2008 Retrospective

It’s December 31st again, and it’s time for the annual tradition of taking a bit of a look back at the year that was 2008.

The year started off sorta quietly, due to work being just crazy. I didn’t have much time to do much, with overtime and travel. Miranda turned 4 on New Year’s Day, and Ian started eating solid food. Maybe it was an outlet for the stress from January, but immediately after, I bought myself a new guitar. Regardless of the motives, I think it has proved to be a good purchase. I’ve had a lot of fun playing it.

In February, Tammy and I gave ballroom dancing a shot. It was fun, and we were “getting it”, but in April, roller hockey came around again, and by coincidence was at the exact same time as dancing each week, so the dancing got sidelined. Hockey took over the activity schedule in the fall, as I returned to playing ice hockey and Tammy joined ice hockey, too. We had lots of coughs and sniffles this year (perhaps because of Miranda’s preschool) but we managed to pull ourselves together for Tammy’s birthday including posing for a nice family picture.

Yet more new arrivals this year: of course, there was the arrival of Brianna for Steph and Evan in June, but there also was Chase for Chris and Chelsea in March, Brayden for Brittany (the daughter of our neighbours Chris and Lorri) in July, and baby Alexei for Jeff and Sasha in November.

We managed to travel a bit more this year. Without having to give Mr. Doos his insulin every 12 hours, we had a bit more freedom to move about, tempered by a four- and one-year-old… In March, we made our mega-trip to Palm Springs. That was a real experience, and Miranda is still asking us when we will go back. We followed it up with a trip to Prince George in May. It was interesting to compare the two trips: Ian being a little older (and wanting to be more active) made a huge difference. I expect we won’t travel much until he’s a bit older. Travel for work continued to be irregular, but less than originally promised when I took the job with ESRI. The trips: Edmonton, Trail, Vancouver, Palm Springs, Calgary, Tech Trek, and Redlands, California. That last trip ended up with the job offer that I ended up turning down.

Miranda has started to develop musically this year. She had a few kiddies’ piano lessons at Juan de Fuca in the spring, and then started regular lessons with MYC in Sooke in the fall. We decided that we’d rather she do that than go to preschool, so preschool wrapped up in June. She’s doing well in her piano lessons and our purchase of a piano with the proceeds of selling my scooter still feels good to me. Also involving money and education, we started RESPs for Miranda and Ian this year.

Ian had a whole series of milestones this year. The first step was his awful teething. It seemed there was hardly a month where he wasn’t miserable from cutting a tooth this year. He managed to sit up and as a reward, got a sunburn even on a cool, watery day… After a long period of wiggling backwards on his belly, he finally managed to crawl forward and followed that up by pulling himself up on furniture. Things took a bit of a dive when he developed croup, but thank goodness that didn’t turn out as badly as it could have. He partied pretty hard for his first birthday, with not one, not two, but three parties. With all that cake in his system, who could blame him for trying to walk it off?

What would a year be without digging in the yard? We started early, because we wanted to establish some trees in the back yard and seed some grass. The front was a bit of a mess for a long time this year, because when I cleared out the rockery, I found myself with yet another pile of rocks that I had no idea what to do with. Thankfully Jeff took them off my hands.

Speaking of rocks, how about the ones in my head? I have no idea why it took another round of idiocy to finally spur me to buy backup equipment for the computer.

Miranda was really growing into a big girl this year. She had a few trips to see Colin and Carol on Pender Island. The first one for Canada Day was abortive, because her allergies alarmed Baba and Grandpa. The next went much better. She had a visit where we went and picked her up on Thanksgiving, too, complete with power outage. She also went with me to see her first movie at a movie theatre: WALL-E. She also graduated to playing with real Lego. Reading progressed in leaps and bounds.

I also got a chance to “stretch” this year: I joined a six-session pastel art class via the community calendar, and I was very happy with the results. I haven’t pastelled much since the class ended, but that’s largely because Tammy and I successfully participated in National Novel Writing Month in November.

The big story to end the year was the snow. Last year we didn’t really have any at all, so it was great to have a good dump. It’s almost melted away now.