2008 Year in Review

Alrighty, so, since this blog is still in its beginning stages, and since people are always curious to "catch up", I thought I'd do a 2008 year-in-review. Yes, I realize it's almost the end of February. But hey, when we finally get our own Christmas tree, you can be sure I'll be one of those people who keeps it up until at least the end of January. So, here goes - my novel about 2008 (yes, it will be long).




January
We're engaged! Josh's proposal was to the tune of "The 12 Days of Christmas", and thus spread out over the 12 days preceding Christmas. Each day I received a small, meaningful gift, and a line of a poem. This culminated in a final Christmas present of a beautiful ring and request for marriage. I delightfully (and a bit tearfully) accepted. My family celebrated, too, as they listened through the air vents upstairs. The month of January is thus spent sharing our exciting news with everything and being equally uncontrollably happy about being engaged and frantically worrying about planning a Seattle wedding from Philadelphia. Enough said.

February
Probably the hardest month to be teaching in Philly. Getting up at 5:45am, well over an hour before the sun rises, is not an easy task. I get semi-depressed and moody. Josh is a really good fiance and makes me tea and gives me back rubs. We continued our tradition of lesson planning at the bookstore, and during those times get excited about getting married. And then get stressed. And then we go teach little children all day.

March
Spring break! As we are both teaching, this is a very important time of the year. I head home to Seattle for some intense wedding planning (the only week of in-state planning I had, other than the 3 weeks before the wedding), and Josh goes back to New York City, to hang out with his family and friends. We also book our honeymoon to the Dreams Resort in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico - for anyone looking to travel on a budget, we got a fantastic, and I really mean fantastic, deal on orbitz.com! Go figure. I will say, we had already decided where we wanted to go (i.e. Puerto Vallarta), and done some tour book research at the bookstore to make a list of hotels we were interested in, which made the process of finding someplace on orbitz much easier. So, with honeymoon happiness on the horizon, we make it through the cold winter weather.

April
Our friends, Nate and Sharon, get married. My sister and brother-in-law, Airika and Gerald, of Gerald Pope Photography, come out to shoot the wedding. We also take them on a whirlwind tour of Philadelphia, during which they take some awesome engagement pictures of us in "Old City" and by the Philadelphia Museum of Art (think Rocky steps). Airika and Gerald use these Philly pictures, along with our Seattle pictures, to make an AWESOME wedding guestbook. We also made sure to take them to one of our favorite Philly restaurants, Eulogy, for some delicious mussels and Belgian beer.

May
Job change! Josh and I both commit to new jobs; Josh will be an intern at our church, working in the community and towards pastoral ordination, and I will be doing development work at an urban Christian school. We're both excited about the opportunities, and looking forward to having jobs that will let us have "real lives" once we get home (perhaps a good thing for what will be our first year of marriage). But, even though we're looking forward to evenings free of lesson planning and grading, I think we know we'll both miss teaching. August 10 starts to seem "not that far away"...

June
It starts to get hot in Philly. This is magnified by teaching in a classroom without any air conditioning, one fan, and windows that only open 6 inches. My 2nd graders get excited about our upcoming field trip - a visit to Josh's school/class, whom have been our pen pals all year. I finish teaching on a Friday and start my new job the following Monday. Our search for a house is in full swing. We've been looking for a house near our church, and have had weeks of coming up empty-handed. Finally, we get a lead, and end up really liking a house that's literally two blocks from our church, on a street with three other houses where church members live. Sweet! It's been abandoned for almost 2 years, and needs lots of work, but we go for it. Nice-sized living and dining rooms for having people over, and a pretty nice kitchen, aside from the fact that the total "work space" is less than 2 square feet. Time to hunt for a kitchen island (we found this one on craigslist for less than half the price). We also have three bedrooms upstairs - two pretty spacious ones for ours and a guest room, and a smaller one for our "study". This whole "getting married" thing suddenly becomes much more real...

July
The crazy month. Josh moves into our "new" (rental) house... while they are still working on fixing it up. I work the first week of the month, then have one week to move my stuff into the new house before flying back to Seattle. Except that on the first day of that one week, while at a routine doctor's appointment, I pass out, hit my head really hard on the floor (I had a lump on the side of my head that you could feel for over 3 weeks), have "seizure-like activity" and end up hospitalized for 3 days. Airika, who was visiting Gerald's family in North Carolina, flies up to help keep me from totally flipping out (I still don't remember much of the day it happened), and to help Josh move my stuff. The very incompetent doctors of Hahnemann Hospital tell me it was a seizure, I will have them for the rest of my life, and that I should go on medication immediately, even though they were unable to finish all the tests due to broken equipment. I am very unhappy about things. But I'm released, Airika and Josh move my stuff, and I fly back to Seattle where I am happy to be with my mom (sometimes you just need your mom). Josh, in his last few weeks of being a bachelor, flies to Hawaii to be a groomsman in one of his groomsman's wedding. He enjoys the beach and sun immensely (not that I'm still jealous, or anything).

