
The big highlight of 2024 was my 60th birthday trip back to Germany in June! I hadn’t been back since I lived there from 1996 to 2006. Going now on my own, I was able to remember the many things that make my heart happy in Germany, things like:
Visiting Castles:
Hiking amazing forest trails:
Visiting my namesake village:
An incredible Bach choral cantata concert on my birthday in the very church where Bach served:
And of course a bonus was time with Wonderful Kate (former library co-worker in Virginia):
And Delightful Jeanine (former library co-worker in Germany):
The trip was all I hoped for, and if you want to hear more, I blogged about it extensively.
Other trips in 2024 included a quick trip to Ohio with my gaming group (which I’ve attended for TEN years now!) to see the total solar eclipse:
A trip to San Diego for ALA Annual Conference celebrating the Morris Award winners I helped select:
And following up by visiting my sister and then seeing other West Coast siblings – including meeting my new nephew Evan at only 4.5 months old!
In August, I did a weekend retreat in North Carolina with Lorna Byrne, who has been able to see and talk with angels all her life. Her message is incredibly encouraging!
I did a reading retreat in October in West Virginia:
And then finished off my traveling for the year spending a wonderful afternoon in Williamsburg with both my kids – who had come from Oregon to Virginia for their dad’s 60th birthday. You know it made my heart happy to see them!
So those are the exciting travel adventures. But my regular life is busy and happy.
I’m enjoying Floris United Methodist Church more with each year that goes by. I’m co-leading a ladies’ virtual small group, and this Fall we went through a book on Joy. Sharing Joys with each other pulled us closer and it’s been so good to rejoice with each other and pray with each other. I’m also still singing in the choir. The weekly rehearsals help pull me out of my to-do lists each week to focus on music, and singing in the Christmas cantata this year again made my Christmas season special. With orchestra, handbells, and children’s choir, this year’s performances made my heart so full.
And of course I’m all about books! I still love my job selecting children’s books for Fairfax County Public Library, and I’ve taken to calling myself a Book Award Committee Junkie. I did finish up serving on the Morris Award committee at the start of 2024. But I’m still the 0 to 5 Reading Group Facilitator for Capitol Choices – a local group of mostly librarians that meets monthly to discuss and select 100 best books of the year for children and teens. I’m still a Cybils Category Chair for the YA Speculative Fiction category and served as a first-round judge. We announced our Finalists today! On top of that, I serve on the Mathical Book Prize committee – and agreed to next year rotate in as co-chair.
With all that, yes, I’m still posting Sonderbooks. In fact, 2025 will be my 25th year! So I plan over the year to revisit my Stand-outs from all previous years, calling it Sonderbooks 25. This past year, I got a bee in my bonnet to try to catch up posting reviews, and by posting almost daily was able to cut down the number of reviews written and waiting to be posted from 270 to 100. Of course, it would be easier if I would stop writing new ones! Can I catch up in 2025? I will try….
I do feel like with all that posting reviews, I dropped the ball on seeking a publisher for my book Praying with the Psalmists. Though at the same time, my website hits increased to over 300,000 monthly, so maybe that will help. The idea of the book is about writing prayers using Psalms as a pattern, which I try to still put into practice – so you can follow occasional posts about it here on Sonderjourneys. I hope to get working again to find a publisher in 2025 or evaluate if I should self-publish.
And with all of that, I still get lots of joy from living in a beautiful place. You’re used to seeing pictures of the great blue heron (or herons) who haunt my lake:
Lately, there’s been a hawk hanging around, too.
But I was awfully surprised when an owl was perched over my path a couple weeks ago.
Though even that was nothing to my surprise one day in March, when I was innocently teleworking, and a bald eagle perched on the tree outside my window!
So yes, life is always exciting, and full of big and small joys. My prayer is that we’ll all keep noticing them, no matter what’s in store for us in 2025.
Happy New Year!
