2010 Year in Review

JANUARY. No car! With the generous help of our parents, we were able to get a replacement within two weeks. My 2010 reading goal: 26 books, with one author for each letter of the alphabet. Plans fell through for my on-campus classes. The Romgi got two internships lined up for the summer: one in Korea (alone) and one in Greensboro, North Carolina (with our whole family). After I thoroughly cleaned our bedroom, the Bwun knocked a can of paint off the nightstand (don’t ask why it was there when I said I’d just cleaned) and when it hit the floor, the lid popped off. Yeah. Giant paint spot on our floor. Still working on that one. Flu + ear infection + percocet = who knows what else happened in January?

FEBRUARY. Two baby showers, a wedding, and lots of sick people in our family. It was every bit as stressful as it sounds. Also: the Bwun turned one! We had a mustache party to celebrate. And my pet rat died. Not to celebrate.

MARCH. Big news – the Bwun started talking! Bigger news – baby on the way! We found out a week before the Romgi’s birthday. I really, really hoped for a girl, partly because we had already used the only boy’s name we agreed on. The Romgi and I went to a law school function called the Barrister’s Ball. He talked me into entering a chili cookoff at the law school; our entry came in last place. Last place. Seriously. Out of five entries. I have vowed to never make chili again.

APRIL. At long last, the Bwun started getting more teeth. His first two came in around Christmas, so it was a long wait until he got more. A long but calm wait. I hate teething! I suppose the Bwun probably does, too. The Romgi booked his flight to Korea. Finals, finals, finals. So glad they weren’t mine. I had a 10-week ultrasound, confirming that I was in fact pregnant, and the doctor told me I was carrying really high. That means a girl, right? And I was lucky enough to not have much (if any) morning sickness. So we made an official announcement, and everyone thought we were crazy. The Bwun made the big leap and walked on his own. He’d been walking for months, but wouldn’t let go of my hand until the end of May.

MAY. Before the Romgi left for Korea, we went out to Communal for our 3rd anniversary. I may not have had morning sickness, but pregnancy certainly affected my taste buds; everything was bland. Then I sadly sent the Romgi off to do his internship in Seoul. May was a miserable month. I tried to stay busy – the Bwun and I started a swimming class together with a friend from our ward, and it was a good distraction. I bought a Snuggie. I read a lot of books. I cleaned our house, sometimes. The Bwun stopped taking naps. The Bwun started being aggressive. We Skyped. By the end of May, I had to get out of Provo, so I went to visit my parents in California. Surprisingly, the Bwun was an angel on the drive.

JUNE. Unlike May, June had a little too much excitement. A visit to Salt Lake just before the Romgi came home resulted in my car being (wrongfully) towed and impounded. I went to the wrong terminal to pick the Romgi up. We had to go to a hearing to get our money back from the car towing mishap. There was about one week of relative calm at our house before an ultrasound, packing, planning, and more planning for our trip to North Carolina. Delightful news: baby girl on the way! We left on our roadtrip at the very end of the month.

JULY. We arrived in North Carolina after a week-long drive. I’ll be honest, I was grouchy and unpleasant for most of July. Here are my reasons: I was sleeping on an air mattress. We didn’t bring many toys or books for the Bwun to play with. I was pregnant. It was hot and humid. There was nowhere to go. I wasn’t familiar with the area. I didn’t know anyone. The Romgi was gone all the time. And above all, I was pregnant. Despite that, I look back fondly on our time in Greensboro. The Romgi thinks I’m crazy for saying it. My favorite thing was going to the beach in Emerald Isle.

