2023 & 2024:
Two Years In Photos
Happy holidays! We have so much to share with you — especially because we missed sending out cards last year. But let’s start with the big news first, since it’s probably on the top of everyone’s minds. (It’s certainly on the top of ours!)
Our family is expanding! We are in the process of adopting a daughter from foster care. Since it’s ongoing, we are not sharing her name or photos of her this year. Things we can share, though: She’s 11 years old, she loves koalas, and she’s amazing. We already have her bedroom ready for her when she moves in.
We’ve been in the adoption process since August 2023. Neither of us felt like we needed biological children, but we both like kids. The idea of one day adopting actually came up on our second date (Tom cut straight to the chase with the kids question and Teresa has always liked the idea of adopting). Last year we decided we were finally ready. A lot of paperwork, parenting classes, a home study and a search process later, we finally met our future daughter in early October and have seen her on or near every major holiday since then.
Above: Pumpkins we made together to match our Halloween costumes. The three bears: Fozzie Bear, a koala “bear”, and a panda.
The anticipation of adoption has really shaped our last year and a half: what we’ve done, our perspective on the world, and where we want to go in the future. We have a lot to share, so you can choose your own path from here. (Or just keep scrolling to see everything.)
Daily Life
Tom (pictured here in his 2023 Halloween costume) is enjoying his 40s so far. He has rediscovered how much he enjoys board games and tabletop roleplaying games, and through them spending time with family and friends.
He is still enjoying his job at PowerSchool. At the end of 2024 he switched roles, from an architect role to a management one. He is now managing two teams focused on innovation projects.
In 2023 Tom got to attend re:Invent, an annual conference run by Amazon Web Services (AWS). It’s huge, spread across five or so casinos in Las Vegas. It was easily the most elaborate tech event he’s ever been to.
Tom’s 40th birthday party was the start of a new routine, where he and Teresa meet with Tom’s longtime friends and their families for a weekend of games and activities. This video is from one of those weekends, in Lake Placid.
Teresa still loves living in the Hudson Valley. Living in proximity to nature and New York City suits her very well. She still works from home for ExcelinEd. She is now an Associate Policy Director, analyzing, writing about, and making recommendations on laws to improve the profession of teaching.
Over the last two years, Teresa has gone on a number of work trips across the country. One of the benefits of virtual work, we have turned a number of these trips into workcations: spending a few extra days in a place, working from “home”, and exploring the city at night. Work trips allowed us to see Nashville and go to the Grand Ol’ Opry for the first time, and for Teresa to visit her friend Altovise in Atlanta.
Teresa has returned to making ceramics. She became a member at The Newburgh Pottery to make friends and art. In the last year she’s made a set of dishes and a number of bowls and vases, but people in the studio mostly think of her making animals, like these raku sculptures of Raku our dog.
The pets continue to live their best lives. Traila, now 12, spends most of her time in Teresa’s office/studio. She enjoys joining Zoom meetings whenever possible.
Ruby, now 9, still acts like the youngest of the pets, demanding play time multiple times a day, whether from us or from Raku. When it’s time for a nap, she is also demanding — demanding that we bury her under a blanket, that is.
And Raku, now 5, is the ultimate sofa dog, often getting up from one couch just to relocate to the other. The only time he doesn’t want to rest is when it’s snowing. Winter is when you get to see his inner puppy.
We’ve completed a few house modifications the past couple of years. The biggest project was in 2023 when we installed a proper bar with a tap, which was Teresa’s present to Tom for his 40th birthday. Smaller projects in 2024 were painting our bedroom, painting the half-bath, and changing our guest room into a kid’s room.
Outside we made some changes, too. In 2023, Teresa’s Dad, Mike, came out from Iowa to help us finally start a vegetable garden in the yard. Berries, Brussels sprouts, and salad greens are regular favorites. In the future, we hope we will get some apples from our trees! Also in 2023, Tom’s uncle David came up from Georgia to replace our old deck with Trex. No more needing to worry about falling through rotting planks for us!
We love going on small adventures together, especially with friends and family. To ring in 2023, we went with Carole and Tim and Tim’s brother and sister-in-law to Philadelphia and watched the Mummers Parade.
We have been going to more concerts again the last couple of years, including Alison Krauss and Robert Plant at Bethel Woods, the location of the original Woodstock festival.
In NYC we also saw Tool at Madison Square Garden and Daði Freyr (seen here), our favorite-ever Eurovision contestant, at a Polish community center and concert venue in Greenpoint.
