I didn’t know this would become a tradition. I didn’t know how important these posts would become for me over the years.
I wrote my first rapid-fire memory list on December 31, 2009. That was the first year I blogged here.
Now here I am, 11 years later, posting another one for 2020, a year everyone seems to say was tough.
Well, maybe not everyone. Maybe not even most people.
Looking back, 2020 has been a great year for me. Looking back, this is one of those years where I got to the end of the list faster than I thought and could have kept going. Looking back, it’s even hard to imagine that some of the memories from the first part of the year weren’t from two or three years ago already.
And I already know that looking back at these memories will only become more important in the years to come.
So, like I wrote in the email when we released our CD (memory #119 below)…
Here. We. Go.
- Ringing in the new year in a hotel in Chattanooga, TN
- Touring the aquarium in Chattanooga with Sarah, one of Unicorns
- Eating Jack-In-A-Box tacos on the way back from the Chattanooga road trip
- Watching Kaegan the first weekend of 2020
- Signing up for the $350 marriage course
- Crying with Bryce when we talked about sitting down with our dads and telling them things we’re ashamed of
- Talking with Meagan about sharing these shame lists
- Starting to make some of my own shame lists
- Selling our entire DVD collection to Half Price Books for $100
- Moving Lachlan to his own big boy bed with trains on it (but him still coming into our bed at night)
- Getting a new bedspread that didn’t really match our current bedroom colors
- Installing the light above the cove in the living room
- Putting together the bunkbed for Lachlan and Rosalie
- First talking with Eric about coronavirus and how it could spread on a subway
- Getting together with Poppy at Qdoba and talking
- Getting together with Poppy at Cracker Barrel just as Covid was starting
- Canceling on Poppy for teaching at church when Covid started
- Going to Steve Reimer’s house for the crocinole party
- Going to Ken’s house for Memorial Day, swimming, and getting caught in rain
- Voting in June and again in November
- Trying to spend 1,000 hours outside this year
- Going to Main Event for Valentine’s Day
- Going to Grandma D.’s house for her birthday
- Meagan winning a year of free swimming classes for Lachlan and Aqua Tots
- Taking Lachlan to his swim classes and reading the Einstein book
- Learning about Relativity in the Einstein biography where the speed of light was compared to trains and sailing boats
- Taking the family to Texas Roadhouse for Meagan’s birthday (and Lachlan riding on the saddle)
- Celebrating our fifth wedding anniversary
- Swapping babysitting/date nights with Will and Lauren
- Grilling hamburgers with Will and Lauren’s family in the rain, twice
- Walking a lot on Anchorage Trail
- Talking family photos together on Anchorage Trail
- Donating Christmas stockings for teenage girls to Roo’s Wish
- Picking up Texas Roadhouse To-Go for Gage’s birthday
- Celebrating Gage’s birthday for the first time in quarantine
- Purchasing and putting together a swing set in the backyard
- Meagan saying that she thought schools would be canceled because of the coronavirus
- Schools closing because of the coronavirus on March 16
- Our neighbor calling me “Mitchell” for the fifth year in a row
- Attending church online over Zoom and Facebook
- Doing an Easter Egg Hunt in our backyard
- Having Ambur, Jamason, and Stacie over for Meagan’s birthday and going to Fat Jimmy’s together
- Sponsoring a high school senior graduating during Covid through the Bless A Senior, Facebook group
- Buying Lachlan a new blowup pool with the slide
- Getting the new grill for Father’s Day from my parents
- Grilling out hotdogs every Saturday through the summer
- Taking time off to go to the doctor with Meagan leading up to Rosalie being born
- Scheduling for Meagan to be induced on May 7, during Covid
- Finding out the morning of the delivery that it was our nurse’s first day back on the job after being off recovering from Covid-19
- Waiting for what seems like a long time before Meagan really went into labor (it was freezing cold in the room)
- Meagan in so much pain that she asked for an epidural when the nurse thought we had hours to go
- Watching the anesthesiologist prep and give Meagan the epidural
- Finding out Meagan was 10 cm dilated when she got the epidural
- The obstetrician calling for backup when he realized our baby delivering properly
- The doctor looking at me before breaking Rosalie’s arm (shoulder dystocia) in order to get her out during the delivery
- Seeing the doctor unwrap the umbilical cord from around Rosalie’s neck
- The doctor apologizing for breaking Rosalie’s arm
- Meagan almost passing out an hour after the delivery
- Meagan receiving a blood transfusion to try to get her hemoglobin level up
- Someone taking Rosalie away while we tried to get Meagan stabilized
