2005 has been a great year.  It has also been a year full of change.

We spent much of the first few months planning our weddings.  We tasted cakes, evaluated portfolios of photographers and videographers, listened to DJs, stopped to smell the flowers, selected and ordered invitations, bought rings, searched a long time to find exactly the right clothes to wear, selected presents for our registry, wrote and memorized our vows, selected the music, designed and ordered souvenir glasses, and concocted a "signature drink" for the reception.  And that was just for our wedding in Arizona!  We also selected a hotel, booked our flights and honeymoon cruise, and worked with Two Dears and A Queer to plan our legal wedding in Canada.

But all the planning and hard work paid off handsomely.  Both weddings went off without a hitch, and turned out exactly how we hoped they would.  About 70 people, including about 20 visitors from out of town, attended our AZ wedding on August 13.   

We enjoyed our five-day stay in Vancouver for our Canadian wedding.  We enjoyed a spectacular view of the city and the mountains to the north from the balcony of our hotel room.  We enjoyed discovering the city and eating in some delicious restaurants - most notably, The Seasons, in Queen Elizabeth Park, where we ate our celebratory dinner following the wedding.  The wedding itself took place on August 18 in the QE Park rose garden, and the day was sunny and gorgeous.  The wedding commissioner was a charming, caring lady who added a lot of warmth to the ceremony, and Two Dears and a Queer not only planned everything to a "T" but were very friendly people who made wonderful witnesses. 

After that, we boarded the Celebrity Infinity for our honeymoon cruise to Alaska.  While we were disappointed with the weather (the rainy grayness prevented us from seeing much scenery, we still enjoyed a couple of the shore excursions, as well as the fabulous meals and entertainment on board the ship.  In hindsight, a honeymoon in a warmer, sunnier location might have fit the bill better.

In between planning for and enjoying our weddings, we worked a lot on fixing up our home.

We discovered that the kitchen cabinets that sat on the floor (as opposed to the wall-mounted cupboards) had suffered severe water damage as a result of a leaking disposal and dishwasher that had gone unnoticed for a long time.  So we bought a new dishwasher and had the cabinets replaced.  While doing so, we opted for a number of nice upgrades, such a sliding shelves, a lazy susan, and sliding trash/recycle cans.    We also ended up replacing both toilets, the sliding shower door in the master bathroom, and the pool pump.

We also had the front and back yards completely relandscaped.  In the front, we added mounds and many new plants.  In the back, we removed the grass in favor of granite, removed three old trees that dropped leaves and seed pods in favor of citrus trees, built a retaining wall across the back to replace the sloping ground up to the back wall, added several planter areas, and lots of rosemary, lantana, queen palms, and other plants.  Unfortunately, we were not happy with the quality of the work or the plants, and have been hassling with the landscaper to fix the issues.  This is on-going as of this writing.

We also selected an attorney and did comprehensive estate planning.

The weddings didn't leave us too much time for other travel, but we did get out of town for one weekend to go to a swim meet with Dave's swim team.

Dave traveled four times for work:  to Washington state in May for a week of Manager training, to Albuquerque in June for a diversity-related event, to Pittsburgh in September for a college recruiting trip (Carnegie Mellon), and to Denver in September for the annual Out & Equal Workplace Summit.

We took one other trip for a less fortunate reason:  Jeff's father passed away in July, so we went to Lexington for the funeral.  Despite the less-than-desirable circumstances of the trip, it provided a nice opportunity for Dave to meet Jeff's step-mother and brother and other family members, and see the places where Jeff lived and frequented while he was growing up.

This fall, Jeff has been getting back in touch with his creative and performing side by taking Improv classes! 

As the year comes to a close, in addition to enjoying the good spirits and parties of the holiday season, we are turning our attention to house-hunting.  We have already gone "neighborhood shopping" and toured some open houses in order to get a feel for what's out there and what we want in a house.  We will begin house shopping in earnest after the first of the year.

In January, we also plan to join the speakers bureau of Arizona Together, an organization devoted to defeating the discriminatory anti-marriage equality amendment that will probably be on the ballot in Arizona in November 2006.

So, it has truly been a busy, monumental, and memorable year.  We hope 2005 has been good for you too.  We wish you a blessed holiday season and a prosperous new year, however you celebrate them.

      - Jeff and Dave

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