it's not officially over....

but i have liked 2009 a whoooole lot (so far... it can still get effed up). it's unusual, because i don't like odd years as a general rule of thumb. you see, odd numbers/years are male, which in my mixed-up catholic school head equals not quite as nice and safe and happy, with nice rounded edges and pretty pastel colors, as even numbers/years)

anyhow my highlights of the odd, but in a good way, year:

• 20 january 2009. i watched. i cried. i watched again and cried again and watched again and kept it on my dvr, all 5 hours of it, for a very very very long time :)
• 17 march 2009. we went to watch Obama land in his fancy naval helicopter thing at long beach airport and he waved to us (forget the thousand other people behind us, he was waving to US!) and he got onto air force one at took off, waving all the time through the window :)
• 3 april 2009. our wedding anniversary. it was 11pm (and the sky was so beautifully clear and studded with millions of bright teeny stars stretching all the way from America to England :) and we were driving along the coast from new york to cape cod, taking our boys to visit a little slice of heaven. they were fast asleep in the back of our fancy seeing-the-usa-in-our-chevrolet impala rental car and we stopped to get hot mcdonalds apple pies to celebrate our anniversary, and we listened to 'stardust' by nat king cole. ahhhhhhh.... paradise found:)
• 9 april 2009. we took our boys to tour the white house, where they were given pictures of Obama's above mentioned helicopter and air force one, presidential candies, allowed to sit on the fancy silk furniture, skip along the long hallways, press their noses against the perfectly pristine windows and admire the JFK painting up close in person. soooooo much fun (but no cameras allowed - dang)
• 15 may 2009. Grandma came to visit from England!! we rented a beach house and spent many hours playing games together, watching dolphins swim by and collecting perfect white seashells on the perfectly empty beach.
• 1 june 2009. you know when you meet someone for the first time and you find you have so much in common and you just want to talk to them for hours and see them again the next day and the day after and you want to share everything with them? well, that's Steph and she is a really good sharer-back :)
• 7 august 2009. how i love Sam and his sweet, summer, tanned-little-face/huge-blue-eyes birthday. we spent the day swimming underneath the awesome waterfall at the Mirage (with Steph's underwater camera:) and had all-you-can-eat cotton candy for lunch and it was all so perfectly sweet and perfect, just like the boy himself :)
• 15 september 2009. we met Mrs Kay, Danny's preschool teacher, who we love dearly. all her classroom toys are from the 70s and 80s and she plays the super cute JFK school exercise tape before class starts... she is so authentically american and wholesome and REAL :) she has been running the preschool the exact same way for 23 years. so she's really organized and calm, and is the most kind, positive, loving teacher to my precious little Dannyboy, who has learned sooo much in just 3 months with her. and she doesn't mind that a stray cat lives under the school, she is just that cool kind of person :)

there are many more dates to add... but it's late... and my shoulders ache... and i want to go to bed remembering these days while they are fresh in my mind again :)