- Taking pictures of Rosie with her giant cheeks right after she was born
- Meagan getting a second blood transfusion the third day in the hospital before we got to go home
- Lachlan calling Rosie a chicken nugget
- Finding out our neighbor, the one who calls me Mitchell, cut our lawn for us while we were in the hospital
- Missing church for three quarters of the year
- Bringing Gage to take the ACT and sitting in the room with everyone else waiting to start
- Picking up Gage from the ACT and him saying he didn’t do well and had to guess on all the math questions
- Gage getting his ACT results back and finding out he scored at or above high school juniors and seniors even though he was only in the seventh grade
- Watching Tik Tok videos with Meagan and drinking way too much bourbon that one night
- Meagan painting our bottom cabinets white, two weeks after having Rosalie
- Hearing about and watching the protests and riots around the country and in downtown Louisville
- Picnicking in Anchorage Trail with the food from the Cottage Cafe in Middletown
- Meagan adding a wallpaper backsplash in our kitchen
- Buying scooters for Gage and Lachlan
- Trying to do Takeout Tuesday doing the Covid shutdown
- Hiking Jim Holder Trail (the one with the creek where people were swimming), Asbury Trail (the one with the cliff), Mount St. Francis Loop Trail (the one where we went the wrong way a couple times), Cedar Sink Trail in Mammoth Cave National Park (the one with the sinkholes), Hemlock Cliff (the one with the rocks we hiked through), Tioga Falls (the one with the train bridge and waterfall), Hardy Lake Island (the one with the lake all around)
- Hiking the Waverly Park Trail and Meagan twisting her ankle with Lachlan on her shoulders
- Hiking Tunnel Falls to Lilly Memorial with Bryce and Lisi and Bryce carrying Lachlan through the giant, cave tunnel
- Lighting sparklers with Gage and Lachlan for the Fourth of July
- Trying a Big Red, ice cream float
- Getting double meals with Meagan at Panera, Subway, and Qdoba
- Lachlan singing Watermelon Sugar
- Going to the splashpark at Skyview park during Covid
- Driving during the weekends of Covid looking at expensive houses and finding that weird one that was completely covered by privacy evergreens
- Creating the intercom video at work
- Walking the Falls of Ohio, seeing the fossils, and watching the RC drivers
- Wine walking through the neighborhood with our kids
- Building a headboard from old wood from the trailer at work
- Video chatting with Bryce and coming up with the idea to start a podcast
- Meeting with David over Zoom and realizing I knew him from Korea
- Creating a website for Cucumber Talks
- Meagan and Lachlan dying their hair blue
- Attending Gage’s open house for school online
- Getting the idea for a novel about coronavirus and thinking it would do well in SEO
- Buying groceries for the man in front of me and him buying me mine so we could get around the Covid-19 ration restrictions in March (and all the other true stories I wove into The Virus)
- Planning to write The Virus for two months before actually starting to post it five days per week on Marshallogue
- Finishing The Virus by waking up at 4am for two weeks in a row
- Struggling to edit The Virus and talking with Bryce and David about it
- Publishing The Virus on Amazon as an ebook
- Taking the kids to Chuck E. Cheese during Covid
- Celebrating two birthday parties with Lachlan to try to social distance
- Wondering if we’d run out of work or have to be off work because of Covid-19
- Trying a bunch of different hamburgers around Louisville, including Kask for Burger Week and Burger IM while Meagan was in the hospital after Rosie was born
- Taking Meagan to Noche for a date night
- Taking Ted to Great Flood Brewing for his birthday
- Going to Frazier Museum
- Going Trick Or Treating around our own neighborhood for the first time for Halloween
- Waiting a week to find out who the next president would be
- Giving away care bags that Meagan put together for the unhoused around Louisville
- Meeting up with my economics professor
- An entire tree falling over in our backyard from the neighbors’ yard
- Celebrating Thanksgiving by ourselves with just Meagan, Gage, Lachlan, and Rosalie
- Celebrating Christmas with my parents, brothers and sisters, Grandma Jones, Uncle Jet, and Paul
- Walking around Veterans Park and drove through Freedom Lake looking at Christmas lights
- Making an appointment for our kids to take a photo with Santa at Cabela’s
- Hunting for and buying a new couch, waiting for it to arrive, canceling that first order, picking out a different one, and then realizing a month later that I got a text the day after we bought that second couch saying that it was ready for us to pick up
- Texting Chase, Loren, and Nate
- Working on the website with Ted to sell Wish You Well
- Releasing Wish You Well and waking up the next morning to the sales in my email
- Reducing down to the wardrobe uniform starting in February and finishing out the year that way
Happy New Year!
