bball's super-awesome 2009 year in review (1 month in to 2010!)!

Wow what a year and it's already 1 month behind me. I kind of suck at writing this on time but so much happens right around new years (when I would ideally write it) and next thing I know I'm working 'til 10 every night of the week and on Saturdays and suddenly it's the end of January already! Time flies, period (since I'm not necessarily having fun right now). I also want to make a note of how perpective changes every day as I have started multiple drafts of this but haven't finished any of them and each time I start one I write about completely different things. I'm also writing about mostly my memories (obviously mostly work-related) as pretty much all family-related memories have been well-documented by my super-wife Rachel. My 2009 year in review as remembered on January 31, 2010.

Flash back one year to January 2009. History is made as the first black President of the United States is sworn in. I remember I was at BMW Bank up on Parley's Way by Foothill working on an audit and basically the whole company shut down for an hour to cram around a tv in the break room to watch the inauguration. In retrospect it was definitely a historical event, yet I can also say in retrospect the only "change I can believe in" that I've seen in this first year of his run is a giant change in the national debt and a change in how we treat crooked CEO's of big-time companies that screw over their investors. . . we now reward them with federal tax money! Alas, I digress.

February 2010 had to be one of the worst (or best) eating-months of my entire life. Working on the IHC audit we were so slammed that we went out to eat for lunch and dinner virtually every day for the entire month. Combine that with the abundant supply of snacks and extra treats that always seem to show up around Valentine's Day and it was pretty crazy. I don't doubt that I put on a few extra pounds in this month. I distinctly remember (with the help of my blog of course) going to Sizzler with Rachel at the end of that week and laughing about how I "took it easy" with only a few plates of all-you-can-eat shrimp.

March I worked on Mrs. Fields Cookies (as I'm now entrenched in IHC it was probably the last time). I liked the team there and I especially liked working close to Rachel's work where I would frequently meet up with her for lunch. La Puente and Pistol Pete's were definitely our two favorite lunch spots. La Puente has become one of our favorite restaurants overall; you just can't beat the smothered burritos or the flaming-hot salsa. With the exception of Cafe Rio (if you count that) we're basically at the point that we don't even consider anywhere else when we want Mexican food. So good, I'm salivating for it right now just thinking about it.

In April I had an opportunity to take a couple days off and we went to St. George for a weekend. Nothing too spectacular about St. George other than it's a lot warmer than here and it's not "here". I can appreciate the need a couple times a year to just get away from the house for a couple days, even if all you're doing is chillin' by the hotel pool most the day, which is exactly what we did. It was Cannon's first real experience in a pool and he really liked it so it was worth taking him down there.

In May I worked on Sweet Candy Company and spent a couple weeks in Washington State again. Nothing too spectacular this month with the exception that I did realize the awesomeness of books on tape in this month! I sometimes drive to Washington, which is 10-11 hours; when a CD is only 40 minutes or so, you cruise through a ton of music in that time. But with a book on tape it takes 8-9 hours to get through the whole book so it kind of progresses with you throughout the trip. This might not make sense unless you've made a long drive alone but there is a difference between thinking "holy crap it seems like I've listened to every album I own!" and tearing through one book on a long drive. While the time is the same the trip has a different feel. I generally drive once a month when I'm working out of town and I started to look forward to the drives when I had found a couple good books at the library.

June was one of the worst month's I've had in my job. I don't mind working 'til 11 when it's January-cold and dark at 5, not a ton of activities going on-but I definitely mind when it's June- warm and light 'til 9, plenty of outside activities with the fam to go do. That is obviously the breaks of my current job and I choose to do what I do but I am allowed to whine a bit here and there right?

I took the first two weeks of July off prior to my annual travel-thon. We had plenty of fun activities and we also started on Rachel's favorite activity ever. . .finishing the basement! Well, we decided to start and bought a ton of materials but we really didn't get up and going for a few months after that. Nevertheless it is interesting now to think back about what the basement looked like before we started the process. The process kind of reminds me of an artist's work who take make something out of nothing. The basement was a big open space that could be made into anything and will now forever be finished according to our design. It's far from finished at this point, but it is completely framed so you can see the dimensions of the rooms, etc. which I think is pretty cool.

My other memory of my time off in July is we went up to the cabin and I took Cannon on his first ever zip line ride. Rachel and I were both thinking he would freak out but he loved it. There is something about that zip line that I would think is special to any Ball-child and probably to anybody who's ever had a ride on it. There is something singular to the thrill of being up in the mountains and riding that thing that is unmatched.

