Christmas Card 2023

 Dear Family and Friends,

This year has been an interesting and fun one for our family. Per usual, we spent a lot of time playing games with family and following our favorite sports teams. We traveled to Sedona and went hiking, and headed to Phoenix to see the Atlanta Braves play the Diamondbacks. I perpetually had the new Burger King jingles stuck in my head, and it wasn’t uncommon for Tyler and I to be making dinner together and me serenading him with “Eat like a king while you’re on a budget, only five dollars-drink, fries, and nuggets!” 

2023 also began with two fun secrets-I was pregnant, and I had a huge frozen waffle obsession. Perhaps those two secrets are really only one since the frozen waffles were just a pregnancy craving, but the joy I felt after getting home after a long day and popping two frozen waffles into the toaster as a pre-dinner snack was unmatched. I purchased a jumbo box of them so it would last me for weeks. On the third meal of waffles I promptly decided they were disgusting and I would never be eating them again, and the mostly full box sat in our freezer for the rest of the year, untouched. That did not stop my increasing appetite, though. While many women spend their first trimester barely able to stomach anything, I was unceasingly starving. My backpack I brought to work became my portable pantry, and Tyler and I discussed the possibility of me making a career change to a professional eater. 

The next months were filled with lots of preparation for the baby-figuring out what we needed to buy, attending showers hosted by incredible friends and family, picking out a name for our son,  and me asking Google on a scale from one to ten how weird my name ideas were. In the evening a week before my due date, I started feeling a lot of intense back pains which I insisted were not contractions, which of course actually were. Tyler and I left the house around 10:30 pm to head to the hospital, and we were just a few minutes away from the hospital when we heard we ran over something. I laughed and talked to Tyler about how crazy it would be if we actually got a flat tire on the way to the hospital. I did not have to imagine what that would be like for very long, as 30 seconds later Tyler pulled our car over, opened the door, and heard air rushing out of the rear tire. 

While I hadn’t really written out a formal birth plan before labor
started, Tyler and I had discussed months previous that the birth plan was to simply to arrive at the hospital, get pain medication as soon as possible, and have the baby. We had even driven to the hospital as a trial run so we knew where to park and check in. One of my favorite moments of the evening was as we pulled over and realized there was no way to drive the rest of the way to the hospital on the quickly deflating tire, and Tyler quickly saying, “This was not part of the birth plan!!!”  The next hour and a half was full of calls to family, timing contractions that were four minutes apart, and a mix of laughing and disbelief that this was actually happening. Luckily my awesome father-in-law came to help Tyler change the tire and we eventually checked into the hospital right at midnight. Fortunately the rest of my labor was fairly uneventful, and Cameron arrived later the next day. 

We are so lucky to have Cameron, and he is so calm and fun. Tyler and I agree that he is exactly what our family needs. The following months after his birth have been spent feeding, taking thousands of pictures, and learning how weird babies are. My baby’s skin is shedding and I’ve wondered if I accidentally birthed a reptile? Normal. My baby has a soft spot on his head that vibrates up and down to the tempo of Stayin’ Alive? Also normal. He is perfect in every way and we are so happy he is ours. While we wouldn’t mind if he would sleep in just a little longer, there is no better noise to wake up to in the morning than him throwing both his legs down into his bassinet like a ground pound in a video game and shrieking happily. 

This year we have had so much support and love from family and friends and we feel truly grateful for you.

Merry Christmas! 

Love, 

The Neeleys

Christmas Card 2022

 Dear Family and Friends,

To gather some ideas of what to include in our Christmas Card, I started scrolling through the pictures Tyler and I had taken this past year. While I hoped my photos would be full of shots from our favorite trips and activities throughout the year, based on my camera roll, 2022 was mostly full of random screenshots and pictures of arbitrary objects. A picture of a paint can so I can remember the exact color of our walls? Got it. A screenshot of a recipe that I ended up never making because I later realized that the delicious looking sauce was actually pureed brussel sprouts? Got it. An accidental screenshot of my family’s Zoom call where everyone is making odd facial expressions because I was not intending to take a picture and really just adjusting the volume? I have a whole album. Eventually I found the pictures of our “bigger” events, like trips and sporting events, but looking through my photos I realized that I liked some of the random photos as much as the more intentional ones, as it gives more of a real summary of the year. 

During the summer Tyler and I got to go with his family to Disneyland, and it was so fun to spend time with family there. Because we went in the middle of the summer it did feel like we were waiting in line on the surface of the sun, so the large sum of money we used on buying ice cream in the park was completely worth it. Whenever I go to Disneyland my family always asks me about the Monorail because when we went when I was a kid I allegedly had a very large tantrum about not being able to ride the monorail when I wanted to, along with loud hollering and dramatic tears all the way back to the hotel, all for a ride that is pretty much the same experience as riding TRAX. Luckily on this trip, one of my nephews declared that the Monorail is the best ride in the park, and five-year-old me felt justified.

