summer.

I realize I've been tuned out for the last four months. To be honest, I've attempted to catch up on posts multiple times, but for one reason or another, never succeeded. And now the sad fact is that the time it would take to upload catch up photos now would not longer make it worth it to catch up.

So here's a very lame post with mostly text to recap the summer and kick off a year of better blog devotion.

This summer was busy for both of us. David went to school during the spring while I TAed. Then he went to work full time while I taught my first class (all by myself) at BYU while simultaneously working part time conserving Egyptian textiles at the Museum of Peoples and Cultures. Somewhere in all the chaos we had time for two trips to California, fireworks, parades, family reunions, mission calls, mission returns, and celebrating our first anniversary. I'm sort of laughing as I type this out because I feel like half of the reason the summer felt so busy was actually because we were doing so many fun things - and in the moment I thought we were having the most boring summer a young married couple could have.

I do want to elaborate on my teaching experience a bit - mostly because it left a much greater impression on me than I thought it would. It was hard in ways I never anticipated, and much easier in ways I didn't think it would be. I had a great group of students, mostly eager to learn and great at participating. They laughed at my dumb jokes and told me they liked my passion for art (and that I needed to be more organized... so there's that.) And at the end of the semester when they handed me their finals, I got a little bit teary-eyed, realizing that my first batch of students had graduated beyond what I had to offer. (And then some of them showed up in the classes I TA for this semester. Can't get rid of me that easily!) Long story short, it was a really great experience, and I'm looking forward to teaching again in the winter.

So for now we're just getting settled in to a new semester. David is jumping into his advertising classes and loving it - he's so excited about what he's studying, which of course makes school and homework more bearable for both of us. I'm feeling much less pressure and anxiety at the start of this year - maybe because I'm a veteran now, or maybe because I've got a great start on my actual thesis. First draft is due at the end of this month. Defense deadline is in February. Totally doable, right?

We're happy. I guess that's my main message with this post... I can't detail all the fun things we've done or all the craziness and hair-pulling we've endured. But I can say that at this precise moment in my life, I feel a very deep sense of happiness and contentment, that I really haven't felt in a while. So that's us. And me. I didn't write on the blog this summer because I was busy building a foundation for happiness for the coming year. And happiness isn't perfection. But I'm hoping that happiness wins out in the end.

David will kill me for posting this one, but I decided it's my favorite picture of us from this summer - we finally made it to the beach, and it was one of the best afternoons. And this picture makes me happy. And it's the best summer tribute I could come up with.