The Christmas Shift: Grandkids, Gratitude & Letting Go

Welcome to We Should Probably Edit This, but we won't.

This is about our life's messy journey. It's unscripted, talks about growth, real laughs, sometimes real laughs, sometimes just the chaos.

And, and we think there's a little bit of comedy here.

Everything.

It's about our 37 years of marriage and our experience. I'm Matthew Greger.

And I'm Nancy Greger. And we're your host of We Should Probably Edit This.

But we won't. And we probably should have edited that. So here's our next episode. Yes, starting now. So we're on now. So are you good?

I'm good.

Okay. All right, well, I think this would be our Christmas edition.

Christmas edition. Santa! He's coming.

Yep. With only how many days? Let's see. Today's the 21st.

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.

So 4 days.

4 days, Santa comes. And we all remember that excitement when Santa was coming. Oh my goodness.

And it was usually we had lack of sleep the night before. How many things have we put together through our lifetime?

Oh, way too many. Way too many.

Assembled the bikes or assembled the—

And sometimes we just didn't do it and just left it there.

And then Santa left instructions for Dad to do.

Yes. He would say, this is how you do it and put it together.

Most of the time we got it together.

It was a lot of fun. Those were fun times. Yay, fun times.

Yeah.

Now this year is a little bit more low-key. Um, we're more of grandmas and grandpas now and dealing with adult children, um, figuring out scheduling with the adult children to see when they can come to pay a visit and make dinner. For everybody. Um, it still has a little Santa in it, still has a little, a little magic, magic and festivities.

That's what the, the holidays are about, is that little bit of magic that's going on there. And also, also to remember, you know, why we're celebrating.

Went shopping yesterday. That was a lot of fun. Come on.

Oh yes, in the mall. My favorite place to be of all places in the world is the mall.

The mall.

Okay, I think, I think they pump it for full of air that you just makes it just tired. I think it's just me though, isn't it?

I think it's just you.

Yeah.

You do good walking though. Yeah, it's 3 levels.

3, 3 floors.

So you go around each level. You may not stop inside the stores, but you can do a lot of walking.

Yes.

And there's not, there's, I don't know, the whole, we were in and out in an hour.

Come on.

We did pretty well. I mean, granted, we don't like to go to the mall. We still shop, but we'd rather go to like local little, excuse me, local little shops. They always seem to have better.

Yeah. Yeah, it's more, I don't know, there's too many clothes stores in the mall for me. I mean, it's not really gifty in my opinion, you know, or things to do.

It depends on what you're looking for. Some people are looking for the sweaters and the shirts and the, uh, jammies.

Okay.

Hats, scarves. Okay. That kind of stuff.

Well, there is the Apple Store, which was still pretty crowded too. No, everything was crowded, which I guess is good news for the retailers out there.

That is good news for the retailers, right? They could always use that extra infusion of cash because let's face it, Amazon took over a great deal, and you can order things online and get it 2 or 3 days or the next day. Yeah, that back in the day, you and I had to set aside a Toys R Us, um, Toys R Us, and setting out time that we would take off from work to say, okay, yeah, usually when the kids were still in school so that we could go Um, that was the challenge.

But I think back then, you know, you could actually like test and feel the toys and feel the things.

Yeah.

Now it's like you got to wait for them to be shipped to you. I mean, I don't even think that— does Toys R Us even exist anymore? I don't think so. I mean, so it's just like, so you do— you—

there are a few toy stores you can still go to, but they're like little mom-and-pop stores. They're not chains. Toys R Us was a chain, right? But nowadays you find a lot of the specialty type of deal where you can go in, and the toy stores are really small. I mean, you could go into Toys 'R' Us and you were like, oh yeah, okay. I was looking for that one gift item that was always really hard to get. Yeah, that brought back— like, remember there was a, there was a show with Arnold Schwarzenegger and I can't remember who the other guy was, might have been Sinbad, and they were in the store looking for that one gift.

