Merry Christmas!

Well, it's Christmas—and Seth is asleep, I can't sleep, and Matt is at Children's for the morning. So here is our year in review! I saw this on a couple blogs and copied. :)

1. What did you do in 2008 that you'd never done before? Vacationed for a month with a kiddo, and only 2 carry-on bags! YES! Believe it! And camped in a foreign country (8 days straight :)). 

2. Did you keep your new years' resolutions, and will you make more for next year? Our new years' resolution last year was to figure out how to move to San Diego. And we did! Woo hoo! I can't think of a resolution this year.... 

3. Did anyone close to you give birth? Seth has three new cousins this last year. And a few good friends had babies, too.

4. Did anyone close to you die? Matt's Grandma Williams.

5. What countries did you visit? England (and Wales... not technically another country, I guess...), Italy, and France.

6. What would you like to have in 2009 that you lacked in 2008? To be migraine-free. 

7. What date from 2008 will remain etched upon your memory, and why? March 20th. Match Day! (We looked toward that date for four years.... Maybe longer. And then it was GREAT.)

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year? The Match!

9. What was your biggest failure? Not curing this headache problem. 

10. Did you suffer illness or injury? Matt broke his knee (he has a bone fragment floating on his knee cap now! Ew!) and suffered a Seth-inflicted recurrent eye injury that he just figured out is really cold-sore herpes (on his EYE! augh! antiviral meds are working great, though). I tore some tendons in my foot. We all got our usual bouts of hospital-shared viruses. 

11. What was the best thing you bought? Plane tickets. 

12. Where did most of your money go? Tuition. Then our house. (I know SoCal is supposed to be wildly expensive but, believe it or not, tuition was much more.... Glad to not be paying that anymore!)

13. What did you get really, really, really excited about? Match Day! Graduation! Moving Day! Woo hoo!!!

14. What song will always remind you of 2008? We heard American Boy literally a dozen times a day—at least—when we were in Europe (I'll never forget walking past a pre-teen German boy who was trying to sing it to his grandma... ha ha!!). Then we came back and no one had heard of it. When the radio stations finally started playing it as "a brand new single" we had to laugh—and also soak up the feeling of being in a pizzeria in Rome, or something. We totally got sick of that song, but it's full of happy nostalgia now!

Compared to this time last year, are you:

15. Thinner or fatter? Just the same, I think.

16. Richer or poorer? Eesh. It seems like we're able to spend exactly the same (which isn't a lot). However, the difference between what we were taking out in loans last year and what we're earning this year is at least a $90,000 raise! [whistle]

17. What do you wish you'd done more of? sitting at the beach at sunset, but the sun started setting too early :-(

18. What do you wish you'd done less of? going to doctors about my headaches. ugh.

19. How will you be spending Christmas? With Matt and Seth at home. When Matt gets home from work, that is.... Hehe. (We might have "Christmas" on another day. Then again, Matt might get home really early. We'll see! :))

20. Did you fall in love in 2008? With Michelangelo. (And pastries and pizza.) So did Matt. Ha ha!

21. What was your favorite TV program? The Mentalist.

22. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year? Ha ha!! No, I think all the people I hate I already hated last year. (Huh?!) Actually, I honestly don't think I hate anyone. Hillary Clinton...? Hehe.

23. What was the best book you read? The Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B. DuBois; The Four Loves, C.S. Lewis

24. What was your greatest musical discovery? I saw Stravinsky's Rite of Spring in concert and (gasp!) actually liked it! No.... Loved it! I still can't believe it....

25. What did you want and get? San Diego. :) Flowers. Green. Ocean! Gorgeous and pleasant time outside every day. Heaven! 

26. What did you want and not get? A dinner alone with Matt in some romantic spot in Europe. Oh well. (We're still so glad Seth went with us. :)) 

27. What was your favorite film of this year? Uh.... Was anything that great this year...? We haven't seen many movies lately.

28. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you? I turned 27 and I can't remember what I did! (Old age.... ;))

29. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying? It was a great year.... :)

30. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2008? What will fit in a carry-on? Also, I refuse to wear a maternity shirt. (What is with that insanity? You all look pregnant, people!) 

31. What kept you sane? Matt and Seth. (And grandmas taking Seth every now and then. :))

32. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most? Did I fancy? Hehe. Barack Obama was totally fascinating—even if I didn't vote for him. And Joe Biden is hilarious. Ha ha ha!!

33. What political issue stirred you the most? San Diego's Prop D! And it passed! (Makes the alcohol ban on all beaches permanent! Thank you, voters.)

34. Who did you miss? Since our year of luxury ended, I miss Matt when he actually has to (gasp!) go to work. That was a long time of being together all day....

35. Who was the best new person you met? We've made some good friends here! And I just met Kristin's baby, Evelynne, who was SO fantastically fun. :)

36. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2008: Being outside is food for the soul! Can't live without it.... :)

37. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year: Here Comes the Sun says it all. :) The smile's returning to the faces! :)

The Secret to our Success

Many of you may look at our life and wonder to yourselves, how do they do it?! How do they stay so happily married in the face of such hardship?! (Hehe.) Years of medical school. Years of snow. A wild child. (Just kidding. He's delightful. :)) Memories of (gulp)...no, i can't say! (But our whole "falling in love" and "honeymoon" phases could have failed right away given the anti-ambience of our stifling locale! Ugh.) Years to come of residency, and years to come of eating the same three meals over and over. Hehe (I'm not very creative with cooking). And to make matters worse, it's now the 7th year of marriage, which is the most common year of failure! How do they do it? Well, wonder no longer! I'm going to tell you the secret to our success! It's (are you ready?) . . . sharing one car! [oohs and ahs from the audience, then thunderous applause!] Yes, yes! It's true! Nothing can bond two people quite like sharing a car. Hehe.

We've spent the last seven years or so anticipating that we may soon need a second car. We keep deciding to wait and see how it goes, and then we keep "ending up" in the perfect situation to still have just one. It actually feels kind of Providential. No, not kind of. Very. (It's amazing how when you make something good your priority—in our case, maximizing our time together—you're blessed with ways to achieve it.)

When we got married, I managed to get a job on campus (I know all of BYU's admissions secrets! :)) while Matt finished school—we rode there together, rode home together. Excellent. When Matt graduated and we moved, we were both looking for jobs all over San Diego county and thought, ok, now we're for sure going to need another car! Bummer! But then, guess what? Matt got a job at UCSD and I got a job down the street. No joke! So we commuted together, ate lunch together, and life was great. Then Matt started medical school and we said to ourselves, selves, we are gonners this time. Time to get another car. And then I got a job two blocks away from the medical school.... You may be wondering if this is all a lie. Too impossible. No, not a lie! Well, was I looking for jobs just nearby, then? No! I was looking all over Denver! And I end up a couple blocks away.... I'd drop Matt off at school, then head over to my awesome, amazing special ed kids, and we'd both finish about the same time and go home together. Once or twice a week, Matt was even able to come help in our classroom! It was great to spend so much time together. But what would we do when Matt started his third year and would be working in hospitals and clinics all over the place? Get another car...? Wrong again! Because I just happened to have Seth just as Matt finished his second year of med school (and, believe me, we had no measure of control as to that timing)—he had a couple months when all three of us were home all day together (heaven!), then he started his 3rd-year work. I left my job to be home with Seth, so we just drove Matt to work and picked him up. (And on impossibly miserable days when there was no way we'd go out in the heat or cold, Matt just took the car.) By the time we were moving to San Diego again this year, we were hooked on sharing. :) And found a home only a few miles from his hospitals, so sharing is super-easy.

And here's why it's the glue that holds us together. (Hehe.) It's so nice to feel like we're sort of living the same life! All from just sharing a car...? Well, kind of! This week we have another car around and, while it's been nice to not get up at 5:30 in the morning to take Matt to work, I'm sitting here feeling like I haven't seen him since we went to bed last night. I kind of sort of woke up very, very briefly while he said good-bye this morning.... And then he left. Off to his life, while I stay here with mine. And then he'll come home who knows when. And we won't be getting in touch with each other about how the day is going and when he thinks he'll be done with his patients. As convenient as it is, we're looking forward to giving back the second car!