AUGUST. Ready to go back to Utah? Yes! Wait…no. We were holed up in a hotel for 3 days in Raleigh while the Romgi and I were sick. Super sick. By the time we were recovered just enough to drive home, we didn’t have money, time, or patience to go through with our planned route through Washington, D.C. and up along I-80; instead we drove straight back from Raleigh to Provo in 38 hours. That’s over 2,000 miles. I stand by my claim that it was the worst part of 2010. Here’s what might be the Romgi’s worst experience from 2010: a toothache so intense that he was seriously considering pulling it out himself. An emergency dentist visit made us fear the Romgi would need a root canal, but fortunately the problem was fixed with a filling. Cheaper! Quicker! Less painful! Then, more school. I applied to start classes again in January 2011. The Romgi started remodeling the Bwun’s room to make way for baby.

SEPTEMBER. We had great family pictures taken. The Romgi and I actually went out on a date! Dinner at Leatherby’s and then a movie in the theater (gasp!) – Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. Unrelated, I spent a night in the hospital. I had in fact been carrying the baby high (so high that I could wear my regular pants for much of pregnancy to this point), and she suddenly dropped one day, and then I started having bad contractions. Turns out I don’t do well with the stop-the-contractions medicine they give you. Good to know.

OCTOBER. The Romgi’s dad was in a horrendous car accident, but luckily wasn’t injured, although his car was totaled. The Bwun got sick and we took him to the emergency room late one night. Two days later, my friend Devan threw me a donut-themed baby shower. Two days later, the Bwun cut his forehead and we took him to the emergency room again. The next day, I went into labor and jr was born. Busy week! Very busy week! We didn’t do much for Halloween because we were still reeling from having jr a month early.

NOVEMBER. My parents came out to visit for a day (and my mom cleaned my kitchen while I had a nap). Most of the month was spent adjusting to life with two kids. We spent Thanksgiving with Kimberlee and Quentin, which meant we didn’t have to host, cook, or clean up. That’s a good holiday! The Romgi and I instituted Amish Hour at our house. And he made the world’s most delicious pumpkin chocolate cake. Divine. Then my mom came out for a whole week to help me. Mom, can you come back?

DECEMBER. What better way to kick off December than by getting stomach flu? It was absolute misery, and I haven’t been able to eat beef since then (since my last pre-flu meal was steak from Carrabba’s). Everyone in the Romgi’s family had it too, but it hit the Romgi hard – right during finals. He was sick for almost 3 days and had to talk to the dean about getting his finals rescheduled. What a champ for making it through those two weeks of finals, especially with me being so grouchy all the time. (Finals make me stressed.) I can graduate in April 2012, the same time as the Romgi, if I stick to my plan which unfortunately involves doing school full-time this next semester. I finished my reading challenge for the year. We had a fantastic Christmas with the Romgi’s family. I think we’re ready to tackle 2011!

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2009 Year in Review

JANUARY. We rang in the New Year at the Romgi’s parents house – without his parents, but with Ben & Krista and our neighbors Doug & Angie. The Bwun continued hiccuping and kicking me mercilessly. We started going to prenatal classes at the hospital in Payson, shortly before we started going to the hospital on a weekly basis for my late-night woes. See, in mid-January I had the bright idea of rearranging our living room furniture…including the extremely heavy tv. This was actually a very bad idea, as it meant that I was technically in labor for the next 6 weeks, with regular contractions and not a lot of sleep. I think I’ll skip that part next time. With a nice prescription for Ambien, though, I was able to mostly enjoy a 4-day trip with the Romgi’s family to a ski lodge in northern Utah (I did not ski). Also, I ate boeuf de bourguignon for the first time. That was an experience worth repeating.

