Monica Buckles

So I asked for suggestions on what I could write about, and I got a couple of great ideas. Lucky says that I should write about my childhood, but I don’t have interesting stories like getting run over by a taxi while laying in the middle of the road on a speed bump like she does. Really you should ask her about it sometime.

Compulsive writer suggested that I write a year in review, and since it is New Years Eve I thought that wasn’t a bad idea. The problem with that idea is that we had a really REALLY horrible year that I have so generously spared you the details of.

I think a year in review is the perfect way to say goodbye to a horrible year. If you choose to click away now I would totally understand. If your still with me here we go.

January started out as a total whirlwind. January is our busy season (we do wedding trade shows) and we worked even more than usual. My hubby travels about half the month, but this year he was gone the whole month except for a few days when he was home in passing. So I spent the month playing single mother, while putting out fires at work. Ash spent the month in airports, and hotels.

January spilled into February, and although life was suppose to slow down we found ourselves working 7 days a week through all of February. Ash was asked to speak at conferences so he ended up out of town about half of February.

March came, and we were ready for life to get back to normal for a while, but it didn’t happen. While going to the doctor for a physical so she could put in her mission papers, my mother in law found out she had breast cancer. When they went in to do the surgery they found that it had spread through her lymph nodes and was worse than they thought.

By April we decided that we were in desperate need of a family vacation. There was a huge divide between us and the kids because we had been in survival mode for so long. We set off for southern California to hang out in the sun, swim in the pool, and be with Ash’s mom while she recovered from surgery and began chemotherapy. The day after we got there I received a phone call that my dad had passed away.

My dad left before I was 2 years old, and only made brief appearances in my life for the next 18 years (that is probably a post for another day). I never realized how much pain and grief I could feel for the loss of a man a barely new. I grieve the loss of opportunity to spend what little time I had with him. I find myself angry at those who kept my dad from being part of my life (his second wife). I once read another bloggers post about her dad, and she said she felt like she had “a dad shaped hole in her heart”, and that’s how I felt.

The next few months are a blur, as I put my head down and avoided life. I trudged through every day until the dark skies finally parted.

In June Ash got me a new puppy, that I love.

In July my mother and father-in-law moved to Utah, and I threw myself into taking care of her to distract myself from my own pain and problems. I cooked, cleaned, and ran errands for her while taking her to many appointments for her cancer treatment. We also had 3 teenage nephews come and stay with us. Two of them came for 10 days and the third stayed for 6 more weeks until mid August. We had a great time, and it was a wonderful distraction, but was also very tiring.

August was spent entertaining the nephews, and showing them all over Utah. I went to Cub Scout day camp with my Wolf den. During lunch I got a phone call that my mother-in-law had a seizure and was on her way to the hospital by ambulance. She ended up ok she had a few stitches and a huge black eye but over all she was fine. They did take her license away for six month so we started having to drive her everywhere.

At the end of August we decided to try another family vacation since our last attempt was a total disaster so we left for Hawaii. Ash and I have promised the kids a trip to Hawaii for years (Ash is from Hawaii). We can’t mange a family vacation without a major disaster, and this one was no different. We had a earthquake, and a hurricane during our trip.

Is anyone still with me?

Well next comes September, and September is our second really busy season so Ash was gone the whole month, and half of October to. By September I realize that we need to make some major changes and I started doing some serious soul searching.

October brought still more craziness, but attending the temple while Ash was out of town, and a lot of scripture reading brought a little peace to my life.

I got a phone call in mid October from Ash’s brother in Iraq asking me if I knew what had happened to his friend Ben. I will spare you the details, because I wrote about it here and here, but after a little detective work I found out that Ben had been in an accident, and was now a quadriplegic, and I spent the next few weeks at the ICU helping out as much as I could.

November was spent at the hospital doing what I could.

Mid November the bishop called me in to let me know that he was going to release me from my calling because he thought I needed a break.

In December family relationships came to a full boil (because of the family business) and we decided that it is time to leave the family business and do something else. I know this is the right thing to do, but it makes our future a little unsure. I have faith that the Lord will take care of us, but I don’t know what the next few months will hold for us.

If this whole post isn’t pathetic enough I’m spending New Years Eve taking care of my hubby, who is horribly sick.

I’m sure by now I have lost you all with my whining, but on the off chance that anyone is still reading this I need to throw in a few good things that happened this year.

1. Sadie went to the temple to do baptisms for the first time.
2. I discovered weight watchers, and have lost 22lbs
3. Ash met one of his idols Seth Godin (who shaved his head)
4. We went to Hawaii
5. My mother in-law finished chemo and radiation and appears to be doing well
6. My mother and father in-law got a mission call to London and will be leaving in February.
7. My children are healthy
8. We had a very generous friend donate a $200 gift certificate for Christmas to Ben and his family.
9. We raised about $2,000 at a benefit dinner for Ben.

Here is hoping for a better new year.

Happy New Year everyone!