Well, that was like, that was like Black Friday when people used to like mob after the one toy. There was, there was always, there was the Elmo toy. Remember that one?

No, I think we lucked out when we bought, um, either PlayStation or Xbox. I can't remember, but I remember we were at the toy store and they just got in the shipment and It was sheer, sheer luck. Right place, right time. And I went there and I— there were only 6 boxes that they could sell. The other ones they had reserved for people had paid in advance. And I lucked out that I got the one box. And I don't think that was even on our list of things to buy. But we were like, let's take it. So we bought it. And then I can remember friends of mine saying, hey, I'm looking for this Cabbage Patch doll. And it's this, this specific doll. If you see it up there, can you get me like 2 of them? And I remember going to the store to see if I could find them, and if I could, I would snatch it. All the fun things that you would do at Christmas time. I can tell you nothing.

Just seems—

go ahead, I'll tell you one more story.

Tell one more story.

So our daughter was a teenager at the time, and I was working for this for a local company here, and I had a staff of maybe about 4 or 5 people, and she wanted these specific UGG boots. I was having a really tough time finding them, and, um, I— so I, I put a challenge out. I think if the employer knew what I did, I put a challenge out to the girls, uh, working for me, and I said, what you did? Yeah, it would say, so instead of working, you had them do what? I had them search online to find me these boots in this specific size And the first person who signed it would get lunch. And it was funny because they all stopped what they were doing to help me find these ones. And I found them and I got them. And I remember I, the girl who got them, her name was Renee. And she said, I found it. I find it. I said, put it in that, put it in the box. And I gave her my credit card and we paid for it and we did it all on there. And she got a free lunch out of me. But, um, The things we do.

Yes. And nowadays it just— today, I mean, yesterday when we were shopping, the mall just felt different. And then even the Santa experience, usually, usually there's like a line of kids waiting to see Santa. That just doesn't seem to be that way anymore. I mean, there wasn't anybody. I felt bad for just Santa sitting there by himself, you know, him and Mrs. Claus. They had candy canes to give out, then like one one little kid would come up, but it wasn't like a line to go see Santa, which, which is kind of sad in a way.

Yeah, but you could also remember those days when you took your kids to go see that Santa, and maybe one of them would like, two of them would tolerate, but the third one was like screaming bloody murder because you had him sit on this stranger's lap. Yeah, and they hated it. I mean, they just hated it.

This was, this was a good Santa too. He had, he had the nice real— he had a real beard, real nice beard and everything too.

Yeah, see, all those little things, those, those are things. But I think as we now— we have grandchildren, it's easy.

Um, yeah, we had— we never had the elf when we were— when we had kids. No, we didn't have the elf. I think that would drive me nuts.

I thought it was cool.

I mean, it's a, it's a cool concept that the elf is watching, he's going to report back to Santa. It gave you some other reason for them to try to get—

and he moved.

Being a behavior. Yeah, I think, I think the best is seeing some of those Instagram posts of the different poses that the, that the dad— usually the dads are the ones with the creative positionings of the elf and where they put them.

No, I'm sure there's some moms out there that say this is mom's doing.

Yeah, I guess, I guess you could say it's more dad jokes that they do with them.

So that was, that was always pretty cool, but it's It's all good. I think, you know, life changes, transitions happened, and now you look through the eyes of your grandchildren versus your own kids. Yeah.

Um, and you can't, and you can't forget to what the holidays are really about. I mean, today, and today in church was a great service. It was, you know, even with the dancers that were there and, and everything, it just made you feel alive.

This isn't about Santa Claus. No, it's not about Santa Claus. It's Merry Christmas because it has the word Christ in it. So it's really about the birth of Jesus Christ. Yeah, as our Savior, not about Santa.

Yeah, but Santa plays a key role. He does when you're a kid, when you're kids. But if you can kind of keep that other part in mind too, that's always good, especially now. It seems even more important to us.