I know it's bound to happen sometime that I just can't get up with Matt anymore—kids will be going to school, or whatever, and we'll be glad for another car. But, for now, we love that we've always gotten up together, spent a little more time with each other, gotten in touch with each other during the day, seen each other a little earlier when work is done.... It sure beats a foggy, early-morning kiss good-bye! And helps me feel, too, like I'm a little more a part of his "work life"—like we're doing that together, too. Anyway, it's nice. Who knew having such an inconvenience could be so rewarding? :)

(The video didn't make it to Google Reader.... But it's on here.)

You've probably heard about the tragic plane crash in San Diego this week. I hope you've also had a chance to see this good, good man speak to the press about it. A military jet returning to Miramar crashed into his home when the second engine failed only two miles from the runway. The pilot ejected safely after attempting to steer the jet toward an empty canyon. 

Imagine the sorrow of this poor man. While he was at work, this totally insane mishap took the lives of his wife, his two baby daughters (one was 15 months old, the other a newborn), and his wife's mother who had come from Korea to help with the new baby. They had only moved into the home a few weeks ago. 

When we first heard of the crash and it still seemed like maybe there weren't any casualties, both Matt and I were questioning of the pilot's decision. Did he really eject and save himself while this plane was about to crash into people's homes? Seriously? We wondered. . . maybe he really had no control over the plane and had no choice but to bail. Or maybe he was panicked for his own life and was hating himself for not doing more. . . . 

If we had questions, I can't imagine what might have gone through this young father's heart. He spoke to the press the day after the accident and—imagine—asked us all to pray for the pilot, that he would not suffer because of this accident. He called him a treasure for our country, and said sincerely that he didn't blame him at all. It was heartbreaking when he said that he knew others had experienced even more painful things than this, and "please tell me how you do it—I don't know what to do. . . ."

I can't stop thinking about this man....

I've thought about how litigious our culture has become—how quickly we seek to lay blame on someone when we suffer. But here is one man who, in the crux of his unimaginable suffering, and not even knowing enough details to really be sure the pilot had done all he could do, here he is asking the public to remember him—the pilot—in our prayers. What an inspiring example he has been—a truly Christlike example in this tragedy.

I'm sort of hesitant to post this news video—I wish the extra commentary didn't make the story so trite. But I do hope people get a chance to hear Dong Yun Yoon's words. (His press conference—I think it was 7 minutes long—is probably on the internet somewhere unedited. It's worth watching.) I believe so much in the inherent goodness of mankind—of our truly divine natures. We are subject to so many frailties in this mortal world, and are rarely able to avoid them enough to act up to par with that nature. But we see so much goodness. We really do. And this week, Mr. Yoon showed us some of that great Light. It makes me feel so incredibly petty for the little grudges I sometimes hold. . . . I hope I can continue to grow away from that, and learn forgiveness and love like our infinitely forgiving and perfectly loving Savior. And I'm thankful to see His light in others.

Something Funny. . .

I read the Twilight series.

Ha ha! If you're not laughing right now, you probably don't know me. But, believe me, it's funny. I laugh every time I think about it. I read the Twilight series! Ha ha ha! (See? :))

Not that I never read easy-to-read books, because I definitely do. I just don't tend to be very interested in: A) novels written for 13-year-olds; B) novels everyone—everyone—is reading (makes me very skeptical... :)); C) novels written for 13-year-olds that 33-year-olds are acting like 13-year-olds over. Oh, and D) novels about vampires. Hehe. 

But, here's the funniest thing: I actually liked them! Ha ha! Not in a way to make me carve "I heart Edward" into my furniture or anything. . . . Hehe. Or to bang on Barnes and Noble windows with 100 wild women to get the newest release when the clock strikes twelve. . . . But I liked them. :) So much of the story was really very sweet, and I think Stephenie Meyer actually did a really decent job at creating interesting, whole characters (for the most part). It was kind of fun! 

