Welcome to the thePowell blog, the place where Brent writes a holiday newsletter once a year, and that’s pretty much it… Ha, well that’s what it’s used for these days. Goodness I miss the old days of writing regular posts on this thing, but you didn’t come here to read my lamentations of underutilized platforms. This was quite a year, you’ll want to stick around to read about it!
Family Updates
Chapter 6 of Fiery Fitz is blazing away. He is enjoying kindergarten, has accepted Jesus as his Lord and savior, and is constantly trying to make life an active sitcom. Seriously, there could be a laugh track and I wouldn’t at all be surprised. We made some good progress with skiing this winter and he gave baseball another round this year. He is a fierce friend to many and loves to make things.
Track 10 of Elaborating Elijah gives everyone a lot to think about. Oh the questions he has! Elijah’s mind never stops and with a love for reading, he is filling that mind with so much story, I’m surprised he can even function at times. He has also improved a lot skiing this winter in his last season with the all mountain ski club. He took me places that I’d rather not go and will no doubt surpass me in ability. This was his first year of full-rules kid-pitch baseball, and boy was it a step up from the past few years. The practices were harder and for the fist time, there were actually some stakes to the games. He also picked up the small business bug and started a lemonade stand to have some spending money and even donated a good portion to some good causes.
Volume 38 of Jackrabbit Jessica jumped into gear. Running is a strong part of her life and recently she smashed a long-standing (13 years) marathon personal best by finishing the Charlotte Marathon in under 4 hours! When she wasn’t training for a marathon, she was still busy keeping up with kids activities, running her photography business, and serving our church with her graphics and social media skills. This was also a challenging year as it started off with the passing of a good friend who lost the fight with cancer, but is basking in the joy of our savior. She also soaked in the final times to be had with her sister before she moved to Scotland. This involved a lot of trips which I’ll detail later.
Season 40 of the Interesting life of Brent Powell is going strong. I’m still working at Headwaters Economics. It really has been a great place for me to use many of my varied talents be it video, web production, graphic design, or now with this year, podcasting. I took house projects a little slower (you’ll see why later), which means that there are a lot of unfinished projects staring back at me. But hey, that means that I have some really strong 2026 goals. I continue to enjoy serving at church which also involves a bunch of media work and leading small groups. I even got to go on a trip to Dallas, TX for some leadership training and took the family up to Calgary to build some ministry partnerships with some pastors up there. I get to lead worship about once a quarter and definitely miss doing that more often and have tried to keep those skills more polished this year (I even bought a piano). I also helped put on the first annual Pioneer Crossings Relay running event and am helping with the marketing side of it. I’ve started writing down some stories of my experiences growing up off-grid in Oregon, so let me know if you’d rather hear them (podcast), or read them (book), or both.
The Dogged Duo of Stella and Willie. That’s right, we now have two dogs. We adopted Willie in January from my coworker’s dad who couldn’t keep up with the demands of a dog. He is a Golden Retriever, Black Lab mix and a great balance to the manic German Shorthair that is Stella. They get along great! Willie spends a couple days a week at the office with me and Stella has started training with Jessica on some of her runs.
Family wanderings
Utah national parks + bonus: One of the trips we did to enjoy more time with Rich and Krista before they left for Scotland was a fast and furious tour of 6 national park in 6 days over spring break. We hit Canyonlands, Arches, Capitol Reef, Bryce Canyon, Zion, and dropped down into Arizona to the Grand Canyon. Was it amazing, yes. But it was also unseasonably cold and wet. We had multiple run ins with snow, though I feel that added a special flare to our adventures. Would I recommend it, yes, but give yourself more time.
Lewis & Clark Caverns: Another trip with Krista. We took a day trip to the caverns. We came, we spelunked, we drove home.
4th of July in Oregon: We drove out to Oregon and camped on my parents property for the 4th. My siblings all came out and we celebrated some family time. We also started having some issues with the Outback of the inconsistent kind, but was a minor speed bump to an otherwise awesome time with family.