True. Very, very true.

So on that note, I'd really like to kind of just reflect a little bit about this year and what are we grateful for? So what are you grateful for this year? Looking back in 2025?

I mean, 2025, I think, brought on a lot of things. We started off the year with our Ultra event in Miami, which was probably one of the most a really, really good time because we were able not only to connect with our group of people that we met, we were able to go out to dinner a couple of times, um, which is very difficult sometimes to get a group of 12 or 16 people all together. Not always easy to do, but we were able to do that in a fabulous town and city because it really nice. The weather was beautiful. Yeah, that kind of kicked off here.

Was that— I think that was February, right?

January, February, end of January, first part.

Right. So, so it's, it's a perfect time to get out of the Northeast and to be back into, into the Florida weather. But not only that, but there's nothing better when you can combine kind of an event that we go to with seeing the grandkids. Yeah, the family.

Yeah, you know, that was a good— that was a double. We did, we did Was that— what's that saying? Um, I can't remember what the saying was, but in any case, we did a great deal. So that started the year off. That kind of started this.

Okay, so you were grateful for that?

I was grateful for that event. It really helped set the tone. I think we've had lots of things change, um, in the house. We redid our kitchen completely. That was great. It looks beautiful. It really is. It came out really, really, really nice, um, and I thoroughly enjoyed that whole thing. Oh my goodness, he forgot a prop. Um, I mean, we had a lot of other adventures. We did the Grand Canyon this year. That was really great. Um, that was something we both took the opportunity while we were away to go see, and that was really nice. It was a Probably one of the trips that we went to where we did something a little bit more different, I think.

Um, for this year, the Napa trip, you got sick, so we, we didn't— we weren't able to do anything extra afterwards, which we didn't have a lot planned, just really a drive. Yeah, so a visit.

So, you know, but I'm trying to think what else. Lots of stuff happened this year.

Um, Is there anything that you're truly grateful for besides those?

I mean, I'm always grateful for my family and for people. I'm grateful that I've come— I would— so I'm the executor of my grandmother's estate, and I was able to finally sell the last piece of property that was part of her estate.

In New York.

In New York. That took— oh my God, 3 years in the making before I was able to execute that.

Now dealing with lawyers, courts, and—

yeah, and still dealing with lawyers, still dealing with courts, and, and now we're adding an accountant to the whole thing. But I was able to re— I was able to at least accomplish, accomplish one of the major feats, which was selling the house and not having that liability to really have to deal with.

So that for me was like, okay, that was definitely a relief when that actually happened.

Yeah, now it's just closing it out and getting it to— getting everybody some money, which I know everyone could use. So, um, that will be a good thing when, when I'm able to do that. That's going to happen in 2026.

But that's a huge thing to be grateful for. I mean, we sold it in 2025.

We sold it in 2025.

Yeah, and that was just a relief. I mean, we had, we had sensors in there to make sure there wasn't any flooding. We had to have, we had to cover the insurance on it.

I had to secure certain parts of it and like nail them shut so we didn't get squatters coming back in. Yep, it was a big relief. Yeah, it was a big relief. So I'm glad.

Several trips to the Bronx to try to, try to deal with Several trips. Yeah, with that. So you have to be thankful for your cousin for really helping.

I am. If one of my cousins really was instrumental for me in helping me deal with that property, because that's not something everybody wanted to do, and that's— there's certainly something I didn't want to do. So she really helped me out a great deal in managing that, that whole aspect. So I was— that was a good thing, but That part's over and now we're coming into the home stretch.