(Oh, and don't worry—no spoilers here. :))

Here's my great sorrow, though. . . . Oh! The agony! I think my favorite book of the series was Twilight—and its big climax could have been SOOOOO good. You know. . . . The part with the. . . hand. . . . :) OooOOOoooh.... [While I shudder.] Could have been amazing. But it kind of fell flat. I finished and thought, argh! If only she hadn't written it from Bella's perspective! And by the fourth book, when she did experiment with writing from another perspective I was seriously mad at her. Why not in the first book?!!! Why?!! Why?!!! Seriously, it might just be silly teen fiction about vampires, but that one scene could have been a really awesome conflict. I drool just thinking about its awesomeness! But it doesn't exist. So sad.... (I do predict, however, that she's going to pull an Orson Scott Card one of these days, and rewrite the series from Edward's perspective. And then—then!—we'll get that scene in all its glory. We'll see! I think I'll be right. :))

One reason I had fun reading these is that the writing style totally made me laugh! Back before I had even heard of these books, a friend of mine asked if I'd read them, saying they totally reminded her of me! When Matt read them a long while later, it dawned on me that those were the books she was talking about—I told Matt what she had said and he started laughing his head off. "It's true! They totally sound like you! HA HA HA!!" And several others agreed as well. It made me curious to read them! But I didn't, and then I forgot again about all those people talking about it. When I was a couple chapters into Twilight, I suddenly had the thought that "haha! This sounds like me!" And then I remembered that I wasn't the first to think that. Hehe. Anyway, that made for some fun reading for me. Bella talks just how I talk in my journal! See what I mean that my posterity will have the all wrong impression? But I can't help it! It's just too fun to write that way! :)

So Bella and I talk much the same way, but there are also lots of other reasons we're kindred spirits! It was like reading a really tripped-out story about myself! (Not that I attract impossibly perfect vampires. :))

• She's lethally bad at volleyball! (Don't ever, ever ask me to play. Really. :))

• In high school, she was totally disgusted with herself when she was dumb enough to crush on someone.

• But she hardly ever had a crush on anyone. And she always rolls her eyes at shameless flirts. Hehe. (So dumb. Flirts are, that is. :))

• She'd rather wear jeans! Always. :)

• She loathes the idea of school dances. 

• At any time, she might randomly start comparing life to a scene or character in some book her audience probably hasn't read. :)

• She uses m-dashes and ellipses liberally—as in this sentence—to add dramatic impact to her run-on sentences. . . . Yes!

• She often accidentally led guys on (sorry all...lots of you... :-|) and then acts the same way about letting them down that I always did. Very stressful. ;-)

• She inherently distrusts any female who appears to spend more than two minutes on her hair and/or wears too much make-up.

• She always has a guy sneak into her room for the night. (Oh, um. . . . Uh. . . . ;))

• Her sense of humor is exactly like mine! Haha! Exactly! Especially when she'd crack some cynical little joke in the midst of some actually-horrible thing. That's me! Made me laugh.

• Oh, and she also deals with pain exactly like me. I was totally in her head on that.

• She's almost entirely unreadable and hard to get to know. Does not wear her heart on her sleeve, whether she wants to or not (but she usually doesn't want to :)).

• Her modus operandi (ha ha! That's such a ridiculous term!) is self-control! I was more than totally in her head about that. Bella never would have wanted to get drunk—way too creepy to not be in control. . . . Riding on the back of a vampire. . . ? Having needles stuck into you? Being really. . . thirsty? ;) I was always in her mind with stuff like that because I'm exactly the same! 

It was kind of weird! The only times I didn't feel like I was actually reading about myself were when she'd tell someone off with some beautiful quip—it was always the exact kind of thing I'd think but not have the guts to say. Then again, my life hasn't been quite so intense as Bella's. Hehe. Maybe under considerably more pressure, I'd actually say those things. :) If I hung around with vampires, that is. Ha ha! Anyway, it definitely amused me. Me and Bella. Twinners. :) Go figure. 

