Hi everyone, and Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Happy New Year, and Happy Whatever Else You May Celebrate!
It’s hard to believe we’re already at the end of 2018—almost three and a half years since Aarica and I met, and almost two years since I asked her to marry me. But we’re here, and only eight months away from our wedding date.
We couldn’t be more excited for what next year holds (Aarica especially, since she’s getting her braces off shortly, which will mean it’s time for us to get our engagement photos and invites rolling), but for now I’m going to talk about what we’ve been up to since our last Christmas letter.
2018 started off busy and stayed that way. At the very end of 2017, I landed a part-time position as a Software Developer at Radial Development Group, which I worked in conjunction with my full-time position as a Mobile Expert (a glorified Sales Associate) to more effectively pay rent. I was hired on in a sort-of-like-contract-to-hire role as a Lead Developer on one of the many projects our small team was coordinating. Meanwhile, Aarica worked her semester as a student teacher at High Plains School in Loveland. She worked with fifth graders for the first half of the semester, then transitioned to working with the second graders for the latter half.
Emmett did not work.
Neither did the latest addition to the household, Leo, my sister Meghan’s new cat. Emmett sees him as his annoying little brother. I see a giant butt on our table.
But we certainly felt like sleeping along with him after our long work hours. So what did we do?
Go to DisneyWorld, of course!
Animal Kingdom was, well, a zoo. But the Avatar ride and Lion King show were pretty fun!
Aarica had never been to a Disney park, so we thought it was important to see as much as we possibly could.
Cinderella’s Castle. And people scared of rain.
Random visitor names are displayed on the walls on your way into Rock ‘n Rollercoaster in Hollywood Studios. Aarica’s was picked, which made her very excited—her name’s spelling isn’t about to appear on a Coke bottle, after all.
Hollywood Studios is packed to the gills with Star Wars paraphernalia these days. Can’t imagine why.
Epcot was as fun and fascinating as I remembered.
Yes, DisneyWorld is in Florida. Yes, Aarica was cold anyway.
Sooooo we got her coffee.
Ha, look at Aarica’s face on Rock ‘n Rollercoaster!
…Well, touche. I guess I find Space Mountain stars cool?
In short, we had a blast.
But then it was back to work. The High Plains/Radial/T-Mobile shuffle continued until the summer, but we found time to see one of our favorite bands again, The Fratellis.
And got to see Vance Joy at Red Rocks and Blue October at the Ogden.
Vance Joy made a live album of the Red Rocks show!
The summer brought some big changes. Aarica finished her student teaching and dived right into her final classes for her Master’s Degree in Elementary Education, while also picking up a nannying job and applying to about every teaching job she could find to jump right into her new career in the fall.
Meanwhile, I officially closed the door on my life in food and retail, quitting T-Mobile and taking on a full-time position as a Lead Developer at Radial.
Ihaveshakyhandsdon’tjudgeme
Since we haven’t been to enough weddings prior to our own, we went to yet another in June. This one was for Jen, Aarica’s former boss and friend from ABC Child Development Center in Greeley, and her new husband, Britton.
Aarica was a bridesmaid.
The venue was at the top of a mountain that we took a ski lift to get to. It was quite an experience!
Shortly before the school year started, Aarica officially earned her Master’s Degree and landed her first full-time teaching job as a fourth grade teacher at Shawsheen Elementary in Greeley. Here’s her eating ice cream in celebration.
She probably would’ve gone to get ice cream anyway. She rather likes the stuff.
In September, we squeezed one more concert in. After Vance Joy, I felt it was important that we see some badass punk rock in the form of Rise Against at Red Rocks.
And that I rep Radial while I was at it, clearly. But wow it was an incredible show!
We went to lots of great movies this year, as always: Incredibles 2 for our traditional anniversary date; Christopher Robin because of course we saw Christopher Robin (it was quite heartwarming, actually); the utterly-outstanding movies-directed-by-actors, A Star is Born and A Quiet Place; the most underrated movie of the year, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald; the latest in a movie series that has no right to be getting better, but is doing so anyway (Mission Impossible: Fallout); and, of course, the latest Marvel superhero outings (Black Panther, Avengers: Infinity War, Ant-Man and the Wasp, and Deadpool 2).
Also, we saw disappointment in film form (Solo: A Star Wars Story), but I guess we should’ve seen that coming based on Ron Howard’s recent track record. It was a bit like drinking La Croix.
But we also did a couple of things a bit out of our comfort zone. Like go to a Halloween… festival, I guess you’d call it? There was one in Denver called Pumpkin Nights that we had a lot of fun at with our friends Charlie and Megan Stoddard.
You know you’re old when you have couple friends?
Aarica was there for the owls though, really.
Unfortunately, not all of 2018 was fun, or even positive. We had a great year, albeit a busy and occasionally-stressful one, but our families met with difficult challenges and heartbreak. Aarica’s grandma was hospitalized and had to get surgery; her sister, Karrisa, has been seeing a speech therapist all year after a car accident she was in over a year ago; my family’s labradoodle, Ellie, died at fourteen years old; my sister Caitlin’s fiancé, Lonnie, broke up with her (after proposing to her in the first place, no less), which led to us road-tripping her back to Colorado from New Orleans; and my grandma, Deanna Rice, passed away in October. We flew out to Maryland for her funeral, where I had the opportunity to speak along with my dad and grandpa about what a wonderful example she was to the people around her.
Fortunately, our families came together to support each other in a fashion that deeply moved me. It’s always hard to watch people you care about go through great adversity, but some small part of me welcomes tragedy for the way it brings out the best in people. We habitually joke around until we hurt someone, fail to take serious things seriously, “troll” people to get a rise out of them, criticize creators more than we create things ourselves, and get outraged (or feign outrage) over trivialities rather than daring to let our inner selves show.
But when tragedy strikes, people’s true natures show. We stop talking about the odd little quirks that sometimes drive us crazy about the people we love, and we start talking about how much they really cared about us, and we them.
Caitlin, Meghan, Aarica, me, Grandma Jackie, Ken, Kelli (my mom), and Grandpa Jack, left to right.
And in any case, there were also some big successes that came from this year for the people around us. Aarica’s younger sister, Karrisa, has nailed down a career path she wants to pursue that she hopes to dig into when she moves to Alabama when their parents return from Japan. Their younger brother, TJ, joined the junior ROTC while going to school at the US Naval Base in Yokosuka. My sister, Caitlin (the middle child of us three), got a job at Mary Blair Elementary School as a Special Education Paraprofessional, got accepted into at least one Neuroscience Master’s Program (with several more applications pending), and got a new boyfriend named Ty who likes Harry Potter and is therefore cooler than Lonnie. My youngest sister, Meghan, graduated from high school, jumped right into the workforce at the local Culver’s (not to mention the world of paying rent), and snatched an internship at Radial out from under the noses of several college students.
And I’m thrilled that there’s so, so much more in store for us all. For our part, Aarica and I are aggressively paying down student loan debt and hope to have it paid off in the next few years; I’m working on a job-experience-sharing social platform called Novum Opus, which I hope to release version 1.0 of next year; and of course, we’re getting married on August 3, 2019.
She’s thrilled, if her constant Pinterest research is anything to go by. I’m thrilled, because I get to marry the most amazing woman I’ve ever met. And we can’t wait to see you all there.
Thanks so much for reading. Have happy and safe holidays, everyone!
Post number 53.