Goodbye 2008

One last post for the year. My Christmas vacation is fast coming to an end. I fly back to Utah on Friday. It has been lovely to have a couple of weeks to relax and not worry about homework or reading or papers. They'll all be reappearing shortly, but I'm fully enjoying their absence.

As you can see, I changed things up a bit on here. I like to switch things around now and again. I don't have a house where I can rearrange furniture, so this will have to do. I'm going to switch up some pictures and update it a bit more, so check it again soon.

Christmas itself was nice. It's a lot smaller affair than it used to be now that all the cousins are married with kids and inlaws to please. It was just our family plus Grandpa Lee and Grandma Helen for dinner this year. Aunt Jean and Uncle Steve stopped by later in evening for a visit too. We all ate good food and watched Wall-E, one of our family Christmas presents. One of the happiest gifts we received was the news that my brother Luke and his wife Janna are expecting a fourth child in June! They don't find out the sex beforehand, but we are all hoping for a girl! After 3 cute boys, Janna is a bit outnumbered. It's time for some catch-up!

It has snowed almost every single day this whole break. I think I heard that all in all, we have received somewhere around 50 inches in the last two weeks. The snow has been interspersed with some rain, so it's only about 2 1/2 feet deep now, but that is still a lot of white stuff. I'm thankful to be from a place that doesn't have to worry about drought!

This has been quite the year. I've set foot in 5 countries, made 80+ new best friends, had a dozen or more close friends get married (but couldn't attend any of the weddings- curse my poverty!), lived with 7 different and new roommates (with the 8th moving in by Monday), work at 3 different jobs, wrote 100+ pages in writing assignments this fall, read five times that amount, go through too many strange ailments to count, and had a tonsillectomy. No need for any pear trees thank you, I have enough to worry about!

It's been a crazy year for me and I'm sure it has been for most of you as well. But it's been a good year if we look for the right kinds of things in it. I've lived in the Holy Land, saw the pyramids in the rain (that only happens about once every 4 years!), learned a lot, made amazing friends, had bunches of happy reunions, a new nephew born, swing dancing on the weekends, and safe travels through it all.

May we all bring our best and be able to deal with the worst as we enter a new year. Thanks for caring to follow me along in my life as I know it.