FEBRUARY. Free breakfast at Denny’s, except an hour-long wait in line behind a really, really creepy guy kind of ruined my appetite. What did sound good, though, was our traditional Valentine’s Day dinner: my favorite Korean dish, samgyeopsal. So. Delicious. Unfortunately, the night before (Friday the 13th, NOT coincidentally), I made the Romgi take me to the emergency room because I was in severe pain – which I thought was from pulling a muscle when I tried moving the tv. One blissful shot of Demerol, one ultrasound, and five hours later, we found out the truth: the Bwun hated me. He had kicked me so hard he was ruining several of my organs. The good news was that my doctor agreed to induce me before the Bwun’s due date. So the Romgi and I went home, got some sleep (I probably got a bit more than he did), and set to work finishing the nursery. It’s amazing, if I do say so myself. And then…and then…the Bwun! Seriously, we had a baby. He was little. He did nothing but sleep at first. I could gush about how fantastic he is, but then what would I talk about for the rest of this summary? My mom came out to stay with us for about two weeks, and after she left we seriously considered paying her to come back. Oh yeah, and the Romgi got accepted to BYU Law School! I guess that was just before we had the Bwun. But it was easy to get caught up in the whole we-have-a-new-baby thing.

MARCH. It turns out that you can do a lot of reading when you have a newborn. I think March is probably my all-time record for number of books read. By the time the Bwun was a month old, I was starting to feel like I just might be able to pull motherhood off. Then the Romgi left for a weekend to visit law schools in California. Misery! No one to take a turn with the Bwun in the middle of the night! Luckily, my sister visited that week, which was not only pleasant company but almost like a nanny I could give the Bwun to. Why don’t we have a real nanny? The Romgi celebrated his 25th birthday. Man, we’re old! No wonder we need a nanny!

APRIL. The Romgi decided to stay at BYU for law school, so I was spared the horror of packing everything up to move out of Utah (although I probably would not have minded leaving the snow). Actually, the weather in April was gorgeous, and I spent a lot of time outdoors with the Bwun, taking pictures of the Bwun. And the weather. Mostly the Bwun.

MAY. I unintentionally scheduled a trip over our anniversary, so the Romgi and I didn’t have a chance to go out to celebrate. Instead, I was in Yellowstone with his mom and my sister-in-law (and our kids). The snow had mostly melted, but there were very few people there, so we were able to enjoy the scenery and the buffalos – in relative peace. The Bwun was still too small to know what was going on, and he mostly slept in his carseat. What a good baby. After a couple days visiting Old Faithful and the breathtaking Sapphire Pool, we headed back to Provo so that our little family could make a second trip. The Romgi and I packed another suitcase and took the Bwun with us to New Mexico for my grandpa’s 80th birthday. Almost all of the extended family was there. It was great to see relatives and show off the Bwun (my dad hadn’t even met him yet!). By the time we got home from that excursion, the Bwun and I had been in the car for over 60 hours of driving time through 6 states (Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, Colorado, New Mexico) in 6 days. Impressive for such a little kid! Also impressive, he learned how to roll over at 3 months. Trust me, it’s really cool. We took advantage of a Memorial Day sale at IKEA to give our living room a whole new look: we replaced the plaid/flowered pink-and-green couch with a nice Beddinge sofa bed, added a Poang chair and a black bookcase, and Craigslisted our huge tv (the one that almost killed me) so we could mount the flat screen on the wall. It looked fabulous.

JUNE. And just in time, too, because we had a full house for the Bwun’s baby blessing. My parents and sister came out from California, and my grandpa drove up from New Mexico (he adored the Bwun, who is named after him). Then add in all our friends and family who live in the area, and there really was standing room only. For the rest of the month, I enjoyed gorgeous weather, an adorable baby, and a new (to me) camera. The Romgi and I also enjoyed a trip to the Cheesecake Factory, a magical place with enormous servings. Plus cheesecake. How can you go wrong?

JULY. The Bwun was surprisingly interested in fireworks. I don’t think he cried much at all. Then again, he doesn’t ever cry much. Did I mention he’s the perfect baby? The Romgi’s boss at work did some incredible portraits of the Romgi and I, which we proudly displayed when I had my birthday party. Yes, I too turned 25. Ancient! Decrepit! No? I guess not. I made a three-layer carrot cake and it was beautiful. We used some of our spare cash to buy a butterflied leg of lamb. You know it was good if it made it onto my year in review. Actually, it was better than good. It was heavenly. And we thankfully had it before disaster struck: the Romgi got swine flu! We were quarantined in our house for a week! We missed seeing Krista’s newborn twins! But, miracle of miracles, the Bwun didn’t catch the flu. He was perfect, like always.