We continue to see plays and musicals in the city once a month. (Family or friends who want to see something on Broadway, let us know! We are always down.)
And we continue to support our local minor league baseball team. (The only wedding we went to this summer was for the team's mascot! How many people can say they’ve been to a wedding with an all-mascot wedding party?)
We also try to see family as often as our time off allows. In July 2024 we attended the first-ever Lundgren family reunion in Stanton, Iowa. And despite living on opposite ends of the country, Carole and Teresa saw each other six times in twelve months!
Making up for lost travel time post-COVID, 2023 had four major trips: Washington and Oregon, France, Iceland, and New Mexico and Colorado. Three of the four were with Teresa’s sister, Carole, and Carole’s husband, Tim. Carole and Tim visited us multiple times since the pandemic, but in May 2023, it was about time we got ourselves out again to see them in Seattle. (And about time we got to stay a night in the iconic TWA hotel at the JFK airport. Look at this place! It's gorgeous!)
Tom finally got to see the Fremont Troll in Seattle.
Carole and Tim also took us to the wildest cocktail bar in their neighborhood of Capitol Hill. Tom’s drink was literally served in a game cartridge! Teresa’s had a palette and you painted your cup with edible paints to mix your own flavors.
We also went down to McMinnville, Oregon with Carole and Tim and watched the local UFO parade.
July 2023 was Carole’s 40th birthday. As someone born on Bastille Day, it was important to celebrate that date with her in France. We joined part of their trip as a surprise to Carole.
The Jura region of France is wonderful, nestled by the Alps. We stayed in Arbois, eating spectacular foods and drinking delicious yellow wines. (Turns out wines can be so many more colors than white and red!)
We even went to a museum dedicated to Comté cheese, the tour of which ended with a cheese tasting. We had never had Comté before the trip, but now any time we see it for sale somewhere in the US, we buy it. It will forever be a favorite.
After Arbois, we went together to Lyon. We toured the city by foot, which is the best way to visit any city (in our opinions). We took lots of photos (and photos of each other taking photos).
Carole’s birthday fireworks (AKA Bastille Day fireworks) in Lyon were spectacular, and a great way to kick off a big decade (and wrap up our first international post-pandemic trip).
We went to Iceland in October 2023, which happens to be the only international destination our local airport flies to. “Have you been to Iceland yet?” is something of a discussion starter in the Hudson Valley. Iceland also happened to be the first trip we took after formally deciding to enter into the adoption process. Every activity yielded a discussion of, “This would be so fun to do with a kid sometime.” How could it not be?
Iceland is a land of trolls.
And elves in tiny houses.
And other magical places, like a Eurovision museum. (One side is for the actual Eurovision Song Contest; the other is for the Eurovision movie, which was filmed there, in Húsavík.)
Even though it was the off-season, we had a successful whale watching experience — Tom’s first.
We deeply appreciated how Iceland is truly the “Land of Fire and Ice”. From snow-covered mountains to hot springs in every town, the country is stunning.
We will be back in the future. To ride more Icelandic horses. To see more whales. To bathe in more hot springs. To find the elves. And maybe even see a puffin (or a whole colony of them). But next time, hopefully, with our daughter along with us.
For Christmas 2023 we joined Carole and Tim in New Mexico. While there, we relaxed in the pools at 10,000 Waves (a local spa).
We also went skiing for the first time in many years at Ski Santa Fe. Tim was impressed by Tom’s grace on the slopes. (It pays to grow up in a former winter Olympic village!)
On Christmas Eve we followed Santa Fe tradition and walked Canyon Road with Carole’s namesake, Carole Owens. We admired the luminarias/farolitos, stopped in galleries, and enjoyed the caroling and bonfires.
The top place on our future daughter’s list of where she’d like to travel just so happens to be New Mexico. It’s a place we love going again and again. We can’t believe our luck that she wants to go, too.
After Christmas, Teresa took Tom to one of her favorite places in Colorado (even with so many to choose from!), Great Sand Dunes National Park. It’s a little out of the way if you’re going from Santa Fe to Denver, but it is always, always worth the trek.
We ended the trip on the Front Range. We toured Denver’s Meow Wolf (seen here). We visited Teresa’s former radio cohost, Norm, in Fort Collins, sadly our last time seeing him before he passed away. And we went to Longmont to see her elementary school best friend, Tricia, and met her baby for the first time.