So my basic take on the stories were that Bella was fun, and that Stephenie Meyer definitely succeeded with Edward. (Could there be a better Prince Charming? The impossibly beautiful and powerful man who loves you SOOOO much he won't. . . um. . . . eat you. . . . Ha ha! Oh, but of course he really wants to. Because he's sensual that way. . . . Hehe.) And all the Cullens were great. Very intriguing. But I hated—loathed!—the whole Jacob sub-plot. Blech. When it was clear he wasn't going away, I almost stopped reading! Halfway through the fourth book I was starting to find him a little interesting. But up until that point, the whole Jacob story was really lame—and totally brought out things that were entirely uncharacteristic of people! It just didn't make sense. It was lame. I hated it! ("I look upon you with a disgust that amounts to absolute detestation!" :)) I don't think Ms. Meyer got in the groove on that one until it was way too late. . . . (However, to be fair, my favorite chapter in any book—since the hand scene wasn't quite what it could have been—was the one called "there are no words for this," or something like that. It was excellent!)

The rest of my take is summed up with saying that the first and fourth books were my favorite. And the second book was mostly really painful and boring. And the third book was somewhere in between. . . . :) Overall, I enjoyed them about 1000 times more than I expected.

Anyway. . . . Twilight books. They amused me. :) And kind of fun to have such a totally easy read. I don't, however, suggest reading the whole series too quickly. Hehe. I was trying to get the whole thing over with so I wouldn't have to bring any books home with me (from Matt's mom), and I definitely over-consumed. Ha ha! My dreams have been insane. It's really ridiculous! It reminds me of when we watched the entire series of Lost in a just a few weeks a little while ago—bad, bad idea! (Don't do it!)

Oh, and inquiring minds keep wanting to know if we're going to see the movie. :) Eh. Not without a substantial bribe. :) All we needed to see was a picture of "Bella" and "Edward" staring longingly into each other's pathetic teenager eyes to know we'd never see the movie. They were no WAY Bella and Edward. Fun books, but I'd bet my life they made a painful movie! Coffee-shop-flirty-nerd-emo-"Edward" and too-much-makeup-"Bella" can't be as fun a story. . . . :) And I can't watch movies of books, anyway, without the movie images replacing what my own imagination came up with (hence the reason I despise animated scripture videos—I'll never be able to picture Abraham and Isaac as non-cartoons again!). So. . . . No. No movie for us. Besides, it looks like there are a bunch of good movies coming out soon! We've gotta save up. :)

So tardy, I know—but I'm still in a Thanksgiving kind of mood! We've been out and about, and then tired, and then decorating for Christmas, so my pathetic little blog has been neglected. Then I thought it seemed anti-climactic to come back after so long without a post that was really, really special. :) Oh well, though—I'm back anyway!

I hope you all had a magnificent Thanksgiving full of much giving of thanks. And turkey breasts instead of whole turkeys. Ha ha! We were at Matt's parents' house for Thanksgiving—when whole turkeys were on sale for only $9.99, that seemed like a great deal. Until the gorgeous, perfectly roasted, tantalizing bird turned out to be. . . FROZEN on the inside! I had to laugh. I don't think I've ever seen a frustration-free Thanksgiving when a whole turkey was involved. They're just trouble. :) I feel to write yet another Ode to the Turkey Breast. Hehe. (Yum!)

We had a fun Thanksgiving—and even felt full of much thanks. :) A fun anniversary, too! I think our anniversary will be on Thanksgiving maybe. . . next year? That will be kind of fun. When we picked our wedding date we had mischievous plans to visit family for Thanksgiving, then ditch the kids and go off for mini-honeymoons by ourselves! YES! Muwahahahaha! But so far. . . we have yet to implement that plan. . . . Maybe next year will be the year. :)

Happy Thanksgiving. And Happy Christmas, too! :)