AUGUST. After taking some more pictures of my adorable baby Bwun, we all went down to New Mexico again. This time, it was just us and my grandpa. The Romgi had a few days between the end of his job and the beginning of law school, so we took a “vacation” at my grandpa’s cabin. It was not restful, but it was a ton of fun. We even got a bat in our room the first night. Adventure! Back in Utah, we tried to give Krista a break by taking her big kids to the dinosaur museum. Apparently I forgot that I hate crowds, and I was g-r-o-u-c-h-y. But before too long I got over it because…the Bwun learned how to crawl! It made him even cuter than before! I have the best baby! (Sorry, all other parents. I’m not objective. But I am right.) Then the Romgi started law school. Challenging, demanding, and stressful. I bet it’s hard for him, too.

SEPTEMBER. We tried to have some family pictures taken, but it was more work than we expected. It did finally work out, and if you ask me, we looked mighty spankin’ good. While the Romgi continued on with law school, I decided to try doing classes on campus during winter semester. I also wrote my most-discussed book review, for The Red Tent. You should read it! (The book. And then the review.)

OCTOBER. The Romgi had a week off of school, in which he refinished our ugly bedroom nightstands, and we made cup pies and biscotti. Once he went back to his life in the library I took a trip to California to surprise my parents. The Bwun surprised me–he was well-behaved and calm for the entire car ride. We had a nice week-long visit and got to see some friends and family. I didn’t blog after our trip, so the rest of the year is really guesswork.

NOVEMBER. We had a nice Thanksgiving dinner with our neighbors, and then took advantage of some great Black Friday deals from the comfort of our living room. I love the internet. The Romgi and I made it through the first few discs of season 3 of 24–isn’t the show on season 7 or something? We’re so far behind! We’ll never make it. Although it did take a lot of restraint to not watch the entire season in one sitting.

DECEMBER. A bad way to start the month: the Bwun got swine flu. So not fun. But he got better, and we started getting ready for Christmas. (Ok, I started getting ready. The Romgi was in the midst of finals.) There were cards to send out (I think this year’s were top-notch!), presents to buy, caramels and fudge to make, gift boxes to deliver, and luggage to pack. We took the train again–and once more, the Bwun was an angel. Aside from wearing us out walking up and down the aisles with him, he was so good. He learned how to wave and charmed everybody on the train. He also charmed my family, which, let’s be honest, wasn’t difficult. He’s just so charming. We loved the pleasant California weather, and it was hard to come back to the cold wintery death of Utah. Especially because our car died on the freeway on New Year’s Eve. What a lousy way to end the year! We sure hope we still have a car in 2010!

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2008 Year in Review

I hope you appreciate how much thinking this entailed on my part, at a time when thinking is not my strong point.

JANUARY. As always, New Year’s was held at the Romgi’s parents’ house (a tradition we missed this year, since they were in California partying it up!). Delicious food all evening, firecrackers at midnight. Ah. The new semester started off right as I got a letter saying I made the Dean’s List for the College of Family, Home, & Social Sciences for Fall 2007! To celebrate I started reading a lot of non-school books and paying less attention in my classes. Huh. Great logic, Roni. I also volunteered to be in charge of the women’s book club for my ward, but that didn’t take off for another month or so.

