The requisite year end review

Here we are, sitting at the end of another year in my life. I have encountered blessings beyond belief and trials to make me realize how blessed I really am. Because I have no other creative way to give the run-down, chronologically it is.

January: We rang in the New Year's at Derek's house with a little too much alcohol and cocktail shrimp. The first month was full of lots of weekends spent traveling to Toledo and the surrounding area for speech tournaments with my hubby and some cool high school kids. My last semester of grad school started and I limited my commute to BG by setting up a practicum at ONU once a week. Jared, Derek, and I continued to do our weekly WOW (worship on Wednesday) service at the church in LaRue, despite waning attendance. I served as the New Attendees meeting coordinator for the annual OCPA conference in my hometown and got to meet some new student affairsy types.

February: More speech tournaments, more WOW services, more snow, more preparation for BG's Alternative Spring Break to NC (of all places!). As far as I can remember, nothing too exciting happened in February.

March: March marked the month that I began seriously applying for jobs. My resume had been written, reviewed, revised, rewritten, printed, and PDFed. I started with a position that looked okay, but really wasn't what I was looking for/qualified for and was promptly rejected. It was a feeling I would learn to hate over the next few months. I traveled to NC with 42 BG students and 3 grad students for a few days of hard work and relationship building. I am proud to say that the SheetrockStarz completed almost an entire house in the 3 days we were weilding hammers. Two of the speech boys qualified for the national tournament, which meant that we would be going to the Entertainment Capitol of the World in June! I attended a conference in Atlanta at the end of the month where I interviewed for some jobs and was "professionally developed". My birthday came and went and then my first nephew was born! On top of it all, I was still doing the grad school thing and the dreaded comps were right around the corner.

(March aparently was a busy month!)

April: The first weekend of April I spent in a computer lab, writing and writing and writing as much as I could think of for my comprehensive exams. As has been usual for me throughout my education, I was one of the first finished, which always makes me a little nervous. But, despite only studying for about 10 hours total (while some of my classmates studied for months), I passed with flying colors. Thank goodness! Now back to the job search... which was picking up significantly. Phone interviews either yielded on-campus interviews or rejections. My credit card bill still bears the mark of the on-campus interviews. I was offered my first job, but it wasn't the right fit at all, so I politely declined (which I think they saw coming). Forge ahead to...

May: Graduation! Quickly overshadowed by the fact that we had a plane to catch at 6:00 a.m. the next morning to fly to the Emerald City for a mini-vacation and job interview. We both loved the area and long to get back there someday, either for vacation or work. We'll see how that works out. Regardless, it was a great way to celebrate finishing my master's degree! A week after that fabulous trip, I flew to Long Island for another interview. Jared's job for the following year had been elimiated in a RIF, along with our friend Derek's, so we spent a lot of time just waiting to see where life would take us.

June: And we survived year one of marriage! We spent a (very hot) week in Las Vegas vacationing and being speech "parents" to the boys. They were cheated out of another round of competition (in our humble opinions) and were disappointed to find that their speech from last year advanced much farther than they had, but we had a great time. Derek happend to be there at the same time that we were, so we met up with him, too. I still didn't have a job by the time we returned, so I went back to work with the I CAN Center a couple days a week. If nothing else, that job helped me see more of the college campuses in Ohio than I did in living in that state almost my entire life!

July: As far as I can remember, we didn't do anything too exciting for the 4th. I still didn't have a job and that was becoming a tense subject around our house. We ended our WOW service since Derek was leaving for Alaska anyway and we were hopefully moving somewhere else. I led a tribe for VBS to help out a friend and a classmate from AU passed away. I had given up all hope at getting a job and then this happened. The rest is basically history.

August: Jared got my employment for his birthday and we moved to NC. I started a new job and Jared started losing weight (of which I am still jealous) and gained employment.

September, October, November, December: We lived through our first hurricane and only had a blown-in window to show for it. Jared left me to drive to Ohio for Dan and Kim's wedding, OSU lost some football games, UNC won some games. I spent a lot of time at the dog park. Jared worked a lot. I have seen more of my cousins since I moved here than I did while I was in college, which I really enjoy. Liza and I had standing weekly lunch dates, and I introduced Marti to the state farmer's market in Raleigh. My parents came to visit for a weekend. We cooked our first Thanksgiving meal together and drove to Ohio for Christmas. We are still establishing ourselves down here, trying to find things that we like doing and the time to do them.

Which leads us to now. Jared and I met 5 years ago tomorrow and I can't wait to start yet another year with him (even if he will be going to bed early to get up for work at 7 the next morning). I have a stable job, a loving family, and great friends. With all of that, I think I am ready to move forward into 2009.

For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne,
We'll tak a cup of kindness yet,
For auld lang syne!