In May 2024 — after receiving approval from New York State to become adoptive parents — we returned to Denmark and Sweden, where we went for our honeymoon in 2016. The pastries, in typical Scandinavian fashion, were divine. (And these were just at the airport!)
The timing was perfect. We were able to procure tickets to both dress rehearsals for the 2024 Eurovision Song Contest in Malmö, Sweden.
A memory we will always have is our interaction with the seemingly surly man at Iceland’s passport control. He asked what the purpose of our trip was, and when we said “Eurovision” his face lit up and he responded with “REALLY?! Have you listened to Norway’s song??”
It was so fun to see how many people got so excited for the event and how the city embraced it.
We got to see all of the acts in person from the floor, including the wild ones like Windows 95 Man from Finland.
And Teresa’s favorite song for the year, by Aiko from Czechia.
And, yes, Norway. (The passport guy was right; it’s a great song.)
On days without performances, we explored. We rode the train to Helsingør, Denmark, home of the castle that inspired Hamlet.
And to Helsingborg, Sweden, to see a city where some of Teresa’s mother’s ancestors lived.
We returned to Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen, one of the oldest amusement parks in the world. It was nice to go in spring and ride the rides this time. (Last time we were there for New Years Eve.)
Teresa also got Tom tickets to Mikkeller’s annual beer festival to taste craft beers from around the world, including flavors we may never have a chance to try again, like a yuzu lager from Japan.
And we hit up some quintessential Copenhagen sites that we missed the first time, like The Round Tower, the oldest functioning astronomy observatory in Europe.
It was wonderful being back.
We knew since last year that Tom’s dad, Rusty, and stepmom, MaryKaye, wanted to go on a big family trip to Alaska. In August, Rusty and MaryKaye brought us, Kayleigh, and Alex on an Alaskan cruise. In cruiser fashion, we had matching shirts (thanks MaryKaye!) and had most meals together. It was great spending so much time together, and we really enjoyed our first cruise!
We loved our time in Alaska and with family. Time on land was too short. We would love to go back for a long road trip sometime to see more of the interior and get deeper into local culture.
The excursions were really quite incredible. In Juneau, we took a helicopter ride to walk around (and drink water straight from!) a glacier.
In Skagway, we took a ride on narrow gauge rail road with Kayleigh and Alex, then went on a “Ghosts and Good Time Girls” walking tour together. Both were most excellent. And our guide for the walking tour (seen here) was wonderful.
We took a small boat in the Tracy Arm Fjord to see iceburgs, another glacier, incredible mountain scenery, and multiple beautiful waterfalls with the purest possible water.
Perhaps our collective favorite town we visited was Ketchikan, although we unfortunately had the least amount of time there. What we did get to see we loved, and we definitely hope to return someday to continue exploring.
The highlight of all the excursions (for Teresa, at least) was out of Ketchikan, seeing black bears in the wild during salmon season. At the wildlife preserve we saw at least 10 black bears in the course of an hour, including this mama and her cub.
Many people have written about how being in nature recharges people, and that was definitely true of our time in Alaska. That’s one of the reasons we love returning to the Adirondacks too. So it was funny to find a boat connecting the two on our trip!
At the end of the trip, we got off the boat with Kayleigh and Alex one more time in Victoria, BC, to get drinks with Teresa’s mom’s best friend from high school, Bizzy, and her husband, Bob.
After Rusty and MaryKaye went home to New York, we stayed with Kayleigh and Alex for a few days in Seattle. Teresa visited her high school friend, Katia, while Tom, Kayleigh, and Alex went to the Museum of Pop Culture.
Our tour of Seattle brought us to Carole and Tim’s condo, to seals showing off in the Puget Sound, …
… And to watching the salmon swimming through the Ballard Locks.
Sadly, Tom’s grandmother, Nonnie, passed away shortly after we got back. But we had a wonderful celebration of her life, where we got to reconnect with many people in Tom’s family that we hadn’t seen in a long time. And it also led to a group chat for all of Tom’s cousins. So, much like Nonnie did while she was alive, she brought her family together again.
The rest of this year, we’ve been doing a lot of waiting and preparing for adoption, like finally buying a second car. We’ve also spent a lot of time looking forward to what 2025 will bring. We are excited for future road trips and for shuttling our daughter to after school activities.
We’re excited about seeing the world together.
We’re excited to make crafts and play games together.
And we’re so excited to have her home — and complete our family.
We leave you with a Christmas gift from our future daughter to us. From our family to yours, we want to wish you a merry Christmas and a 2025 surrounded by those you love.
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