FEBRUARY. I love doing the Year in Review because (thanks to blogging) it reminds me of all the adventures I had that somehow got pushed to the back of my mind in the intervening months. For example, I crashed our car in February. The insurance company sure said it was my fault, but I blame the snow…I made a left turn one evening and as I did so the tires started sliding, which pulled the car down the slanted side of the road and into a lamppost. Luckily I was fine, the lamppost was fine, and the front fender was…just a bit damaged. Then, a few days later, the car stopped working altogether. The key wouldn’t turn at all to start the car. Which meant we had to have it towed to a body shop. Yuck! (P.S. Thanks again, parents, for helping us out with that one!) It also meant that we had to postpone our Valentine’s Day anything, since it’s hard to sneak out to get a present when you have to walk everywhere. But once the car was fixed, the Romgi brought me awesome flowers, a pound of See’s chocolate (which I will always maintain is a perfect gift), and a new pet rat! If that sounds weird to you, just remind yourself that you and I are different. I’d been feeling miserable about the lizards dying, and careless for accidentally crashing the car, so having an adorable furry little animal to take care of and lavish with whatever affection you can really give a rat was wonderful. It helped me get out of a funk and start paying attention in classes again, too! Oh, and the Romgi and I both got jobs—at the law school (him) and Independent Study (me). And I bought the Romgi a rat so that my rat could have a friend. Even though they both have names, we refer to them as “my rat” and “your rat.” It sounds a lot more territorial than it really is.

MARCH. Most of March was spent reading. The first meeting of the ward book club was held at my apartment, and I had the pleasure of being the only non-childbearing person there. Everyone else either had kids or was pregnant. Great way to feel left out. We talked about what kinds of books we wanted to read, how the club would be run, and so on. The woman who was previously in charge but decided she was too busy for the responsibility was a great contributor to the discussion (read: she was the discussion). The Romgi, who lurked in the other room where he could hear our conversation, later called her the Jabberwock. It’s a great nickname and I hope to someday meet another person I can secretly call the Jabberwock. Yeah. Anyway, I had prepared a list of possible books, and since no one seemed to have an opinion on what we read, I chose The Kite Runner and we planned to meet the following month. For the Romgi’s birthday, I made a smaller version of my mom’s 12-layer chocolate cake (it is the best cake in the world). And in a gesture of true love, I gave the Romgi Alien vs. Predator as one of his gifts. You just don’t understand us, do you? That’s ok, sometimes I don’t either.

APRIL. At work one morning I was browsing through the recently-listed apartments in Provo, mainly because I liked the idea of upgrading. I happened upon a listing for a two-bedroom basement apartment with “tile floors” in the kitchen and bathroom, a “deep jetted tub,” and a washer and dryer for barely more than we were paying for our one-bedroom linoleum kitchen no-washer-and-dryer-or-laundromat apartment. I emailed the poster and made an arrangement for the Romgi and I to go see it after work. We totally lucked out—not only did we absolutely love the apartment, but thanks to my quick email, we were the first people to come take a look, and the tenants had been given permission to sell to anyone they liked. And they liked us. One downside: because the basement and upstairs were formerly one single house unit, Provo zoning laws prevented having an oven in the basement. That’s right. We have no oven. But we did still have an oven for all of April, since the current residents weren’t moving until mid-May. So I stuck around at our old place and hosted the first book discussion meeting of the book club. Guess what? No one showed up. That was awesome, after I stayed up the night before reading the book and skipped a class to get the apartment clean. Good news, though! The Romgi graduated college!! Sadly the Humanities department got the most boring…speaker…ever for their ceremony. Honestly, he talked for at least 45 minutes. That’s what I remember most about graduation. Isn’t that unfortunate?

So glad the speaker is done.

MAY. I didn’t blog at all in May, which is probably because we were getting ready to move and then moving the whole month. Or most of it. We did have our one-year anniversary, which we celebrated by going to Ottavio’s, a delicious Italian restaurant in downtown Provo. If we ever have money (ha! Probably not while we’re in Provo) I’d like to go again. Then the Romgi’s parents took us out to celebrate his graduation, and that was at the very nice, very expensive Chef’s Table. De. Li. Cious. Mmm. At work I found out that I was being considered for a promotion of sorts; the woman who is a liaison between Independent Study and its professors thought I was an excellent candidate to replace one of her assistants who was leaving at the end of the summer. So I looked forward to doing an interview…someday.