In between trips to Washington in August we also went on a sweet cruise with some friends! Rachel posted all about it on her blog but some key things I remember: 1) I weighed in at 245 lbs heading into the cruise, knowing I had to keep it under 250 to ride the ziplines 2) I came home at 260 lbs and haven't dropped since and I'm pretty sure I was over the 250 point by the 5th day of the cruise when we rode the zip lines. Oops!. (Sidenote: I'm in a weightloss competition at work and am down 5 lbs so far. I know I have like 85 more to go but needless to say my February '10 won't be like February '09 as the managers cut off the sweet treat supply). 3) After the evening entertainment was over late Rachel and I would head up to the top deck and watch the ocean and chat for an hour or so nearly every night, which we don't get the opportunity to do nearly enough, 3) the realization that we are old loser-adults: the group of us head up to the hot-tubs on the top deck late one night and get into a tub that has tons of teenagers in it. They all IMMEDIATELY get up and leave. Wow, we're that intimidating huh? We sit and chat for a while and during the course of our time there a couple teenage girls and a few teenage guys come get in but just sit there and don't say a word. I didn't notice anything until the second we got out they start talking to each other and all of us realize they were scared to talk in front of us! That was a sobering moment knowing that you're definitely too old to relate to the young crowd anymore. In my mind I'm eternally 22-24 age but when I see someone that age or younger I realize I am definitely NOT. Oh well, the cruise was a blast and a needed break for Rachel and I; however, we were definitely missing Cannon by the time we got back. We had a 3-state bonanza the day we got back: Fly from CA to UT in the morning, unpack cruise stuff and pack work stuff, and fly from UT to WA in the evening for me while Rachel drove up to Idaho to pick up Cannon.

September! Month where dreams come true! Really it's just my birthday month so you have to say it's awesome, right? September started off with a bang as my beloved BYU Cougars went to Texas to play Oklahoma in the new Cowboys Stadium and beat then-No.3 Oklahoma. I dinstinctly remember shouting after the winning touchdown "This is the greatest day in my life!" as I shook Cannon up in the air. My friend Britton made the comment "As he is holding his son in his hands!". High comedy. Sadly they got their butts kicked, at home no less, by a mediocre Florida State team two weeks later and fell out of the national championship discussion just as fast as they got in it. There is honestly nothing better than the feel of football in the air. We even went to a high school game up in Idaho with Rachel's family when we were up there visiting. That is what September is all about, being excited for football, which I am every year.

October was a death stretch for me as I had been away from home every week since the middle of July (including the cruise I know but that was still away from home!). I even spent a weekend up in Washington in October to finish my job and had a 14 day stretch of working every day, usually past midnight. The job I'm on during that stretch isn't a bad job, it's just when you don't go home at night to your own home you can't get little things done around the house so those all build up for the weekend, which makes the weekends a mess as well. I did get home eventually and my good memory from October is Cannon being a cowboy for Halloween. We took him around for the first time and he got boatloads of candy that we still have today. He did pretty good on asking trick-or-treat but the real fun is seeing how excited he got for the candy from every house. Funny how important these things are as you become a parent in life.

November was a blur but I will note the best day of November 2009, the 21st. My buddy Jared Selman called me the night before and offered Rachel and I to go to the BYU-Utah game. I have never been live before so it was awesome. Hall to George in OT and Hall's "I Hate Utah" press conference afterwards are immortalized and will forever hold a special place in my heart. Hall notched himself up a level in the BYU QB pantheon in my mind and backed it up the next month with a thrashing of Oregon State in the LV Bowl. Rachel also found out she was pregnant in November! We are both excited and grateful for an addition to our family! I think a lot about how weird it is to have this concept of another person in your family and how it just doesn't resonate until it's actually real. I can't picture Cannon being anything other than what he is but you have no idea before they are born. Same for this baby so we're excited for the adventure.

In December I took the final two weeks off over Christmas-New Years. That is a great time to be home and not worry about anything but family so I was happy I could be home for that stretch. Rachel's dad took off the second week and we framed the entire basement that week. OK, I didn't help that much other than passing him the hammer and cutting some boards, as I know how anti-handy I am; but I have learned a lot working in the basement and would feel at least something other than terrified if faced with the project again.

2009 ended kind of where it began, with a bunch of our friends at the Gehrke's house (this year just their house not at Bear Lake). Kind of funny that the more things change, the more they stay the same, which is not a bad thing at all.