Silverwood Theme Park: Jess and Krista surprised the boys with a trip to northern Idaho to ride some rides and seek some thrills. I stayed home and worked on plumbing and wiring up a new location for our washer and dryer.
Camping in the Pioneers: We’ve done this nearly every year for the past few and we even were able to drag Krista one last time. Our time up there tends to be pretty chill with the occasional side-by-side ride to some mountain peaks or ghost towns.
North Dakota: Jessica’s parents moved out to North Dakota last year to LARP as farm owners, so we headed out and spent the weekend with them. We left the boys there for a week and Jess and I took a detour through Theodore Roosevelt National park on our way home. We had a very quiet house for a week before Jessica drove to Billings to pick them up. I stayed home and rented a skid steer to do some much needed earthwork on the property.
Beartooth Pass: We were supposed to go on an annual multi-family camping trip, but due to illness it fell through and we decided to still go on an adventure and drive the Beartooth highway in southern Montana. We boondocked one night and drove the highway the next morning. It was our first time and it didn’t disappoint! Unfortunately, I fell ill and we skipped a second night of camping as Jessica rallied and drove us all they way through Yellowstone and back up to Helena.
Glacier Speedrun: We were invited up to the Flathead area by some of Jessica’s clients-turned-friends for a wonderful evening and to take some photos of their Air BnB. We camped in a different friend’s backyard and then did a very quick driving tour of the Going to the Sun portion of Glacier National Park since we had our dogs with us. One of these days we’ll get back there and explore a bit more, it’s been too long.
Brent & Jessica go to the Baltics: To celebrate my 40th birthday Jessica and I ventured to the Eastern European country of Latvia. Everyone asks “why Latvia” and our answer is cheap flights. It was cheaper than many places in U.S to go to and we had a wonderful time exploring Riga, a couple coastal communities, many castles, and a couple palaces. It was pretty easy to get around by train and we rented a car to go to a couple places not as easy to get to. I would recommend it to anyone with a traveling spirit! We hope to get a post put together about it, as we found it an illuminating trip.
Calgary: Our church has been growing pretty steadily over the past few years and we at the point where we would like to start sending teams out on mission trips. Through our church’s network, we had a couple days of meetings in Calgary to discuss some options with our North American cousins. It was a two family trip, us along with our pastor’s family, so the ladies and kiddos had some fun while we were in meetings. We hung around an extra day and went to the Calgary Zoo. It’s crazy to think that a metro area of that size is just 6 hours to the north of us, we’ll definitely be going back.
Thanksgiving in Eugene: Remember the problems we had with the Outback, well we are still driving it, but don’t quite trust it for the long hauls anymore. So I put my years of researching a new family car (I have lists and tables) to buy and found a 2019 Toyota Highlander to fill the role. We took it out to Oregon after just a couple days of owning it. We did the 14-hour drive in one day with just two stops so we could make a family dinner. It was another awesome time with family (parents and all the siblings) that was a great end to our travels for the year.
What lies ahead
This next year has a few adventures predefined (Jess signed up for a marathon near Las Vegas and found some affordable tickets to Scotland), but most of the year is still to be determined. We’ll definitely be up at the ski hill trying to keep up with the kids. I’m sure that work will take me to some new places and that we’ll have some adventures in the great outdoors of Montana. We are getting ever closer to building a garage, hopefully no more setbacks this year. Maybe I’ll make some more progress on my book.
I hope that any and all who read this newsletter find peace in this upcoming holiday season. I also pray that you experience or grow in the hope that we have in Jesus Christ, the son of God, who died for our sins and was raised from the dead, conquering death and providing a way to righteousness and relationship with our creator. I truly believe this freedom exists and want it for you.
Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and have a blessed 2026!
Some random photos to pass the time with (click to enlarge)