JUNE. In early June, I got an email—who knows why I got it at all, especially not until that day—about the TaLK program to teach English in rural Korea; it said the deadline to apply was in less than a week. The Romgi and I were both excited about the opportunity, since it would be a great cultural experience, we’d be helping people, and it would allow us to save up quite a bit of money for law school. Of course, it also meant we had one week to decide if we wanted to move abroad for a year. Better still: the program started August 1. But, we felt good about it, so we spent the next week frantically getting passports, letters of recommendation, luggage, a webcam to do a video interview with the Korean Consulate in San Francisco…finally everything was in except a copy of my passport, so we took a trip down to New Mexico for my family reunion over the weekend and hoped the passport would have arrived when we got back. The drive down to New Mexico was longer than I expected, but it was fun to meet up with my brother and his kids for part of it. Plus I got to introduce the Romgi to almost all the rest of my extended family, and he went horseback riding with my grandpa! Good times all around. But, we did have to get back to Provo. And when we did, guess what we found out? Yes, my passport came, but I was also pregnant! Um, Korea? For a year? With my first kid? I kind of regret my quick decision but I tossed the TaLK program out the door the same day. One last thing: we came home from work at the end of the month to find a bunch of baby quail trapped at the bottom of our stairs! They were too little to jump back up the steps. We have pictures on our phone…very adorable.

JULY. Remember that promotion at work? The interviews were finally held at the beginning of July, but even though I was the favorite choice, my good baby news meant I’d only be at Independent Study until the end of December—and they were looking for someone slightly more permanent. I was really kind of sad about that. And I got my first pregnancy cravings: sushi. With cooked meat, mind you, but I HAD to have sushi. I was desperate. The joke’s on me, though, because I ate too much the second time the Romgi humored me by taking me out to get sushi, and since then it sounds like one of the worst foods in the world. Too bad I didn’t tell the Romgi that right away, because he was really sweet to get me a sushi-making kit and book for my birthday. I promise, eventually sushi will sound good again, and then I can make my own and be super-awesome! Really. He also gave me an Ecosphere, which I’m wondering how he plans on ever topping in terms of best gifts. We went to Llama Fest in Spanish Fork at the Krishna temple (yes, those are all weird things to say, especially together), and I made a fabulous llama cupcake cake which I was, tragically, too nauseated to ever try. But I heard it was good. Also: my first prenatal visit. Complete disaster. After that I switched doctors and it’s been a much better experience ever since, but I felt so miserable. Now I’m convinced in the power of recommendation for finding a doctor you like. Trust other people. We did go against the first doctor’s advice and told our parents that we’re expecting, which made the Romgi’s family reunion easier—less explaining about why I felt sick when we drove on the twisty mountain roads. The reunion was a week-long event in Brian Head, near Cedar City, and we had a blast. We got to see Cyrano de Bergerac with the Romgi’s parents, look at petroglyphs, and go on a long-ish hike in the rain and hail. The hike was more fun in retrospect than it was at the time. Bonus: we found out that Sposita is also expecting a baby right around the same time as us.

AUGUST. New doctor: awesome. In early August I had my first appointment with him and he did an ultrasound—I got to see the Bwun! So tiny! Exactly the size and shape of a cinnamon bear, so we called it the Cinnabwun for a while. Trust me, it’s funny. The doctor said we should expect the Bwun around February 28. I stopped working at Independent Study and started doing classes through Independent Study…it seemed easier than going to campus everyday for classes, considering that I wanted to throw up more often than not. As the month went on, I started feeling better, with the exception of increasing hormone levels that made me ridiculously emotional. Everything was suddenly poignant, including the end of the movie Cars. Hmm. How about that?