Yep. Well, it's definitely been a good year for me. For me, it was, this was the year that I launched my book, Think Brilliance, which was great. So it's really exciting for that. And if you haven't gotten your copy yet, you know, go to Amazon or you can check out the Stan Store that we have too. And get yourself a copy of that. I think it's a great book to set yourself up for the new year. It's about how to harness the power of curiosity and creativity. And as we move into 2026, you know, it'd be a great start to get you going for the year. So that's something that I'm extremely grateful for. It took a lot of work to get to that and to actually publish your book and become a number one bestseller. It was really exciting for me. I will— I'll agree with you on the Ultra trips that we took. There was something about those that just really helped us renew, you know. So we had the Miami trip, and then we actually went to Austin. Austin was the Growth Day event. That was the Growth Day one too. There were a few thousand people there, so that was a great trip. I'm grateful for the opportunity to to see our family when we can, to see the grandkids, to see them. And I'm really grateful for being able to go down and see my parents after my father had cancer treatment and where he is at. I mean, I know they've been through a lot of emotional things this year, and it was good to kind of like reconnect with them a little bit and see where they're at in this stage of life now and seeing what's next to be able to help them move forward with that. So that was actually a really good trip. It was better than I expected. So for sure. And, you know, grateful for this moment right now as we make the shift into selling the home getting— just purging things and getting rid of things. There's something about it that just leaves you— takes a weight off of you. I don't know why, but, um, you know, some things— I mean, it's— some of it's reminiscing about stuff you have, whether you're looking through old yearbooks or you're looking through 8 boxes of photos. Yeah, yeah. And I mean, I'm sure it brought you down a little bit of a memory lane. You're the one that actually went through those.

Actually, it got to a point where when I saw the 8th copy of our wedding, I was more like, why do we have 8 copies of the same picture? And we still have different sizes, and but we still have 8 copies. Then add the originals, proofs, plus all the negatives. I was just like We were cuckoo.

Yeah, well, now you just have 10,000 different copies on digital.

But yeah, it's easy to go on digital. You just had to say, you know, delete all duplicates, and it automatically magically does it in one shot.

Do you trust that?

Yeah, I would. I'm figuring, why not? Well, let's edit the duplicates, whatever you see as duplicates. But it— that was—

hey, you had— you went through a A lot of things. I mean, we're going to take the box and, um, bring them to one of those companies. I think it's like called Legacy or something where they'll, they'll scan them in. I mean, you— we went through that transition of time where you had actual real film, real cameras, real photos, and we do have videos. There are videos, videos too. Yes. Um, and now it's all digital, and so we've— we're in that transition where we've got a lot of physical copies. Yeah, that we want to digitize so that—

but we don't have a VHS player anymore, so I have no idea.

Well, those, those I plan to— those I plan to send out, send out to, for them to actually convert.

We'd have to convert them in order to figure out what they're on. I mean, some of them are labeled, but not all of them are labeled.

I still have those, you know, those, those disposable cameras.

They're, they're just used once that we never had developed.

Yeah, when, when we were on a vacation, we each gave we would always give the kids a camera like that, and then we would take and develop their pictures, and then they would have their little momentum. So I still have some that we never did develop.

Oh my Lord.

So it'll be interesting if I can find the place to actually process the cameras and to see if— I don't, I don't have any idea if it's any good anymore either. Like, like what's—

that was the thing though, is when you went through it, there were some pictures we had in, in frames that had gotten moisture on it, so they're stuck to the glass.

Yeah.

So I was kind of like, I don't know what we're going to do to fix this. Good thing is in some cases I had duplicates. Yeah. So you didn't have to worry so much about it. But that was— I couldn't believe that every time I'd open up a box, it was just more photos. And I was like, oh my God, there's more photos and more photos. Mm-hmm. So that was a lot of fun.

Yeah, and I ran across artwork that I had created when I was freelancing when we first, um, got engaged and then married. That's what I did for the first couple years, um, seeing some of the original artwork there and some of the original artwork from when I designed t-shirts before we got married. And now it's just a matter of processing and getting rid of tools that I don't need.

And, and oh my God, that someday You know, that's the one word in our vocabulary that needs to be removed.

Yeah, someday.

