Spending Christmas on the Road

Needless to say this past year has been challenging for me on a personal level. Not only was it the first year without my dad, who we lost days before Christmas last year, it’s also been challenging on a personal and professional level for me. This has undoubtedly been a challenging year for the agriculture industry, probably one of the worst we’ve seen in years. Many of the farmers that I work with are facing uncertainty going into the 2025 season. If you’ve ever lived in a southern community you know that when the farmers have bad years, everyone has a bad year. It’s simply a trickle down model with farmers at the top of the pyramid.

In addition to business and professional challenges this year I’ve also had some personal challenges that I’ve been pretty vague about for a number of reasons, mostly because there are some things still being sorted out and will be corrected soon. I’ve learned a valuable lesson at 52 about people that are not worthy of our trust. More on all of this later…

I was talking with my mom a few months back and we discussed how we didn’t even remember Christmas last year because we were so numb following the loss of my dad. We also remembered how much dad enjoyed Christmas, especially spoiling Spencer. The more we talked the more we realized that we were dreading spending Christmas here this year without my dad. We came up with the idea of doing a destination for Christmas that we could enjoy and start a new tradition.

We considered a few locations but quickly arrived on Colorado as our destination. Knowing how much Spencer enjoys waterparks we landed on Great Wolf Lodge in Colorado Springs, Colorado (photos). In addition to spending an entire week at the lodge we also decided to plan some other activities outside of the lodge like the Santa Express Train at the Royal Gorge (photos) and a quick trip up to Keystone Ski Resort (photos) followed by dinner in Denver at the Casa Bonita (photos).

I’ll be honest, it was completely different than past Christmas holidays but we all had a great time and most importantly we all made it through the Christmas season. I’m pretty sure we will plan something next year and keep up this tradition. If you are interested, I’ve updated my photo galleries, finally… and there are some great photos from the trip.