Hip, Hip Hooray for 2010!

It feels like it's been forever. I've missed you all!

I guess traveling through six states in two weeks can make a short vacation feel longer than it is.

This season was our second holiday as a married couple. We're still trying to figure out how to navigate two families who are 981 miles apart (and 1,000 miles away from our house in Houston) without stressing ourselves out (and still make time for friends).

We had a good plan this year: drive from Houston to my family in Tampa (with our bloodhound, Hoss), stay for 2.5 days, fly to Bloomington to see Matt's family, stay for 2.5 days, fly back to Florida, drive to Naples to hang out with our friends at a birthday party/New Year's Party (with bowling!), and drive back to Houston (with enough time to do laundry and go grocery shopping before the work week started).

However, an unexpected medical emergency affected our plans (but ended up reminding me what marriage is all about). When Matt and I were about an hour outside of Tampa on the first leg of our journey, we got a phone call letting us know that Matt's grandfather was back in the hospital and was gravely ill. I told Matt he should change his flight and fly to Indiana early. He wasn't sure what to do. I urged him to be with his family in their time of need, despite the fact that we wouldn't be together on Christmas.

Once he rebooked his flight, we decided to have a "Car Christmas" by exchanging gifts. I gave him a living, growing scrapbook of our past four years together, as well as a coupon for a wood-working class. Matt gave me a book about growing plants in shade (since we have a shady backyard), a coupon for two massages, and a collection of vintage postcards. It turns out he's been sneaking into the back room of the antique shop we go to on Saturdays, and he's been squirreling away postcards from locations that have meaning to us.

Fortunately, Matt's grandfather recovered, and we enjoyed our time in Bloomington. Afterwards, we trekked to our friends' birthday party/New Year's shindig. We completed our yearly reflection forms and made our collages to visually represent our goals for the new year.


As always, I feel like I take on too many projects. This year, I'm going to be extra cautious of what I say yes to. I'm going to prioritize building a garden at our home, maintaining the time bank, updating my education blog more frequently, fully settling into our home, cultivating the ability to relax during stressful situations, nurturing my creativity through crafty projects, forging more friendships, saving money, starting a non-profit to promote the proliferation of public Montessori schools, maintaining my personal blog, strengthening our marriage, learning to love, love, love, and preparing my body/mind/soul for pregnancy.

I'm super-excited to continue updating 2000 Dollar Wedding at least five times a week. We have a lot of new features in the queue, and we have two contests coming up this month.

I hope to continue providing a forum to share ideas about how to plan a meaningful and memorable wedding without losing your savings or sanity! Of course I can't do it without you. There are lots of ways to contribute to 2000 Dollar Wedding:

1. Send me a question about wedding planning. I'll take a shot at providing advice and then lots of really helpful people will chime in with their perspectives.
2. Share your wedding with us!
3. Write a guest post about some aspect of wedding planning.
4. Become a Facebook fan to receive more frequent updates from Chez 2000dollarwedding or follow us on Twitter.
   
5. Leave a comment (anonymously if you want!). Your insights bring a smile to my face on a daily basis. Thank you!
   

Raising my glass (of calcium-fortified orange juice) to toast the new year and you!

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