SEPTEMBER. By now we’d been in our new apartment for several months, and I had come to the conclusion that I left an entire cupboard full of stuff in our old kitchen. Despite repeated attempts to get in touch with the new tenants, they were never home. Finally we were driving by one night when I saw that the bathroom light was on and shouted for the Romgi to pull over. I ran up the stairs and probably weirded the new tenants out when I said I was sorry, but I wondered if they had my stuff. Yes and no. They had the cheap stuff. They gave the expensive stuff (such as our coolest-ever fish platter) to DI because they didn’t want it to go to waste. I can’t even blame my brain lapse in leaving the stuff on pregnancy! It was just dumb! So it goes on my list of regrets. The Romgi switched jobs because he had worked the maximum amount of time in a student position after graduating, which we found out in October was actually a very good thing…

OCTOBER. The new job had an employee dinner with lots of door prizes. It was a nice dinner, with absolutely perfect mousse for dessert, and after we suffered through the two-hour presentation of awards they gave out the door prize we had entered for: a 42-inch plasma tv. Yes, we won. And yes, we fit it into our car. And yes, we put it in our bedroom in place of the computer monitor, so I’m writing this using a giant monitor. (And yes…I still have to wear contacts or glasses to be able to read anything on the screen.) We also got a $50 giftcard to P.F. Chang’s, which we’d been wanting to try, but…well, we’re poor, alright? I took a trip back to California for about a week and a half, which was relaxing and wonderful and fabulous. It was also the first time I’d gone without seeing the Romgi for more than a day since he was in Korea in 2006. Weird, huh? But when I got back to Utah we had The Ultrasound appointment and found out that the Bwun is a boy! And Sposita had her appointment and found out she’s having a girl! So we’re carrying on the tradition of having one boy and one girl around the same time. The bad news from October: Mother’s Cookies declared bankruptcy and shut down production, making Cookie Parade extremely hard to find. But we did get to make apple pie with our friends, which made me feel both talented and popular. Oh! And we spent a day at the zoo with the Romgi’s nephew. A very long day. And the Romgi took the LSAT. It’s hard to remember everything that happened, so it doesn’t necessarily end up here in order!

NOVEMBER. Drawing on the success of our apple pie, in November the Romgi and I tried making cup pies—which yes, are like little pies, made in cupcake tins. They’re unbelievably easy and delicious. We first made apple, then maple walnut, with a trial berry cup pie tossed in there as well. The greatest thing about cup pies, aside from their tastiness, is their great capacity for sharing. We’ve become friends with our basement neighbors (we live in a duplex) because of this. I also made banana muffins, endlessly good, which are difficult to share but I did manage to give some of them away. The people who we got the apartment from actually moved to the not-right-above-us upstairs apartment in the building (because the people who used to live there were moving to Texas or something), and we found out they’re having twin boys in January! Also, I feel like I should mention that November was election month, and we did actually put the tv antenna out the window so that we could watch coverage on election night. Plus we got a crib and bedding and started actually putting together the Bwun’s room, so he can have an awesome room here even if we have to move next summer (hooray for law school applications!).

DECEMBER. …The world has been righted! Kellogg’s announced that it would purchase the Mother’s Cookies trademark and recipes, and produce many of Mother’s most popular cookies. Breathe a sigh of relief! The Romgi got his first law school acceptance letter, to McGeorge School of Law at University of the Pacific in Sacramento. And I played Rock Band for the first time; until my tummy is a little smaller and holding the guitar is more comfortable, I think I’ll stick with drums. We experienced the weirdest “ham” in the world at our ward party the same week I got to experience the “orange soda” gestational diabetes drink (which was surprisingly not as bad as I expected). I spent a lot of December being grouchy, but we had a really fun Christmas at Besta’s, and it was great to have a New Year’s party with Besta and our awesome neighbors, watching Nacho Libre and eating lots of food. My thoughts in the final moments of 2008 were, “Maybe I can go to bed soon…I’m so tired…” Here’s to a fantastic 2009!

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