Today you are eight

Today would have been my son's eighth birthday. There is never a day that goes by that I don't think of him. He is as real to me as Cooper. He is as loved as Cooper. He is, and will forever be, my son.

Love to you, baby. All the love in the world.

Happy Birthday, Geekboy

My husband's birthday is today. I can't imagine my life without him. Ours was a whirlwind romance. We got married less than six months after our first email on an online dating site. It would have been sooner but we waited for my brother to get home from his mission. (We married two days later - which was convenient for the family, even though it made a busy weekend with a wedding Friday, a reception Saturday and a mission homecoming Sunday.)

When I married him, I thought ours was the deepest most eternal love that I could imagine. Twelve years later I realize how incredibly naive I was. We have gone through so much together, and never have I felt that he wasn't completely in my corner. He is the one who encouraged me to go to graduate school. He is the one who prodded me to apply to teach at the university. He sacrificed his own comfort to let me commute to another state for a job I wanted. He held my hand while I spoke through my tears at our son's funeral. He held my hand while I labored to bring Cooper into the world. He could have an easier life with a wife who didn't suffer from fibro and depression, but he counts it an honor to be my protector and best friend. I am the most blessed woman in the world to be his wife.

When I was little I remember looking up at the stars and seeing what I thought was the immensity of space arrayed before my eyes. And then I saw the Milky Way and realized that the iridescent band of light was millions and millions more stars that couldn't be distinguished from each other. I realized how much bigger space was than I had previously understood. And then I saw photos of galaxies taken by space telescopes, and realized that what I had been seeing wasn't just stars, but entire other galaxies, with their millions and millions of stars. Beyond our ability to see, beyond our ability to understand, the universe keeps expanding, and right now I feel like that is our love. It's so much bigger than it was 12 years ago, but I realize I am just at the start of something that will just keep getting bigger and bigger as we continue our life together. I feel like I am staring into the immensities of space when I am looking at him, and unlike the real world, it all revolves around us.

I love you.

The Decoy Bride - Movie 1 of 50

The Decoy Bride

Merida makes fun of the Tenth Doctor - standard rom-com with a heavy Scottish accent.

Fun and adorable.

My rating - 3 1/2 stars
GeekBoy's rating 3 1/2 stars

Goals for 2013

Education

1. Read five non-fiction books on a particular topic.

2. Learn how to play the ukulele.

3. Get one piece of piano music performance ready.

Spiritual

1. Temple once a month (this is a sign how bad my temple attendance is, and there's no excuse since I can literally see Moroni from my front steps.)

2. Visiting teaching done by the 15th of every month.

3. Study a general conference talk each week.

Wife

1. Watch 50 movies with GeekBoy that neither of us have seen.

2. Plan a game night at our house. And then actually have the game night.

3. This one is none of your business. ;)

Mother

1. Read a book a day to Cooper that he has never heard before.

2. Enroll Cooper in at least one sports class besides his gymnastics. He loves baseball and soccer on TV.

3. Vegetables once a day! He's great about fruit, he actually prefers it to candy most times, but I'm bad about getting veggies into him.

Fun Stuff

1. Plant a fairy garden

2. Knit something I would actually wear

3. Crochet something geektastic.

Running a Home

1. Do the dishes every day!

2. Kick the storage closet's butt.

3. Get all the art rehung that we took down when we moved rooms around. And the new art we have acquired since.

Mental and Emotional Wellness

1. Read some fiction every day.

2. Stretch for 15 minutes every day.

3. Have a sing along at the top of your lungs session at least once a week.

Make the World a Better Place

1. Respond to all circumstances from a place of love.

2. Write a letter or card each week. Not email!

3. Do whatever Leslie's weekly challenge is.

Now, I should print these out and put them somewhere prominent so I don't forget them.

Also, I am a little tired just looking at this list.

How did I do on my 2012 goals?

So my goals for 2012 were the following:

1. Buy new mattress for our bed. Ours is ten years old and slumpy. Done! Yay for better sleeps!
2. Finish the basement. Nope, because three turned out to be a disaster.
3. Fence the backyard. Yep! And put in a patio and egress windows and they broke a pipe and basement floods and blaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh. Also, firepit! Yay!
4. GeekBoy and I take a real vacation, sans Cooper. Yep! It was lovely to have a few days off, just the two of us.
5. GeekBoy and I take a real vacation with Cooper. Nope. Our calendar was all kids of weird this year.
6. Plant a tree that is at least as tall as I am. Nope. I feel really bad about this one.
7. Laugh more than I did last year. Yes!
8. Make an item of clothing - not an accessory - and wear it. Fail!
9. Read thirty books for fun. Above and beyond. I started reviewing at FantasyLiterature.com again too.
10. Try thirty new recipes. Fail.
11. Find a new poet to adore. Mary Oliver. She's amazing, and I'll probably end up spending all my Christmas money on her books. Also, W.H. Auden's For The Time Being is amazing. I have preordered the authoritative edition that is due out in May.
12. Do something completely spontaneous and unexpected. Quit my dream job, became a stay at home mom, a homeschooler, a Whovian, a nerdfighter, and even more of a Whedonite.

Maybe I should post my list of goals somewhere other than just on my blog so I can see them more than once in a year.