special edition: sretan božić svakome

the christmas letter

*this postcard may be too long for your email provider. if it’s clipped short, click “view entire message” at the bottom to see it in your browser*

2023 had barely dawned and we were already on a plane to Finland. The northernmost reaches of Finland in fact, above the Arctic Circle, in January. Daylight averaged 4.5 hours each day in Levi. What some might say was a crazy trip set the tone for what turned out to be a wild year—21 trips, silly adventures, a move abroad. Our brand of wild.

We spent a week cross-country skiing under a perpetual sunrise/sunset, dog-sledding through frozen forests, eating reindeer and squealing with glee at the Northern Lights. It was utterly perfect.

It was my 25th season skiing and I made the most of an excellent coverage year braving i70 traffic with my best ski buddy, my dad, many a weekend, taking Hazelnut on her first road trip to Santa Fe to get in a few runs at Taos and checking out Steamboat’s truly burly trees for the first time on a fun spring weekend. Topher, whose been out of ski commission for the last five years thanks to dislocating his knee, finally braved the slopes again this year and we got a few days in together as he re-remembered the motions. We closed out the year with a May tail-gate party for one of our besties at Arapahoe Basin.

Since we got married, we’ve been working behind the scenes on how to move abroad. Our vision changed several times, but in a random bahn mi shop in Denver this spring we made a decision: 2023 would be the year we finally did it. We set our eyes on Spain (I know, I know, wait for the plot twist) and started working on everything it would take to get visas and move across the Atlantic.

I successfully closed my first magazine season at National Park Trips with four issues under my belt as editor this spring and, knowing that I had limited time left in the states, crammed a ton of work travel in this spring. I say “work travel” but getting to road trip to national parks rarely feels like work. I spent a few solo days hiking through the Superstition Mountains near Phoenix and Sedona’s red rocks, and then my friend Natalie joined me for my first week in the southeast. We did a whirlwind trip through Great Smoky Mountains National Park, hiking, biking and eating as much barbeque as possible. The cherry on top was catching the synchronous firefly show, laying on a random trail after dark and watching as thousands of fireflies blinked in tandem.

Baby Hazelnut turned one in May and celebrated with all her best dog and human friends at my parents’ ranch. It was Hazelnut’s first summer living with us and we made sure to show our little puppy all the best parts of a Colorado summer. She went on her first camping trip in Telluride and rode the gondola and she climbed her first mountain (Medicine Bow Peak in Wyoming). She splashed in alpine lakes and went firefly watching and ate ice cream and fried chicken sandwiches and s’mores.

Somehow, my dad had never been to Crested Butte despite having lived in Colorado for more than 30 years so we rectified that on Father’s Day. We caught a late season blizzard over Cottonwood Pass and bundled as much as humanly possible for a frosty and muddy mountain bike through the first of the lupines. Of course, we got in the obligatory Secret Stash stop.

By summer we’d hit a road block in our Spain plans. The country’s brand-new digital nomad visa application required a special form from the IRS. The problem was, the IRS wasn’t granting it for digital nomads. It effectively halted our plans and those of every other American hoping to move to Spain and work remotely for an American company. We quickly pivoted to our plan B: Croatia.

Amidst fingerprinting, getting documents certified and getting rid of all of our stuff, we packed our summer full of adventures and time with our favorite people.

My goal for the summer was to prioritize crazy adventures. The kind that have no purpose other than being a wild and silly goal. I roped my dad into the first one: Boulder’s Three Peak Traverse, a 14-mile trek across the city’s tallest summits. We started before dawn and clocked more than 4,000 feet of elevation up and down and up and down the skyline. It was definitely Type II fun, but I loved getting to stand on top of the peaks I’ve looked at every day over the last decade as I’ve gone to school, lived and worked in Boulder.

Taylor Swift decided to come to Denver for my birthday and one of my oldest friends flew out from Virginia to go to the show with me. We spent a beautiful weekend hiking with her baby, making friendship bracelets (IYKYK) and then singing ourselves hoarse at her show. It felt like a very full circle moment, to go from listening to Taylor Swift CDs in my car after theatre rehearsals in high school together to being almost 30 and experiencing her in person at each other’s sides.

I may have used my birthday (and the fact that we were moving abroad) to persuade our friends into accomplishing two more crazy adventures with me. The first was a bike ride to everyone’s favorite pizza restaurants in Denver on a scorching July day. Eight of us biked through Denver’s streets, stopping for slices as we went and trying not to melt. It may have also ended up being Type II fun.