I— this, this would be good for someday, or maybe someday I'll use it, or no, someday we're going to go and do this, someday we're going to go on vacation, someday we're going to go on vacation, someday we're going to go to Europe, someday we're going to blah blah blah blah blah. Take the word someday out of your vocabulary.

Yeah, because when you say someday, that really means never.

It's never going to happen. You won't do it, or you don't.

Yeah, you just— it's like the same thing as saying it's a horrible maybe.

And you all know there are people in your life, or there are situations where you say it, you automatically know what the answer is, but you always say maybe.

Yeah, but deep down inside, it's a no.

Because it leans more towards the no than it does a yes. Because if you were going to do it, you would have just said yes, plain and simple. Yes. When you say the maybe, it really means no, but for whatever reason you don't want to hurt somebody's feelings, maybe, or you don't want to be as negative.

It sure would just be better if you just come out, no, I don't want to do it.

No, I don't. It's not going to fit with my agenda.

But, but I had great plans for the 4 windows I have out there that I moved. They're like 50 inches by 6 feet. They weigh a ton. Yeah, we moved them from the house in Danbury to here. They were gonna make a wonderful greenhouse someday. Someday.

See, don't use that word. Take the word out, guys, ladies. If you have put aside something because you said someday I'm gonna revisit that.

Either do it now or just get rid of it.

Get rid of it because it's not gonna do anything for you. It's not gonna offer you anything.

And then if you decide later on, oh, I got rid of that, I really want to do it now, then go, then go do it. Figure out how you're going to do it now, even if it's something you got to build or it's used again. Yeah, who cares?

Go buy it.

If But at least at that point you've made the decision that's what you want to do.

Correct. Correct. So it's always a good learning, I think, um, experience.

What, moving or to get rid of stuff?

Yeah, moving is a very— I mean, it's not like we move all the time.

No, when I grew up I moved like every 4 years, so it was a process. So I, I really wanted to stay put. Yeah, when, when I was there, and we did that in the very beginning.

We stayed put in one house, in one place where Yeah, I mean, we raised all of our kids in one town.

You know, we were in two homes, but it was more of an upgrade home, you know.

It was from the first one to the second one, right?

Yeah, for more space for their teenage years.

For their teenage years. But it was, it was, the moves are always very good and they were always had good intentions behind them, right?

Um, this move for us is more of I think I see it as preparing us for when we do retire. It's one more, it's one more step so that because we're beginning to just downsize more. When we moved to this house, we downsized, but we also kept a lot of extra stuff, um, because it wasn't that long of a move and filled our basement up.

We had a house. Yeah, the main difference is we moved from one home to another home, our home, right? And homes and houses always need a lot of work and a lot of maintenance and a lot of upkeep, and you got to fix this and you got to fix that, and you want to do this and you want to do that. So it—

well, especially when we was moved into this house, bought this house, you know, it's kind of like the worst house in the neighborhood, you know. When we first moved into it, it was like—

it was— they needed a lot of love.

It for the last 30 years that the lady lived here before us, I don't think she did a lot. No, for that.

No. So it was, it was a lot.

So yeah, so you, you knew those tools were going to come in handy. I bought extra ones just to be able to do different projects around here.

But then, you know what's funny is, is that, so we've always been the type of people, and friends of ours will, will, can definitely testify to this, we are always always doing something to our home, right? Always. I don't think there was a moment—

well, we had, we had plans for this one too, like, yeah, gonna put the fence up between the garage, the side of the garage, and we were gonna figure out what we needed to do with the pool, or we're gonna put a pool in, or are we gonna fill it in.

And there were lots of things that we were still thinking about, but it It got to the point where other things became more important to us.

Right. And working on the house suddenly moved further down the list of what we wanted to do.

Oh, we wanted to do that, but it went from here down here. Someday.

Yeah.

