2024: Year in Review

2024. Whew buddy, you could be so beautiful at times and then you could turn around and be so cruel in a flash too. I'm going to recap some of the highlights, but I sincerely hope that 2025 will be a far better year — hopefully for everyone!

One-on-one Trips with My Boys

Being a parent of twins, there's rarely ever a chance to slow down and get one-on-one time with each little human. This year was the first time we ever did solo trips and had a dudes weekend together, while the other got to spend the weekend with their mom one-on-one as well. As these little humans get older, I feel like it's even more important for us to have weekends together like this.

A whole lot more baseball!

A regular season in the spring, a stand-in for a tournament for a travel ball team, and a summer of all-stars practice and games.

Kayaking with Friends

My life needs more time floating the creek. But 2025 needs an overnight camp-yaking trip with friends.

Auroras in Alabama

The weirdness of 2024 wouldn't be complete without being able to see the northern lights all the way down in the deep south of the United States. Wild, but beautiful.

Seether + Staind

Alicia and I finally got to see Staind live! We've been able to see Seether like 4 or 5 times, but Staind has always been one of those bands that we just never could get it to line up right…and then they went on hiatus for a while…but this was our year finally! And they were incredible. Aaron Lewis is my spirit animal.

The Ultimate McKays Road Trip

Alicia is a huge book reader — she read 57 books this year. She had been wanting to visit a used bookstore called McKay’s (they have 5 locations, one is in Chattanooga) last year, so on our anniversary trip we went checked it out, spent several hours there, and came home with a bunch of books.

This year was their 50th anniversary and to celebrate it they were doing an event they called “the Ultimate McKay’s Road Trip” and if you visited all 5 stores during business hours on 7/9/24 each person over 18 in your party would get $800 in store credit that never expires. As soon as she told me about it, I told her let’s do it.

We VASTLY underestimated how many people would be doing this event — as did McKay’s. We started in Mebane, NC and got there an hour before they were going to start handing out passports. When we got there we were shocked that there was already a line all the way around the store…twice. We stood in line for 2 hours and the line did nothing but grow exponentially. At one point the line was wrapped around the store 4 times, then snaked through the parking lot and down the street. People that showed up around 9 stood in line until 1 or later!

We got to Winston-Salem’s store and made it through the line quickly, then headed to Knoxville. Once we were almost there, McKay’s Knoxville posted for everyone to bypass them and go to Chattanooga because they were being shut down due to the amount of people on location. So we kept driving and had no problems getting in and out at Chattanooga’s store, then made our way to the last stop in Nashville. The line was halfway around the building when we got there, but thankfully it went quickly. We went in and looked around for a few (stretching our legs) and when we came out the line had grown exponentially. Thankfully we got out of there with no problem and completed our “Ultimate McKay’s Road Trip” in 13 hours and that’s only stopping once for gas/bathroom break and then the time waiting at each location for our stamps.

All in all it was a fantastic and fun experience!

Beach Trip with the Fam

This one was the turning point in our year. The Thursday before our trip on the following Monday, Alicia's back was hurting her so she went to a chiropractor. The next day, she couldn't sit down without being in pain. It got worse as the day went on, so the next day I took her to the doctor. They gave her a steroid shot and sent her on her way. She felt good for the rest of that day, but it started getting worse again on Sunday. Monday morning, we headed out for the beach….on a 6 hour roadtrip, which was agony for Alicia.

Somehow we lucked out and the townhouse that we rented actually had a small elevator to get to the second floor so she didn't have to use the stairs. 2 days into the trip, she could barely walk and she was in non-stop pain. Against her wishes, I made her go to the emergency room. They did a CT scan and found out that she had 2 herniated discs, and one was pressing on her sciatic nerve /really/ badly and that was causing her the most pain.

She toughed it out as much as she possibly could, but it was the longest vacation of her life.

Alicia's Back Issues

Once we got home, we had another ER visit that led us to a referral to a fantastic surgeon. She had a spinal injection first and that did absolutely nothing. She ended up having a microdisectomy to try to fix the worst herniated disc and get it off the nerve so she wouldn't be in immense pain 24/7. The bad thing is, 2 weeks later it re-herniated and was worse than the original incident. So in only a few weeks she had 2 different surgeries on her spine. On this second one, the surgeon told us that it was the worst herniated disc he'd ever seen — and that he had to remove the entire disc because it all had been "squeezed" out and was pressing on that nerve again.

After healing from the second surgery for 6 weeks, she started physical therapy. She rocked it for 4 weeks, and religiously did every single thing they told her to do for homework twice a day (nearly an hour's worth of stretches/exercises, twice a day). When she got to week 5, they (the physical therapist) started her doing some new exercises and immediately her back started burning again as soon as she did it. They told her that was normal and to do those new exercises every time it started burning…come to find out, that was damaging the scar tissue and making things worse. She had another MRI and found out that the other herniated disc that they didn't repair with surgery now has a tear in it.

She's been dealing with all of this agonizing pain + numbness and weakness of her right leg for over 5 months now. The next step is another spinal injection in a couple of days to see if that gets her some relief.

The biggest thing I want in 2025 is my wife to get back to 100%. She's endured so very much, and I'm ready for her to not have to be in pain every single day and get her back to where her light is shining bright again.

Twenty One Pilots

Early in 2024 we had bought tickets to take our little humans to see Twenty One Pilots again. When September rolled around, it was RIGHT in the middle of some of the worst pain Alicia was experiencing…so I had to take them without her. That was such a hard decision that I really struggled with, but looking back on it, I'm glad that I did. The dudes had such a great night and loved that experience.

Spooky Season

This year's spooky season looked a little different too. I took our dudes + 2 of their buddies to a haunted house, but I missed having my better half beside me.