August
A big month. First order of business - finding out if I'm really having seizures. Visit a doctor in WA who finishes the tests Hahnemann couldn't, and tells me that I'm completely fine, and don't need meds and lab work for the next 2 years. Whew.

Josh flies in on my birthday, August 3, exactly one week before our wedding. There's a bridal shower/birthday BBQ at my friends Patye and Minh's house, and life is just fantastic. Wedding planning the week before is hectic, but Josh and I both have a blast as our bridesmaids, groomsmen, and friends fly in. Then. August 10. August 10 is a really big day. We get married! It poured the day before, and I come my closest to having a "bridezilla" moment as I fret over whether it will rain the next day or not (for our outdoor wedding). August 10 dawns without rain, though there were a few clouds... which part as I walk down the aisle! It is a fantastic, wonderful, memorable day - check out our wedding slideshow!

The next day, we meet up with some out-of-town friends for lunch at Ivar's on the Seattle pier, and leave the next morning for Puerto Vallarta, Mexico! We have a fabulous time, complete with lots of sun, an ocean warmer than the pool, releasing baby turtles, far too much good food, and zip-lining through the jungle! (Though there aren't pictures up yet, there will be, I promise. I promise!) We return to Seattle with some nice tan lines, and have a couple days to repack and fly to New York City, where we have a Chinese reception with Josh's family and friends who couldn't make it out to Seattle. I enjoy the opportunity to wear my gorgeous wedding gown again (hehe), as well as show my mom, dad, and little brother, Jacob, around NY. I become sad when I have to leave early to attend a work retreat and return to "real life", but am excited to start said "real life" with Josh.

September
I discover I miss teaching. A lot. Josh does, too. But we're really happy to be starting our new life together... unpacking many, many boxes. Isn't that always how married life starts out?! We slowly make progress, and enjoy adjusting to our new neighborhood and way of life. I'm quickly caught up in figuring out my new job, as Josh starts working with one of our church's church plants, leading the after-school program. We like our new-found time, and love being married. Despite uncertainties regarding job direction, life is good.

October
The big news of October.... we're parents! We adopt two ridiculously cute kittens from PAWS - the Philadelphia Animal Welfare Society. We get one boy and one girl (both fixed) to keep each other company. (And just like with the wedding/honeymoon, pictures will be coming soon, promise). The boy quickly earns himself the name Captain Jack Sparrow, "Jack" for short; the similarities are so evident. Our girl is named Mizu, which is Japanese for "water". And, no, there's nothing special behind our cat's name meaning "water". We wanted to name her an Asian name, and since it's hard for me to pronounce the Chinese tones consistently (and comfortably), Josh was just reciting all the Japanese words he could remember as we sat in the car one day. Mizu just stuck. But, back to the kittens. They are wonderful and individual in every way. They follow us around everywhere, jump in the shower with us (yes, it's true!), play fetch (again, true!), and cuddle up on the couch. Every parent's dream (and the only kind of parents we want to be right now).

November
We get the chance to go up to Boston for a 3-day weekend! We stay with my good friends, Robin and Jason, from Wheaton, and play a number of great board games (Shadows Over Camelot, Munchkins, etc). We also make the trek into Cambridge to see one of Josh's old friends from high school who went to Harvard for undergrad, and my friend, Philip, who is working on his PhD at Harvard. Since I didn't grow up in the northeast, I very much appreciate the architecture and history of the campus. Plus, eating dinner at a restaurant named The Druid, makes it worth it in and of itself. We can't wait to go visit again! Thanksgiving break we go up to NY to visit Josh's family. The festivities include his aunt making a turkey for the 2nd year in a row, and me supplying some additional traditional Thanksgiving foods (think pumpkin pie). We also go in for a little day-after Thanksgiving shopping, and attend Josh's 10-Year High School reunion for Stuyvesant. Yup, he's ooooold!

December
December brings lots of Christmas parties and Christmas concerts... and time spent with families! We travel up to NY the weekend before Christmas to spend some time with Josh's family. A few highlights include opening gifts (and having his parents get really excited about Planet Earth), seeing Slumdog Millionare (I think my favorite movie of the year), and driving into Manhattan to see the lights and Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center. Then we fly out to Seattle... to 2 feet of snow! It truly was a winter wonderland. Josh spends his first Christmas with my family... and all of the unwrapping that that entails (the boys who marry into our family think it's crazy - we girls just know it's wonderful). Because of all the snow, we end up house-bound for the majority of the time, and play a lot of board games: Agricola (our newest favorite find), Munchkin/Super Munchkin, Thurn & Taxis, Power Grid, and Killer Bunnies, to name a few (I'm pretty sure there were more). Josh, brother-in-law Gerald, and little brother Jacob (i.e. "the boys") also build a snow fort wall/snowball targets at our house and help construct an igloo at my cousin's house, with some pictures here. We spend New Year's Eve house-sitting for Airika and Gerald, watching a movie, drinking some wine, and taking a walk together in the snow that started to fall around 10:30pm. In a beautiful place, surrounded by people we love, it's the perfect way to end one year and begin the next.