Happy Holidays! We hope your days are filled with joy and love. I’ve made a habit of writing a few of my favorite stories throughout the year and releasing it around Christmas. I hope you enjoy the 2025 version!

And I give thanks to my youthful days
Of grass-stained knees and trick-or-treat face
I pray I’ll find as innocent a place
When I am 88

There were a few tasks to complete when I entered Tokyo DisneySea with an evening ticket on a cool October night. The most important of those was to buy Melissa a Duffy teddy bear. I had come to the parks solo and knew she was bummed to miss out so I asked her if I could get her anything. Duffy was her request and was my first mission. A walk through Mediterranean Harbor and American Waterfront led me to Cape Cod where I stayed on target and bought the bear.

That was where my planning ended. Upon exiting the shop I realized that Duffy was pretty large and couldn’t be fully stuffed into my backpack. Not that I’d want to stuff him anywhere, he’s been stuffed enough. So I adjusted on the fly while keeping my hands free to take photos. Duffy would be riding around on my back, his head sticking out of the backpack to enjoy the view behind me. If you think Japanese theme park goers are nice already, just wait until you have an adorable teddy bear sticking out of your backpack. I felt as close as I ever will to celebrity.

The evening passed by quickly, as it always does at DisneySea. I was one of the last people out of the park after taking my time to take photos. I plunked down on a monorail seat, setting my backpack on my lap, very satisfied with the night. There was Duffy, peering out across the monorail.

Two young women sat on the bench across from me in an uncrowded monorail car. Before long, I noticed that one of them was waving to my Duffy with her array of stuffed animals, starting with her own Duffy at first. That wave started what I have to assume is the longest duration for stuffed animals to wave at each other. I waved back with my Duffy before she moved on to her next waving animal, her friend and her laughing the entire time. Eventually I remembered I have a small Henry from the Country Bears so I utilized his waving abilities too.

This whole waving event lasted from one stop to another. We left the monorail, going separate ways but laughing the whole time. Sometimes you need the child in you to come out through silly circumstances. I never thought I’d be a mid-30 year old waving at other stuffed animals with one I’d just bought. But there were no inhibitions and only laughter about the cute animals and gleeful waving. For all of the heaviness experienced in the world this year, I think back to that simple and silly interaction. I’m still smiling and hope those two friends, and their stuffed animals, are too.

“I’m afraid of getting older, ” that’s what I’ve learned to say
Society has given me the words to think that way
The message spirals, “Don’t get saggy, don’t get grey”
But the soft and lovely silvers are now fallin’ on my shoulder

Since moving from Washington to California in 2021, making new friends hasn’t always been easy. Melissa and I lean more on the introvert side of things and aren’t always the best at putting ourselves out there. Don’t get me wrong, interacting with people in our travels or at theme parks is something we cherish and always look forward to. Heck, that’s why this post (and previous year’s iterations) exists! I just always feel a little bit awkward in those interactions which makes having new theme park (or travel) friends a little more difficult.

2025 found us at Walt Disney World for the opening of Starlight, Magic Kingdom’s new nighttime parade. With a ground so hot that I’m pretty sure the floor was technically lava, we met a few people waiting for the debut. The conversations came easy and there was a shared interest in the theme parks. Not only were Melissa and I buzzing from the parade debut but we staggered back to our hotel (embracing the sweat) buzzing from meeting a couple of potential friends.

Two of those friends have since been to Disneyland and we were able to meet up with them and continue talking. Then a few weeks ago we went to Jollywood Nights with them and we had a wonderful time. There are others from that week that we stay in contact with, as well.

I used to write these posts and try to tie-in some grand meaning. I’ll probably do it again in the future. But sometimes just meeting some really cool people at a place we love is enough to make the year brighter. Making friends in adulthood is often hard and I hope I never lose my wonder in how people come into your life just by standing in the same spot that you are. Those sweaty days in July at Walt Disney World showed us to not give up, you never know when new friends will come along.