The stars aligned and pretty much all of our friends were able to get together and go camping in a remote part of Colorado for my 29th birthday. My friend Ben flew in from LA and my sister, Gianna, drove down from Nebraska to go with us. 12 of us spent a semi-fun, semi-miserable weekend dodging apocalyptic numbers of black flies and thunderstorms that kept us from climbing the mountain we had our eyes on, but I felt so incredibly loved to get to spend time outside with all my favorite people.

In August my little sister turned 25 and she, my dad and I went to Buena Vista to climb a 14er to celebrate. We did Tabaguache via an alternate route that saw no traffic and managed to see only two other groups the entire day. It was a special, wild and remote feeling experience, even when we got chased down by hail. We celebrated our awesome summit with a soak in Mount Princeton Hot Springs.

As August came to a close we had one last U.S. adventure to tackle before we moved abroad. We drove out to Salt Lake and took Hazelnut on her first backpacking trip with our friend Blake in the Uintahs. It was a fun weekend full of delicious food, bountiful wildflowers, gorgeous views and hiding in our tents playing card games in the rain.

If the theme of 2023 was wild, nothing fits that bill more than Topher finally getting the greenlight for knee surgery two weeks before we were due to move. Five years ago he dislocated his kneecap and partially tore his meniscus skiing and it’s been a painful few years for him since. He gets an MRI every year or so when the pain flares up, but has been told to do PT and grin and bear it by doctor after doctor. After spending the year as a woodworker in a custom furniture shop and being on his feet and lifting heavy things day in and day out, he was in a ton of pain. We decided one more MRI before we left the American healthcare system couldn’t hurt. It turns out 5th(?) times the charm. This doctor found a floating piece of cartilage that had grown significantly over the years that he was willing to remove. Topher went in for knee surgery 16 days before we moved and recovered like a champ. He’s pretty much pain free now and it feels like such a radical good thing.

We fit so much into the summer, but before we knew it, it was time to move. We spent a hectic week doing Goodwill runs, selling furniture and loading the rest into a storage unit (and the rest rest into our apartment dumpster at midnight—oops) and stayed with my parents for a few days while I finished up the first magazine issue of our 2024 season at work. Saying goodbye to our people was the hardest. Each cheese plate filled, ice cream cake fueled goodbye had us crying buckets on the car ride back. We lingered too long in the driveway saying goodbye to my dad and set off across the Midwest, bawling our eyes out.

This is the part of the year where I started postcards from europe. If you’re new here click to read a weekly installment of our life abroad. If you’ve been around since the beginning, you already know what we’ve been up to, but here’s a quick recap:

We drove from Denver to Chicago, flew to Munich, Germany and then drove from Munich to Croatia. We did this in massive, 12-passenger vans to fit Hazelnut’s equally massive kennel, since of course she joined us. We trepidatiously loaded her on a Lufthansa flight—the shortest one we could manage—but our worries were unfounded. She did great and settled immediately into her new life in Europe. You can read about our journey here.

We moved sight unseen to the town of Pula, Croatia, on the Istrian peninsula an hour from both Italy and Slovenia and right on the sea. It’s been three months of adjusting to life abroad. It’s harder than I’d ever imagined, but we’re also handling it better than I ever dreamed we would. Our little family is intrepid and adventurous and I’m so proud of us. We still don’t have our visas, but we have an apartment and (almost!) a car and Pula is starting to feel a bit like the home it’ll be for the next year.

Our biggest desire in moving abroad was getting the chance to explore Europe and we’ve already had so many adventures. From chasing fall in Lake Bled, Slovenia to hiking in Plitvice Lakes National Park here in Croatia and the Italian Dolomites, Christmas markets in Austria and Zagreb, we’ve earned our Platinum status on Expedia this year.

We’re celebrating our first Christmas away from home under a tiny Christmas tree over a pan of homeade lasagna. We’re homesick, but we’re also so grateful for this adventure. The adventure that this entire year has been. We can’t wait to see what 2024 has in store.

Wishing a peaceful, adventurous new year with a bit of wild thrown in for both you and the world.

Sretan Božić, Merry Christmas,

Mikaela, Topher + Hazelnut

P.S. If you want to keep up-to-date with us in the new year, subscribe to postcards from europe and you’ll get a weekly update in your inbox.