Knowing My Way.... By Heart: The Year in Review

Okay, so I have a lot of ground to cover!

The highlights of my life in 2008:

new amazing friends
graduating with my MFA
being Officially Catholic

The not so great stuff: well, why waste time or thoughts dwelling. Let's move on:

I'm still working at SWI Photographers, but hoping to land this awesome job that I've been in the interview process for lately. I would be coordinating events and putting together a quarterly newsletter and maintaining a website for one of the nicest communities in Tallahassee. The job sounds like a blast and it's for a national management company with properties all over, so I could conceivable transfer in a year or two if I wanted. So... *fingers crossed* I really want this job!

I moved in this year with my friend Kat and am still camping out there. It's home. :-)

I got a guitar for Christmas, which was amazing and totally unexpected, so I'm pretty happy that I get to finally knuckle down and get serious about this business of playing it. It's a black Fender acoustic/electric. I haven't named it yet. Pics to come soon. :-)

I got to hang out with mi familia for the holidays. The older I get, the harder it gets to go home again. Economically, I find home to be a bit depressing. Things have really been let go and people are used to settling for less. It's a mentality that's tough to synch up with. I love my family, but what's the old addage? Family is like fish, after three days it starts to stink. Lol....I'm sure they were sick of me by the end of it, too. Let's just say you realize quickly how small a house is when you have three adults, three cats, and a dog fighting over everything from the bathroom to the remote.

My neices (soon to be, anyway) are cutie pies. They are also a handful. TWO handfulls. But I got to take them to the OKC Bombing Memorial. I make it a point to go there every year that I'm home. It's incredible. Even considering all of the amazing memorials in DC, this one in OKC is still my favorite.

This is the reflecting pool at the Memorial. It stretches between the 'Gates of Time' which say '9:01' and '9:03' because the blast occured at 9:02. The pool represents that moment in time, holding it forever in peaceful stillness. Reflected in the pool is the gorgeous Oklahoma sky, the thriving trees that are growing up beautifully despite the tragedy of where they are rooted, and the chairs that are there to represent the lives of the people lost in the blast.

My brother, Mike, and his girls: Riley (6) , Dacey (5) , and Shandy (7).

At the entrance to the museum, they have a childrens' area with chalk panels on the ground where kids can color or write both for fun and also to help them process what they're learning about the Memorial. The heart that someone kid had drawn seemed like a pretty accurate sentiment.

If you EVER get a chance, go visit this gorgeous Memorial. Gentle reminder, though: turn off cell phones and gentlemen please remove your hats. Even though it looks a bit like a public part, it is still a respected Memorial and deserves to be treated with respect and dignity.

I'm also going to throw in some pictures of other stuff I did over the break:

Crashed a scooter: