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A Day in the Life… 2025

ByRebekah Hoffer
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Every year on January 18th I take one picture every hour from the moment I wake up until I go to bed that night. I end up taking pictures of the ordinary – supper prep, school drop off, a cup of coffee, my computer screen.

These ordinary pictures are actually quite extraordinary. They are my everyday. They are my here and my now. They are a day in my life.

For 15 years now, I’ve given myself an amazing gift to be able to look back at a typical day from the past years and see the changes from year to year. The gift of being able to see the extraordinary in my everyday routine because the truth is simple: today’s routine will not be the same for long. My children will grow. My jobs will change. These routines will not remain.

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A Day in the Life of Rebekah – January 18, 2025

9:00 AM – Nate has gotten into the habit of bringing me coffee in bed on the weekends. Today on this Saturday, Noah brought it for me. I love a slow morning, so this has become a huge blessing.

Also pictured is my mouth guard that I started wearing at night. I have been clenching my jaw at night and this helps. I’m equal parts relieved it is helping with jaw pain and annoyed because I don’t want to wear it for the rest of my life.

10:00 AM – We are heading to our nephew’s basketball game, but first we need to drop Nate off at the car rental agency.

Nate was in a minor accident last week due to snow/ice conditions, and we will probably need to replace his car. It has 210,000 miles on it – so replacing it was already on our radar. But it never is fun to be forced to replace a vehicle.

11:00 AM – The game has begun!

12:00 PM – They won! Pictured here is Nate’s sister, her husband, and their son Matthew. Matthew is their youngest kid. He was born just 2 weeks after our oldest. It is fun to cheer him on, and even more fun when they win!

1:00 PM – We are back home, and the boys are watching YouTube. I’m pretty sure that last year during this photo project I predicted that our living room would look very different by this time. Sadly, we didn’t make as much progress on redecorating as I hoped.

In March we replaced the ceiling in the living room and added new lighting. In May we had several cracks in our plaster walls repaired in preparation of paint. In June we had our balcony and deck roof repaired, which took a couple weeks. In August we moved some bedrooms around upstairs and repainted Grace’s room – which also included a massive decluttering and cleaning of all bedrooms and the playroom.

Progress on the house was made in 2024, but it didn’t look quite like the progress that I had hoped for at the start of the year.

2:00 PM – Nate made us a simple lunch and cleaned up. He takes care of a lot of the meals over the weekends. It gives me a break, and he really enjoys it.

3:00 PM – After doing some laundry, I am watering my plants. These 2 were Christmas gifts this year. I love them! I have almost 30 houseplants now. Some of them are going to get kicked out – like the problematic spider plant pictured here. It is such a drama queen.

The snake plant was purchased on Amazon. I am impressed with how great it looks. I especially love its height. My hope was to add some larger plants to my house since I previously had a lot of smaller plants.

4:00 PM – TikTok is going to be banned tomorrow. I have a lot of really big feelings about it. One thing I am going to miss is scrolling through my “liked” TikToks that I saved as a curated feed for my kids. We are taking some time to watch our favorites one last time.

5:00 PM – After an hour of us scrolling old favorite TikTok videos together, the boys went next door to play with the neighbor. Grace and I continued on without them.

I can’t stress enough how strange this day has felt – the final hours of TikTok. Grace and I laughed until we cried. That app has brought me so much joy. Sigh.

Update: About 12 hours after typing this caption, TikTok’s service was restored in the USA. The future of TikTok is still unknown currently as the ban has not been canceled, only postponed.

6:00 PM – Supper tonight is leftover shepherd’s pie. I made a double batch yesterday, and popped one in my freezer. (Sorry this photo isn’t very appetizing.)

This recipe is from a blog that is no longer being hosted. However, I was able to find the recipe using the Wayback Machine. I highly recommend trying it for any old Pinterest pins that may have stopped working for you.

7:00 PM – Video games, laundry, and Olive and June’s Plaza – one of my all time favorite nail polish colors.

8:00 PM – This is me at 43. You can almost always find someone in my family wearing this same sweatshirt. It says “love your neighbor” and it is merch for Good Samaritan Services (where Nate works).

9:00 PM – Noah and Isaac are easily distracted from the task of putting away clean laundry. I hear the sound of “slam dunks” daily since the weather has been too cold for real basketball.

10:00 PM – Grace is in her room. Nate is relaxing on the couch. Noah is in the shower. And I’m saying goodnight to Isaac.

Reflecting Back on my 2025 Day

Because I always do this project on January 18th, the day of the week changes from year to year. In 15 years of doing this project, this is only the third time that it has fallen on a Saturday. I thought it would be nice having us all home together throughout the entire day, but it wasn’t as great as I hoped.

This was probably my least favorite A Day in the Life projects I have ever done. The day felt slow. After the basketball game, we didn’t have much going on. The kids are getting older, and they want to relax in their rooms or playing video games. There wasn’t as much to photograph as when they were younger, bopping from one play activity to another.

And frankly, I was stressed and distracted. The looming TikTok ban weighed heavily on me throughout the day – not because it would highly affect my income, but because it has become a source of great joy, community, and news.

I know that many of you reading along will completely understand why my internet friend Lexie and I cried together over voxer when we were both booted out of the app on the evening of January 18th. And others of you will find that baffling – perhaps even supporting the ban.

It was a strange day.

For the first time ever, I wondered if I should have broken the mold and picked a different day.

Other Noteworthy Observations:

  • The kids really are getting so much older. They are getting more and more independent. In the blink of an eye they won’t be featured as much because of jobs or college.
  • While I am disappointed that our living room doesn’t look that much different from last year, there was a lot of changes/repairs/decluttering that was done. Most of those things weren’t captured in these photos.
  • I have new glasses compared to last year.
  • Grace still has her braces, but she is very, VERY close to getting them off.
  • Noah has changed up his hair routine, going with the popular tapered fringe. By this time next year, he will probably have braces and will be even taller.
  • Out of all the kids, Isaac probably looks the most like he did last year. Although he is quite a bit taller and now has some adult teeth in that adorable smile.

This was January 18, 2025. I look forward to seeing what changes come next year.

Thank you for following along on my 15th annual “A Day in the Life” project.

Take a peek back in time!

Thank you for sharing a day in my life!

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. Thank you for supporting Simply Rebekah!

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