Tyler was happy to be able to watch the Atlanta Braves in the playoffs in Atlanta this year. This was quite a miracle as we’ve planned multiple trips to see them in the playoffs in previous years but they didn’t advance, but luckily the stars aligned and we made it to Atlanta in time to see the Braves win a playoff game at Truist Park. The day of the game started off  with a rain delay that left us sitting for four hours on the floor of the stadium, but eventually the rain stopped and the Braves won the game. 

The week before Thanksgiving, Tyler went to Florida for work, and I expected it to be a quiet week at home. Shortly after he left, I opened the freezer and instead of delicious frozen treats, I found large puddles and found that neither the fridge nor the freezer were working. My knowledge about refrigerators is pretty limited, so I tried the old “unplug it and plug it back in” trick and hoped it would fix itself by the morning. I am sure it surprises none of you that this did not work. I called Tyler in a panic, only to find out that he had tested positive for Covid. Unfortunately my Google search of “How do I fix a broken refrigerator and also take care of my spouse who is sick but is also on the other side of the country” did not bring very helpful results, but luckily I have great parents and in-laws that give great advice. Tyler was able to recover quickly, and we had an unusual Thanksgiving week that was spent not baking, but instead counting down the days until our new fridge arrived. We had a great Thanksgiving dinner with my incredible grandparents and family, and were so grateful to all be together.

Perhaps one of my favorite memories from this year is when I won the Masters! Well, I didn’t really win the Masters specifically, and don’t actually play golf, but I got my Masters Degree, which seems to be pretty much the same thing, minus the green blazer the golfers get when they win. All of the classes I took were online, besides my internship, which was a pretty big feat for me seeing as my high school-self took four whole years to complete a three credit online geography class I needed to graduate. Tyler was incredibly supportive during my whole program, from helping me choose the program I would complete to making sure I had time to spend on studying and listening patiently as each week I would tell him how many papers or assignments I had to write until I could graduate. If anyone deserves a green blazer, it’s him. 
This year has been a great one, and we are so grateful to celebrate Christ’s birth this season.

Merry Christmas!

The Neeleys

Neeley Christmas Card 2021

At the beginning of the year, some families come up with a theme for their family to focus on that year. Some families concentrate on being kind or hard working, while others pick a specific goal they want to meet.  Tyler and I don’t usually pick a theme for our year, but after a few months we realized the perfectly optimistic theme that so accurately was describing our year was “don’t get your hopes up.” 

In January, Tyler and I put down some money for our first house. This was incredibly exciting for us, but maybe even more exciting for my parents, whose basement we had been living in for three years. (They acted happy when we told them we found a house, but I imagine after we moved out they burned something on the stove to set off the smoke detector because they missed me regularly doing that) Our home was in the process of being built, but we were told that the timeline was hazy due to the fact there needed to be a sewer lift built in the neighborhood before we could move in. (If you’re wondering what a sewer lift is, you’re not alone. Unfortunately this year I learned that buying a home means becoming an expert in a lot of boring things like sewer lifts, bathroom sinks, and water pressure.) There was a pretty big window when the sewer lift could be ready, but we were so excited to move in that we drove by weekly. This is when our “don’t get your hopes up” chant started as I constantly refreshed my email ninety thousand times a day, hoping for an update from our builder.

In March, I won my family’s March Madness bracket. You may be wondering if this achievement is Christmas card worthy, but my family has a real knack for being extra competitive about things that require mostly luck and no skill at all. The last time I won our family bracket I was in college, and anytime I stopped home I would get on the family computer, screenshot my winning bracket, and make it the screensaver of the computer. This year’s 37 Marco Polos to family members and mention in the Christmas card about my win truly shows my growth in humility.

In May, our house was finally ready! We got all moved in with help from our family and friends and we love our new place. We’re currently going for a minimalist home decor design as I am incredibly indecisive and continue to procrastinate figuring out where to hang photos and artwork. 

In July, we decided we would go to Hawaii in the fall. To say I was ecstatic would be a huge understatement. Hawaii has been #1 on my bucket list for as long as I can remember. When I was growing up, my Mom would sometimes leave her to-do list on the kitchen counter, and regularly I would add “Take Rachel to Hawaii” to the bottom of her list. Unfortunately my persistent begging did nothing (except maybe made my parents wish they hadn’t taught me the 50 states) and I never went. Tyler decided going to Hawaii would be the perfect way to celebrate our 5th anniversary, and I obviously needed no convincing, so we bought our tickets. Shortly after we bought our tickets, the Covid cases started spiking in Hawaii, and there were discussions about closing the state to tourists again. I was devastated. We decided again we wouldn’t get our hopes up and decided to play it by ear. (In case you’re wondering, a very chill and cool person like me likes to “play things by ear” by Googling Hawaii Covid counts daily, following the governor of Hawaii’s Twitter account like a hawk, scrutinizing any news article ever published about Hawaii in the past eight years, and delivering a four hour press conference to Tyler each night about what our chances were of actually going) Luckily after the summer, Covid cases cooled down, and by the time our trip came in October we were good to go! It was the most wonderful trip-we spent the week hanging out on the beach, hiking, and seeing the sights. I also spent a fair amount of time plotting ways to convince Tyler that we could move there. (My strongest argument was that the Atlanta Braves, Tyler’s favorite baseball team, won every single playoff game while we were there, but I had a million backup reasons) It was the best week ever and I spent the entire layover on the way home looking for flights to return.

