I moved in to small house on McCullough St. in Norman, Oklahoma in 2004 with my friend Mindy. We were so excited about our new beautiful house. I remember telling my parents about how amazing this house was and how cute it was. They came to help me move on move in day and my mom was less than thrilled with the new dwelling space. She pulled my dad aside and told him that I could not move in there… It was a shock to me because I thought it was an adorable house. Looking back today I can see where the worry came from. The doors and windows wouldn’t lock and when you walked in the bathroom you felt like you just might fall through the floor and the best part was the train was literally one house away from us, so the entire house shook for about 5 minutes every hour. But I loved it anyways. Mindy and I moved in and made it adorable.

It wasn’t too long after living there that I met Michelle & Julie. They were our neighbors and still today Michelle is one of my best friends. I’ve been so lucky to find such amazing friends in my life. Michelle is a special gal and from day 1 I knew we’d be friends forever. Now I get to see her in the role of a wife and a mommy, which is completely different than the Michelle I met. We spent our time stalking boys, drinking wine, and playing with the dog beasts that live with her. One time we devised the most brilliant plan in order to meet this boy who was a graduate student in Ecology in one of my classes at OU… It was fabulous and I am not going to go in to details because 2004 was a really busy year! But I will commit to devoting an entire blog post to the boy from Brazil!

So through working at Journey I had the opportunity to go on two fabulous trips that year. I spent a week in Cancun, Mexico… But not the Cancun of girls gone wild, the actual city. I worked at a mission there that supplied help to the community. It was an amazing trip, the kids were wonderful and the folks that I went with were great too. I couldn’t imagine a better trip, that was until I went to Mozambique that summer. That trip to Mozambique was absolutely amazing. I stayed onsite at an orphanage the time we were there, except for a few nights that we spent in tents in the bush. The children at the orphanage were unlike any children I’d been around before. They had seen and been affected by things that no child should ever experience but they had so much joy. I assure you that a day has not gone by since my time in Africa when I haven’t thought about those kids. It was a fabulous summer. I went with a small group of people and our lives will always be tied together because of that trip. I still love to keep in contact and hear how they are all doing today. A special friendship formed from that trip with my friend Abbie. And I have a feeling that one day we might go back there together. (What do you think Abbie? Or should I ask Colin?) On our way to the bush my group was taken off a bus and thrown in jail… It might be one of the more exciting stories I have. It was horribly scary but they let us go in the end. So all was good, and I came home with a fabulous story from it!

I ended the year with a trip to Austria to go and visit Kelly. I met them the day after Christmas at a ski lodge that her boyfriend’s family had rented for the past 30 years. It was amazing, except for the fact that I got the flu and I can’t ski. Little kids were flying past Kelly and me and laughing at us. I fell more than I stood up and finally we called it quits. That when I found out we were supposed to sled home. Now being from Texas and Oklahoma sledding to me was something you did on a hill. I had no idea that you can control a sled and have it lead you somewhere. But we did, we also sled down a huge hill that had a fence at the bottom of it and had no other way out but to climb back up the hill which was really steep and covered in at least 2 feet of snow. It took what seemed like hours, the sun was going down and I was pretty sure we were going to die, but we made it. We rang in the new year German style, lots of singing, lots of toasting and for me, lots of Kleenex.

2004 was a fabulous year that just might be one of my favorites of this decade.

With the kiddos in Mexico

The girls at the orphanage braided my hair. This is me with baby Sam.

I love this picture so much. This was the night after we were arrested and had made it to the bush. These ladies were amazing!

Super cold in Austria.

President: George Bush
Vice President: Richard Cheney
Population: 294 million

No budget information for this year… Sorry

No. 1 Song the week of February 12, 2004: The Way You Move by OutKast

Nobel Prize for Literature: Elfriede Jelinek (Austria)

Random Facts:

• Scientists created two new chemical elements, named Ununtrium (Element 113) and Ununpentium (Element 115)
• Cosmologist Stephen Hawking reverses himself on his Black Hole theory and concludes that information can in fact be retrieved from black holes. DUH!
• Martha Stewart, diva of domesticity, was sentenced to five months in prison in July after being found guilty on four counts of obstruction of justice and lying to federal investigators.
• Janet Jacksons nipple was revealed to all during the Super Bowl.