Leap Year Recap

It's the middle of the night and I'm awake, catching up on blogs I follow with fingers crossed that my computer doesn't freeze once again.  I just read a Leap Year blog entry that made me want to try it myself.  Because today is the anniversary of Neal's birth I will limit the recap to the years since we became engaged.

2000 - At the end of February 2000 I had just broken up with a man from Ennis Montana and Neal was planning a trip to Montana to visit me (where he would propose within the first hour after he arrived).  I was teaching at Billings Senior High and loving every day with my students.  I was serving as stake Relief Society president and as an ordinance worker at the Billings temple.  I drove a 1988 maroon Oldsmobile 88.  The last day of school that spring we would be married and spend the summer in Seattle living in a darling mother-in-law apartment on Lake Washington.

2004 - I had retired and moved to Seattle where we went from the 800 sq ft place on the lake to a small apartment complex on Benson Hill and then purchased a home a few blocks away.  Neal and I had been to Hawaii a couple of times (broke my leg at Kauapea Beach on Kauai in 2003) and were busy upgrading our home.  Also in 2003 we were sealed in the Billings temple after my temple cancellation went through in ten days and we went every Friday evening to temple sessions for our date night.  Neal had his first church calling as secretary to the high priest quorum but would become the ward clerk in a few months, and I was serving as a counselor in the ward Relief Society. Part of my visiting teaching route was to Spanish-speaking sisters.  We had a Subaru Legacy that Neal drove and I had a 1998 blue Oldsmobile Intrigue.  I had begun a project to compile all our favorite recipes into one cookbook, which we ended up printing and sharing with family and friends.

2008 - Our entire world had changed in October 2005 after Neal had an ascending aortic dissection which left him paralyzed from the heart down.  Little by little we learned how to carry on with our lives so that by 2008 we had a routine that worked for us.  Neal drove a Town and Country van with hand controls and got around in a power chair.  Julia was just months away from going Home after an 18 month battle with non-smoker's lung cancer.  Anne was divorced and living in Billings with her daughter Celestina but would marry again that fall.  Neal's contract with Boeing was just months away from ending.  He was serving as ward clerk and I was the stake website administrator, giving power point presentations to various groups around the stake to help them learn how to use the church's new website.  We spent a lot of time going back and forth to UW Dental school since they had facilities to accommodate Neal's wheelchair while he had his teeth fixed.

2012 - Neal had died the previous year and I was learning how to be a widow.  Part of that included a memorable trip to Mexico and Guatemala on the Book of Mormon Lands Tour.  It was a wonderful experience.  Julia's husband remarried the same year Julia died and he had moved to Arizona.  It broke my heart that her grave was all alone on that hillside in Nevada without family to take her flowers.  Anne and her husband had moved to North Dakota and my first road trip in my 2011 silver Subaru Forester was to North Dakota for Celestina's baptism and to spend time with my year-old biological grandson.  The Subaru was the first new car I had ever purchased.  I was serving as Laurel adviser and struggling with some of the requirements of that calling since it seemed to involve more chaperoning or driving than actual teaching.  Later in 2012 I would attend my 50th high school reunion where I felt like I must have been invisible in high school because people I considered good friends in high school didn't even remember me.  Locally I had made some good friends and later in 2012 would begin walking with one or two of them on the Soos Creek trail.

2016 - Anne and her children moved from North Dakota to Renton last fall and are living with me so I'm learning how to share my home again.  Without a sewing room or a computer room anymore my bedroom now serves as both of those as well as a place to sleep.  My callings in the church include choir director, occasional organist and community meal coordinator for stake Public Affairs.  I still drive my 2011 Subaru that only has 19000 miles on it.  Other than the long trip to North Dakota in 2012 most of those miles have been local with regular weekly trips to the temple in Bellevue.  I cherish the time I spend there and prefer the Tuesday 5:30am session because traffic is easier that early in the morning.  I no longer go walking since my partner sold her condo and moved to Maple Valley.  We had quit walking on SC trail after her car was vandalized a few times so the last few months of walking together we used city sidewalks around her place.  On one of those mornings my car got its first dent when I parked too close to a support beam.

So that's it for this Leap Year.  Today I plan to go to the cemetery and then try to do some planning for upcoming family dinners.  We're celebrating Easter twice - once with Neal's daughters and families and then later with Neal's sisters and families.