I’m going to honest, as I tried to compile (very much after the fact) my best photos from 2025, I had a very hard time. Some months had almost nothing to choose from, and others were so full of choices that it was painful to only use one. But those are the rules, even if I am the only one playing the game. So let’s go!
JANUARY
This is a view from above of the Palm Court at the Grove Park Inn in Asheville, North Carolina. This is the old part of the hotel. It’s not as fancy, but I wanted to stay where there was so much history, including a room where F. Scott Fitzgerald once spent the summer. John and I went here for a weekend at the beginning of the year to have our yearly business meeting. There is so much to do and see that we never left the building.
 FEBRUARY
I love this picture of Cumberland Avenue, the University of Tennessee Campus, and Downtown Knoxville, which I took from a pedestrian bridge as Emily and I were on our way to an amazing concert at Thompson-Boling Arena featuring Andrea Bocelli.
MARCH
Look at the daytime moon peeping through the trees! I took this at Lakeshore Park, which used to be the grounds of Knoxville’s hospital for the insane.
APRIL
This is the urn with Daddy’s ashes. His funeral was the first week of April. It was a sad occasion but a beautiful arrangement. And the picture certainly captures April 2025.
MAY
It’s not the best picture I took in San Francisco in May, but it was so hard to choose, and you can’t go wrong with the Golden Gate Bridge. Also, it commemorates the fact that William was along this time, having taken his very first flight. We had a wonderful time, but he does not care for flying.
JUNE
This is a shot of the Hyatt Place on Gay Street in Downtown Knoxvill; however, I prefer to think of it as the Farragut Hotel, as it once was. I was spending a weekend alone here to write–and as luck would have it, I am there again writing this post, a little more than a year later.
JULY
Daddy did not dress up much. He had seven ties, and these ae four of them. My sisters and I spent nearly six months going through Daddy’s house to get it ready to sell. Part of that included photographing his belongings so we could ask the rest of the family what they wanted to have. I am so happy that John wanted a couple of the ties, especially the polar bear one.
AUGUST
This is the old Blount County Courthouse, one of many locations where John practices law. Last summer we visited most of the courthouses in the nearby counties to get pictures of John standing in front of them to improve his Google listing.
SEPTEMBER
John and I went to a football game. We sat in my sister and brother-in-law’s super fancy seats, with access to a club and ridiculous amounts of food. I took this picture from the balcony.
OCTOBER
During Fall Break we went to Baltimore so that the kids could see their 90-year-old grandmother. While there, we visited our oldest son, Jake, and his girlfriend, Olivia, at her family’s farm in Frederick, Maryland. This is one of many residents–there were also goats, horses, geese, chickens, and more.
NOVEMBER
John and I went on our first trip to Europe together in November, spending a week in Rome, courtesy of my inheritance from Daddy. And how am I supposed to pick just one picture from Rome? Of course it’s impossible, and I probably should do a whole post, but in the meantime, here is the Pantheon. It is incredibly preserved both outside and in, as it has been a church for centuries and thus avoided for the the most part being despoiled.
DECEMBER
Finally, here is a picture from New Year’s Eve, of our traditional meal–seafood gumbo. We always have the family over. This year was very sad, because Daddy loved my gumbo so much and would eat several cups, and then I would send more home with him.
To see photo essays from past years, click the links below:
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
2018
2019
2020
2021
2022
2023
2024
