Ode to Markie

Oh the woes of holidays....

Let me break this down for you if I can:

Many couples fight about money and... other things.  Not us, folks, we fight over friends.  When we travel we are constantly at odds over who we will see and for how long.  We have long ago learned that we run out of time when we go to Utah to try to see friends from Christmas past, present, and future and we miss someone that we care about so we have had to come to terms with the fact that either we fight or we plan out in advance who we are going to see.  I have the philosophy that we should see a lot of people, one time.  Steve has the philosophy that we see a few people for longer.  Both arguments have merit.

So we compromise and we do this by me seeing people alone that are the shorter visits--so I usually go see the at-home moms during the day and then at night we do our longer visits.  I don't like it and neither does he but it keeps the flame alive.

This last trip we saw the following people for longer:

Mark and Angela
Family

We saw the following during daytime short visits

Chellese
Wendy
Helen
One night out with my mission friends
Sunday evening visit with my family

We have known all of these people for 5 years or more and there are about ten other people we did not see, some of them people we have known for almost 10 years.

So while it seems like we are always in Utah, the truth is, we rarely get to see new people or even all the people we love and care about.  To add anyone else simply complicates matters--I had two people who I really wanted to see over Christmas who I missed just because of time and it broke my heart that it never worked out.  Not to mention my beloved Katie who although she lives here will be moving soon and who knows when I will get to hang out with her again.  Hopefully tomorrow.

To be fair, I did have every intention of stopping by the Crabtree during the summer but our plans got messed up when I had to do an emergency work trip out to Napa (which also stole three days out of the landerson-fleming family trip and swiped New Mexico clean off our slate in which we had three friends who we didn't get to see either).

I hope that my little plea explains the sad reasons why I neglect to see my favorite WD supporter and if you are ever in SB, by all means, come by the house and we will cook you up a meal you will never forget.  Or you can snub us and I will understand the justification.

And if you are wondering about why Jespy got a visit, she has gone one major advantage: location, location, location.  And the truth is, we have some friends we usually stay with in Vegas who were busy with relatives during this last trip so my kids were asking how we can see both the old friends and the new friends next time.  I know, I know.