Um, I mean, you looked at it and you knew it was there, so it didn't go away, um, but it just didn't have that level of importance. I don't think it was a someday problem. I think it was we were evolving differently, and that was no longer—

no longer became as, as important to us.

Correct.

Right.

So we— when you lose that interest, when you lose that, uh, ability to want to do something, then I think that it moves to the someday category. Yeah, it does.

It makes us like, yeah, I would have really loved to have this great greenhouse But it wasn't the priority for me to build. I mean, I kept bricks from our, from our walkway when we had that redone. It would have made a great floor foundation for it.

We had all the pieces.

Plus I had all the slate from our old patio. Between the bricks and the slate would have made a great foundation and patio area for the greenhouse.

And I could envision it in my head, but, but You didn't have the time, and you didn't—

and I didn't, I didn't dedicate the time to go do it.

So that no longer became a level of importance. And so I think that's one of the major reasons why we decided that it was time— one of the reasons to sell the house and start to move along, because the someday projects were getting bigger and Well, I don't know about bigger.

We were putting more things on the Someday Project.

The list was getting—

the list was getting longer.

Yeah, I don't know if the projects were getting much bigger, but so, but yeah, so getting rid of the house will simplify, um, I think our life a little bit more. And if we're going to do something, it's more like, okay, do we want to paint an accent wall? And what kind of furniture do we want to buy to fill in the space, replace what we have. Yeah, yeah. It's not a matter of, oh, I got to fix this, right? Or I got to fix that. Because that's when you go back to the person who owns the property or the management and say, hey, this isn't working. Can you guys come and replace it or fix it or do whatever you need to do?

I'll still do minor things. Well, we're always changing the light bulb things.

Yeah, we're all going to do minor things. But that's just it. They're minor things. And they're everyday things that you have to do.

Yeah. But, um, but yeah, so, so I mean, it's, it's, I think 2025 has been definitely, um, a good year for us and a turning point, um, I believe, and where we're headed in our direction in life.

Yep.

So it'll, we've made some decisions.

So we'll see what happens in 2026.

I'm looking forward to that. But that's the next episode.

That's it. That's the next one.

We'll talk, we'll talk about that.

Talking about what's gonna happen.

Happen in 2026. What, what some of our plans are.

Right. What's in our minds?

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah. What, what, what, what, what projects do you want to work on? What things do you want to do? What are some of your goals for 2026? Those kind of things. But that's, that's for the next episode. So, um, so yes, I'm, I'm looking forward to this holiday season for Christmas.

It's gonna be low-key. I don't, I can't remember what we did last year, to tell you the truth. Mm, okay.

I don't remember.

That's part of the age issue. I know, I know.

We thought hard enough about it, we could come up with what we did.

I know, no, I know what we did. We went—

what did we do?

We went to Katie's. We went to our daughter.

Sorry, no, we didn't. That was Thanksgiving. I haven't seen her since last Thanksgiving, so we did not go there.

Oh my, what did we do?

It must have not been that special.

It must have been just— so I know last year, I know we did the grandchildren and come up. No, that didn't—

it was pretty much a quiet, a quiet time.

Maybe it was, or just the— it was just the two of us. But we did have a tree and we did put out all the decorations for Christmas, but I think we just did— we, we probably just do very much.

I mean, I know Noah, I'm pretty sure that we were—

Oh, I know what we did.

That's why it's not very much anymore.

I know what we did.

I think we'll leave it on that. We'll leave it at that.

Now it's coming back. It takes a little prodding. Yes. But you see, that's what happens when things are not eventful. I don't think it's that we forget. I think the issue is, is it's not an eventful moment that places some sense of wow sticker in your head. Yeah, to remember. And so it was still—

there were, there were still moments that were good, you know. I mean, we spent time with some family.

We did.

And, and it was— and that was good.

And it was, it was good.

But on that note, we should probably edit this Oh, we won't. So until our next episode, I hope you guys have a wonderful holiday. Have a very Merry Christmas.