My mother and my grandma, my great-grandmother too
Wrinkle like the river, sweeten like the dew
And as silver as the rainbow scales that shimmer purple blue
How can beauty that is livin’ be anything but true?

A whirlwind month was about to end. That month started with the passing of my grandma and a rush up to Washington to be with family. After a memorial service on Friday, I boarded a (previously scheduled) flight to Japan on Sunday. Our first group trip was set to take place a few days after and I arrived early to get over the jet lag and take care of a few last minute details.

Despite the hurried state of thing, the trip went off without hardly any issues (just a wrong turn here and there) and we look forward to repeating the whole experience in the future. Melissa and I stayed a few days extra in Japan after the rest of the group left and enjoyed Kyoto, the theme parks and a little bit of Tokyo. The whole month gave me a life change, a trip I worked extremely hard on and then a few days with my wife in our favorite place. I still don’t feel like I’ve fully processed everything about those 4 weeks and slowing down was never top of mind.

At least it wasn’t top of mind until we sat down in the Ambassador Hotel a few minutes before we needed to go catch a shuttle to the airport and head home. Melissa was repacking a few things and I was feeling a little overwhelmed in the moment. Maybe the month was starting to catch up to me.

In the Tokyo Disney Ambassador Hotel, there’s a player piano. Throughout most of our time in there, it was playing Christmas songs that were a mix of traditional carols and upbeat tunes. As I sunk down into a chair, the piano started playing an old hymn that I knew my grandma liked. It hit me like a brick and I started crying. The weight of her passing hadn’t really hit me before that moment. Knowing that she wasn’t suffering from dementia or failing health was a relief, to a degree, but there hadn’t been much time to think about what I’d lost. She was an encourager, friend, cheerleader and, of course, my grandma.

I have no idea why that piano was playing an old hymn that didn’t really have a connection to Christmas. Looking back now, it makes no sense to the point where I wonder if I made it up. But I didn’t. This was a wild coincidence, or something more, if you believe in that sort of thing.

My grandma encouraged me to write but never really grasped what I wrote about. Her health had declined to the point where I couldn’t really tell her that I was able to run this website as my full-time job and that I was writing every day. But there we were in a Japanese hotel, coming off such an exciting endeavor, where a piano had flooded me with memories of her.

I choose to believe that moment meant she was watching me on that trip, seeing me do what I love and really understanding. Come along anytime you want, granny.

And I give thanks to my present day
It just got here so please don’t go away
I finally see it’s what I choose to make
I choose to make it into gold

In the last month since that trip ended, I’ve just been overwhelmed with thankfulness. Getting to go on these adventures is something we’ll never take for granted and I’m blown away that people want to read my thoughts about them. We’ll keep working very hard to make sure our content is original and, hopefully, interesting.

On top of these wonderful trips to Paris, Japan, Orlando and more, we’re just as thankful for the people we’ve met along the way. This year has been filled with friends, both new and old. Meeting anyone during our travels has always been a highlight for us and why I started writing these posts years ago. Now that we travel more, we get to meet more and more people. Some of whom we’re lucky enough to call friends now. While we’re at the age now where we lose some people here and there, we’ve gained some wonderful people along the way.

That includes all of you who check out this site. To say we’re grateful sounds canned and similar to what everyone says at this time of year. But I promise you that it’s true. I’ll keep writing this style of Christmas post for as long as this site exists but what I said in the very first edition still rings true.

Whether we’ve met you in person or you just read the website, you have made our travels personal, beautiful, and purposeful. More importantly, you have made our love for humanity grow. We hope you get to have similar experiences in your life and we’re honored that you read Wandering in Disney! Have a beautiful holiday season and Happy New Year!

Song lyrics are from Cloud Cult’s Thanks (1st and 4th shared) and Big Thief’s Incomprehensible 2nd and 3rd).