The Year (2012) in Photos

Because photos are pretty.

Disclaimer:  I am not a professional photographer, as the following photos will demonstrate.

Here are some of, but not all, of the highlights of this past year (the ones captured in photographs, anyway):

My sister-in-law's husband (is there a name for that?  is that a thing?) and I destroying snow elementals with swords.

Running the Thanksgiving Point Half Marathon with our friends Jon and Andrea (it was actually quite gorgeous).

My sister-in-law and I both graduated with our Masters degrees in April.  (This is my wife's family.)

Notice my brown hood.  And check out those sleeves.  Yeah, you don't see that stuff often.  MFA all the way, baby. (?)

My Dad, sister, and her husband were able to make it down for the graduation as well.

The fattest man I know got married and it was awesome.

I wrote a collection of short stories for my Masters Thesis.

We moved to Lehi, where I started writing full time in this shnazzy little office.  That's white-board paint on the wall, by the way. 

A couple of fun trips this summer, including Zion National Park.

Oceanside, CA with Rachel's family (okay okay, this picture is from a few years ago...apparently I didn't take any pictures there this year).

Florida with my family, including Disney World and--of course!--Harry Potter World (or whatever it's called)!  Notice our wands, here.  Pretty awesome.

Rachel was much more excited about halloween than I was, this year...but our costumes turned out quite well.

Puerto Rico!

This guy got re-elected, and I'm pretty happy about that.  Thanks for the low gas prices for Christmas, Obama!  (Hey, if you can blame him for high gas prices, I can blame him for low ones.  He is equally involved in both, and when I say equally I actually mean infinitesimally...)

My parents and brother came down to UT for Thanksgiving--that was the first Thanksgiving we'd spent as a family in at least 5 years, so, yeah, that's pretty cool.  (This was when we went to Temple Square to check out the lights.)

The parentals.

Rachel and I celebrated 6 years of dating and 4.5 years of marriage on 7 December of this year.  Don't you wish your marriage was hot like me...us...hum.

It actually snowed in Utah for the holidays this year, which is quite the miracle considering the dismal showing we had last year...

We spent Christmas in La Crescenta, CA with Rachel's family, and had a blast.  Saw Les Miserables on Christmas Eve, and it was just about the best Christmas present ever.

More taking advantage of the snow.  Rachel and Kristi made a pretty sweet snowslide in our backyard.

Also, I had a beard.

There are some other pretty awesome things that happened this year, but those are the visual highlights according to my hard drive.

We Live for Days Like This

I watched my sister get married on a glacier in Alaska yesterday, and it was probably one of the most unique experiences I've yet had in my life.

It was beautiful, exotic, and I felt like I was in an episode of The Bachelorette.  Minus that whole fake element, of course.  And the cheesy-ness.  And the completely ridiculous premise.  Okay, nothing like The Bachelorette at all, really.  But the experience was unforgettable.

Despite the extraordinary circumstances--and if you've ever been on a glacier, you know how extraordinary those circumstances can be, and if you haven't, think of icy dunes merged with a lunar landscape, along with striking green mountains in the distance and bright blue streams of water running everywhere, and think of the fact that you're standing on hundreds upon hundreds of feet of ice moving lethargically and painstakingly slowly beneath your feet, and you may get an inkling of what I'm talking about--but yes, despite the extraordinary circumstances, what I loved most about the day was how easily I could see how happy my sister's new husband made her.  Their affection for each other was effortless and genuine, on a level I don't see very often, if I've ever seen it at all.  They were confident enough in their love to completely let their guard down and allow the rest of us to glimpse the world they have created for each other.  I've been to a lot of weddings, most of them beautiful, many of them where the couple were very obviously in love, and it was wonderful.  But what I saw yesterday was rare.  Sure, my view might be skewed--she is my sister, after all.  But the fact that the day did belong to my sister, and that I did feel the way I did about the two of them, makes me more happy than I can possibly articulate.

I'll avoid going on and on about how remarkable the day was; things like this deserve the respect of brevity.  So here's to Deja and Ben, and the life they're creating together.

In case you've been wondering . . .

. . . why I haven't posted in more than a week, just have a look-see below.  Its because I've been at the beach in southern California for the past week, watching sunsets like this:

And building things like this:

Or, from another angle:

And enjoying the general scenery right outside our back door, including but not limited to:

...as well as doing a whole lot of writing, sunning, a variety of aquatic ocean-related activities, hours upon hours of Scum (the card game of course, although there was some questionable filmy stuff around some parts of the ocean . . . they told us it was "algae" but you never know . . .), and lots of lazing around in general.  With family and friends.

Be jealous.

WeekendUpdate

Had an awesome family reunion this weekend, on my wife's side.

Family is good stuff. Makes you think, just a little, about how important the whole "building-relationships" thing is in life. Just a thought.

In writing news, you may have noticed that the progress bar for my YA Novel project is slowly creeping up there. DANG STRAIGHT. I've found a groove, and I'm hoping to stick with it for a while. The pendulum is swinging and I'm riding it for all its worth. I'm sure there will be some rougher spots ahead, but with any luck (and with a lot of hard work and dedication and motivation and decapitation [one of these things is not like the other . . .]), I'll be finished with this novel in the next three or four weeks. Knock on wood.

So, basically, all is well with the world, and writing is the bomb.com.

Just sayin'.