There hasn’t been much going on around here the past few days (I know, the end of the semester), so I decided to follow Bored in Vernal’s example and reflect on what I have been doing for the past [5] Decembers (yes, she did 10, but that would be a lot longer, and besides, my husband gets sad when I talk about old boyfriends in nostalgic ways). And unlike her, I’m going to go forward instead of backward. So here goes:
December 2001:
I met my husband, started dating him, and got engaged. This was in the last 10 days of the month. Yes, I am insane. I was also a senior in college and was happy to finish some of my last classes. I spent finals week baking holiday treats and taking them to my friends (this was an annual ritual — who wants to actually study for tests?).
December 2002:
We were living in TX and I don’t remember much except that we went to VA to see our families. I was very excited about that, because I was not a fan of TX (anything about it, really). We drove home, which was long, but we survived. We decided that we’d probably fly home thereafter, though.
December 2003:
Our second in TX. We went home for Christmas again (we do every year). I was very happy about it again (I am every year). We flew this time.
December 2004:
Our first year in NC. We went up to VA for Christmas, even though I was 8.5 months pregnant. I figured the worst that could happen would be that I’d have the baby there and go to my mom’s house for a while afterward. We did in fact make it through the holidays without the baby coming, though. I accompanied Voices of a New Day (an area youth choir) for a couple of pieces on my flute at their concert at the Visitors Center.
December 2005:
Our second year in NC, but I actually spent almost all of the month in VA at my parents’ house. Why, you ask? Because I was pregnant with my second kid and extremely sick, and I called my mom around the first of the month and said (piteously), “Can you come get me?” She did, and she took care of my older son most of the month while I sat around being miserable (about all I was good for). That’s all I remember. My mom is great.
So, what have the rest of you been up to the past 5 Decembers?
All I can say is that I like Texas.
I have, in the past, hated Decembers. You’ll see why.
December 2001
Had my bankruptcy approved to cover the costs of a car accident that was my fault and health costs from a kidney stone I had earlier in the summer that cost $20,000!
December 2002
Worked. Not much else. Actually we had a huge snow storm. I was the skeleton crew at work, and I worked one weekend the whole time we were open. I doubled my check that period. 🙂
December 2003
I nearly tried to kill myself. I was on Paxil to handle depression, and well, it led me to nearly take my own life. My mom and my sister nearly threw me in a mental institution because I told them I wanted to take my life. Yeah, Christmas has not been fun with my family.
December 2004
I tell my girlfriend that I love her. Next month, I propose to her.
December 2005
We’re married. Life is happy and great. My wife is four months pregnant.
December 2006
A far cry from just three years ago. My how the world moves so fast…
Dec 2001- I was a freshman in college, and spent that Christmas at my parent’s house. Played with my nieces.
Dec 2002- Started dating a guy from college. Spent most evenings at my parent’s house chatting with him online. Brought him to my hometown for New Years eve.
Dec 2003- Got married to my Husband (not the same guy from the year before). Honeymooned over New Years eve.
Dec 2004- Announced to our families that we were having our first baby.
Dec 2005- Visited both our families, took pictures of our kid.
Christmases & Decembers are boring for me and my families. Thanksgivings & Novembers is where all the excitement is at.
Dec 2001: Graduated from BYU (2 mth pregnant) Spent Christmas in MI with hubby’s family.
Dec 2002: New baby, sent little sis to MTC. Christmas in AZ.
Dec 2003: Living in AZ w/ parents (since May when hubby graduated from BYU). Visit extended family in UT.
Dec 2004: First Christmas in our own home in Mesa, but we actually travel to MI to visit hubby’s fam. (while my fam goes to Hawaii, how unfair!)
Dec 2005: 8.5 mth pregnant with second child
Dec 2006: visitng MI again, this time we’ll have 15 people and 3 bedrooms, yikes! (We leave tomorrow!)
Lots of great memories. And, this is our second Christmas with the best garage sale buy ever: a goregous 9 ft Christmas tree!
1991 Xmas in Maryland (Got engaged)
1992 Xmas in Connecticut
1993 Xmas in Utah
1994 Xmas in Florida
1995 Xmas in Eastern Washington
1996 Xmas in Utah
1997 Xmas in Dominican Republic
1998 Xmas in Eastern Washington
1999 Xmas on South Padre Island, TX
2000 Xmas in Seattle
2001 Xmas in Seattle
2002 Xmas in Eastern Washington
2003 Xmas in Seattle (everyone at my house)
2004 Xmas in Seattle
2005 Xmas in Hawaii
2006 Xmas in Eastern Washington
Not much to brag about anymore, but those first 10 years of marriage it was pretty hopping.
Wow, what exciting lives you all lead! (Anonymous, I’m really glad to hear that recent Decembers have gone so much better than previous ones.)
Almost every December since 1998, our first Christmas away from our families, my husband and I have gone back to Utah to visit them. When we lived in South Dakota, we usually drove. I would do laundry and pack clothes and Christmas gifts all night while my husband slept. We would start out at 4:00 a.m., my husband driving and listening to Warren Buffet tapes while I slept. I remember waking up to watch the winter sunrise over the endless fields of snow after we’d crossed the Missouri River into Nebraska. We’d stop in Laramie for lunch, and mountains on the horizon meant we were nearing the state line. I remember listening to Karen Anderson’s book on Islam, Stephen King’s on writing, Annie Proulx’s The Shipping News, Aerosmith, the Indigo Girls, Handel’s Messiah, Bach.
Although those trips were exhausting, I’m nostalgic about them now that we live too far away to drive and have to deal with airports and tiny plane seats. There’s nothing like finally reaching the mountains as the sun is slanting through the snow-covered canyon walls and seeing the pine trees’ shadows stretch away east, getting to Park City with the sun going down and the lights all coming out, driving through Heber, around Deer Creek Reservoir, and down Provo Canyon in the early evening, and finally stepping out of the car into that perfect, crisp dry air that allows you to see some of the stars even in the suburbs and seeing the mountains, craggy and luminous with snow even at night. For all my deeply ambivalent feelings about Utah, it is the irreplacable landscape of home.
Not nearly so eloquent as Eve:
2001: I was a junior is high school, pretty much hating life.
2002: I was a senior in high school, we had the sister missionaries over, and they even spent the night. I wonder if that was weird.
2003: Freshman at BYU and relieved to be away from my roommate.
2004: Sophomore at BYU and the first time my whole family had been together since 2001 (because of missions).
2005: Junior year — First married Christmas. We went to Houston the day after Christmas to be with my husband’s family. First time to Texas. If it’s that hot in December, I will never go any other time of year. Sorry in-laws.
2006- Senior year (hurrah!) Whole family together again! And I don’t even have to go to Texas this year.
(and this makes me remember how incredibly young I am . . . )
Eve, we just took that trip through the mountains of Vernal/Roosevelt/Duchesne/Heber/Deer Creek/Provo Canyon to pick up our BYU girls and bring them home to for Christmas. What beauty! I took 357 pictures of the scenery with my new digital camera.
cmac, LOL. I was just thinking how incredibly OLD I am. (We’d have to go back to 1988 to find my junior year of high school.)
BinV, oh oh oh…I miss the mountains! If you and some of our other Utah Bloggernaclers could all be arranged into one ward and I could be in it, I’d move back in a flash.
Bored in Vernal,
Aren’t digital cameras great? Ever since my wife and I got one, I have not stopped taking pictures, mostly of our incredibly cute kids. I take so many that my wife and sisters actually mock me and call me a “photo snapping lunatic.” Can you imagine? 🙂
Ziff, coughcoughphotosnappinglunaticcough, I have to admit that your kids are so incredibly cute that they could probably drive even me over the border into digital-camera mania land.
I can’t wait to see them next week and be amazed at how much taller they are than they were last year.
Digital cameras are great because not only can you take lots of pictures, but you can edit them too.
BiV, my mother came from the Uintah Basin and we always went there to visit family and go to reunions. The views through Provo Canyon, Heber, Daniel’s canyon, Strawberry valley, and on out across the flats are unique, and the presence of mountains and their shadows, especially on snow, would be worthy of at least 357 pictures.
Eve, next week we’ll be doing I-80 across Nebraska and Wyoming, but our tastes are much more lowbrow than yours and your husband’s. Instead of Warren Buffett, it’ll be Jimmy, the book on disc will be by P.G. Wodehouse about the adventures of Bertie Wooster and Jeeves (yes, that is my wife’s gift to me, and she doesn’t know that I know), and there is something about long, caffeinated drives that requires music by Lynnyrd Skynnyrd and ZZ Top.
Mark IV, heh heh. My husband and I actually had a terrible time finding books to agree on. He usually can’t be persuaded to read fiction (“where’s the data?”)–even after I found a study which I can’t figure out how to link to right now suggesting a correlation between reading fiction and the development of empathy. But he likes history, biography, that kind of thing, so that was usually our compromise. The Warren Buffett tapes were 100% his choice, but to my surprise he actually picked out Stephen King’s book on writing and really enjoyed it, and one year we listened to a terrible dramatization of The Lord of the Rings, the story of which he also enjoyed (after having seen the movies).
Music posed similar problems. He likes classical, but every time I put it in he would complain that he needed something more raucous to keep him awake, so we usually ended up going back to the louder of his CDs I could stand (Aerosmith, Bon Jovi, Morrissey, the soundtrack to The Rocky Horror Picture Show–bleah). I wouldn’t recognize a Lynnyrd Skynnyrd song if I heard it, but I do know the name from his CD collection.
I’ve heard great things about P.G. Wodehouse. I’ve never read him, but it was my impression he’s at least sort of highbrow…?
Eve, Wodehouse’s characters have names like Looney Binney, Stilton Cheesewright, and Gussie Fink-Nottle, they all belong to the Drones Club, and they are forever getting themselves into impossible problems of the romantic variety that can be solved only by Jeeves’ superior brain power and discreet manners. His novels are worth at least one belly laugh per page, but I’m not sure they can be called even middlebrow… 🙂 Do yourself a favor and read just one, but don’t blame me if your sides hurt afterwards.
Sweet Home Alabama?
OK, Mark, I’ll give Wodehouse a try. But hey, he was reviewed in the Atlantic Monthly–just how lowbrow can he be? (Is he one of those lowbrows for highbrows?)
Sweet Home Alabama is a Lynnyrd Skynnyrd song? My husband sings it around the house sometimes, and he dragged me to the movie a few years ago….