The 2010 Highlight Reel

In celebration of a great year, here are my 2010 favorites:

1. 2.5 years of marriage to husband and 4 years of building a relationship.
2. The Ashland Shakespeare Festival.
3. The Wizarding World of Harry Potter.
4. National Parks: Yosemite, Arches, Canyonlands, Crater Lake, Mt. Rainier.
5. Traveling with dear friends and both of our families.
6. Starting a backyard garden and having it actually grow vegetables and then being able to eat the veggies!
7. Discovering Ravelry (www.ravelry.com).
8. Knitting.
9. Friday Night Lights.
10. Netflix Instant Queue.
11. Enjoying the last year of our 20’s.
12. Concerts: Shawn Colvin, Zoe Muth, Patty Griffin & Buddy Miller, the No Depression Fest.
13. Playing Settler’s of Cataan, Munchkin, and Carcassonne.
14. Getting closer to friends at church.
15. YD’s 40th Anniversary Bash.
16. Mentoring and sharing life with some fabulous teen girls.
17. Traveling to San Diego for and incredible week with 13 teens.
18. Our friend Katie surviving the Haiti earthquake and making a full recovery.
19. Singing in 2 church musicals and growing as a singer.
20. Joining the AFMC worship team.
21. Watching Lost with Clay and Bethany.
22. Starting yoga classes at Movement Arts.
23. Goonies Weekend in Astoria.
24. Starting Spiritual Direction meetings with an awesome mentor.
25. Enjoying some of Seattle’s best sushi restaurants.
26. Wedding weekends in Dallas, Houston, and Tampa.  Celebrating a new life for Brittany&Wilson, Dan&Tracy, and Matt&Kacy.
27. Our church transitioning to a new Senior Pastor.
28. Cabernet Sauvignon.
29. Teaching from Andy Stanley, Craig Groeschel, and Henry Cloud.
30. Women of Faith, especially Sheila Walsh.
31. Successfully pulling off with my staff team: 8 fundraising dinners, Golf Marathon, the 40th Anniversary Celebration.
32. Eating cake and watching Inception at the IMAX to celebrate 2 years of marriage.
33. Smoked Gouda.
34. Teavana.
35. Sweet Potato Fries.
36. Paradise Sushi in Arlington.  Dinner for 2 for under $20!
37. Mae Phim’s (Thai) Crispy Garlic Favorite Chicken.
38. Lunch Specials at Asian 1.
39. Reading the Bible cover-to-cover with 9 teen girls and watching it come to life for them.
40. Continuing to walk through life with my tri-mails, near-daily emails with 2 of my best friends.  Seasons of life change, but we continue to write and walk together after 10 years.
41. Celebrating the births of best friends’ babies.
42. That husband got 1st place in his fantasy football league.  (Not really a highlight for me, but funny to watch husband brag all day and giggle with glee at being victorious.)

Back on the Wagon…of Blogging, if there even is a wagon for that.

So my new blog died ever-so-sadly as it was just beginning…and I have reasons for that certainly, most of which involve being home very little over the last 3 months, and some of which involve a pervasive fear with waxing on too long about inane narcissistic things…but this is a blog, and what is it, if it is not self-involved? (This question was meant to be rhetorical…but then I had to pause and reflect oh-so-philisophically about what on the internet is not self-involved, which led me to question what of the human existence is not self-involved, and suddenly I’m totally derailed by tangent and thus unable of accomplishing the very task I set out to do which was to write a very simple blog to get me back on the blogging wagon.  This leads me to now being totally embarrassed that my parenthetical comment is longer than my original comment was, but I’m unwilling to delete it, because this is a blog, and I can write poorly if I want. If it bothers you, I recommend Slate as a much smarter read.)

So anyways, I want to recap Summer 2010’s Greatest Hits, which tend towards the general more than the specific…and honestly, they’re each so spectacular that they’re probably worthy of a blog each in and of themselves…  So, what if I do that.  It also requires me to make a commitment.  So yeah, let’s go for it.  Yee-Haw!

Coming up next, #1 on the list: The National Parks.