As soon as we returned from Hawaii, the World Series started! I have really only followed the Braves since Tyler and I started dating (don’t worry family and friends, I'm still a Cubs fan), but I knew their track record well enough to know that this was the ideal time to repeat our “don’t get your hopes up” mantra daily. Luckily they went on to win the World Series, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen Tyler happier. We laughed extra hard the night they won because in June, I had called MLB TV to fix a streaming problem and the customer service representative asked me what team I cheered for. I told her Tyler is a huge Braves fan but they had been playing terribly this year. The woman on the end of the phone then gave me a very stern talking to about not giving up because this year they could win it all! Tyler and I laughed daily at this because we thought there was no way that could happen this year, but I guess she knew what she was talking about, and we were glad somewhere in the world a very smug customer service representative was also celebrating the big win.  The great thing now is that anytime one of Tyler’s other sports teams lose, all I have to do is pull up the highlights of the World Series on Youtube and all is right in the world again. 

Have a wonderful Christmas and don’t get your hopes up! 

Love,

The Neeleys

Neeley Christmas Card 2020

My favorite time of wrapping gifts, festive treats, and poorly made Lifetime movies is upon us. For every 10 minutes I watch in Lifetime Christmas movies, I inform Tyler I could definitely write a better script than anything I’ve seen. (I actually told him I could write a better script in 5 minutes. Unfortunately, after describing a Christmas Space themed movie in which one alien from Jupiter and one alien from Neptune fall in love over Christmas but can’t be together due to galactic tensions but are able to reunite under the snowfall on Mars on Christmas night, Tyler kindly told me “I’m not quite sure why this is taking place in Space.” so I’ve decided to give myself at least 15 minutes to come up with a superior plot.) With my Lifetime movie script out of the way, I now have plenty of time to write our Christmas Card.

2020 has been an eventful year. I started a new job as an Innovative Learning Coach for my school district. For those who stick around long enough for me to explain what that is, I tell them I coach teachers as they integrate technology into their classroom, but for those who don’t, I am happy to let them think I’m coach of the soccer team or something. My twelve year old self who always snuck off the dodgeball court and into the long line of people who were “out” even though a dodgeball hadn’t even come remotely near me always beams anytime someone actually thinks my coaching job is one of athleticism. I’m overjoyed to have gotten this job and my new team is amazing. It was bittersweet to leave my old school as the staff are some of my favorite people ever. Luckily, leaving the classroom was made slightly easier when I was cleaning out my student’s desks during the Covid shutdown and found one of my students had left an old carton of chocolate milk in his desk from March-June. (You may be thinking “Rachel, I’ve already heard this story about chocolate milk being left in your classroom for weeks at a time” because an almost identical experience has now happened in my class THREE TIMES while I’ve been teaching. To say my classroom is cursed would be an understatement, and I hope the incoming teacher had enough sense to carry Madame Zeroni to drink from the stream at the top of God’s Thumb before the school year began.) 

My new job still gives me plenty of time to interact with elementary students. When I went to a 2nd grade class to teach them how to code, a very skeptical student informed me that I would be required to buy him a soda if he didn’t enjoy coding. I told him no, but we settled on me burping in front of the class in case he didn’t enjoy the lesson. Luckily about 10 minutes into the lesson he informed me that he absolutely loved coding, so I was saved from public humiliation. I have not found any rotten chocolate milk at work and consider that to be my job’s biggest perk. 

Tyler continued working in his current job this year and earned an Employee of Merit award from the city. He sometimes doesn’t like to tell me about the recognition he receives at work because I apparently “make it too big of a deal.” In other news, I’m currently constructing  a 20 foot tall golden statue of Tyler in our front yard.

The ongoing pandemic hasn’t stopped us from taking a few nearby vacations. We visited family in Arizona over Labor Day and had a wonderful time with them. We went to the movie theaters to watch Tenet, which took a collective 84 hours after the movie to research what exactly happened during those two and a half hours. (After reading hundreds of articles that tried to explain what happened, my only understanding is that someone had a really weird dream and literally nothing made sense.) We got the chance to visit Zion and Bryce National Parks over Fall Break. We spent the morning and afternoons hiking, and the evenings watching the Atlanta Braves in the playoffs. (Condolences in the form of Oreos can be sent directly to Tyler)

This year has certainly been unusual, but I am so grateful for every adventure. Hopefully at this time next year, we’re all sitting together watching a spaced themed Lifetime Christmas movie.

Merry Christmas!

Lessons from Quarantine

After the social distancing measures were put in place and our lives were shaken upside down like an Etch-a-sketch in a matter of a few days, I saw tweets and articles touting all the geniuses who’d been isolated in their day and created masterpieces. Isaac Newton came up with the theory of gravity, Frida Kahlo painted her first self-portrait, and it’s speculated that Shakespeare wrote King Lear. What will be your masterpiece? they asked. What greatness will you achieve during your isolation? After almost one month at home, I’m pleased to announce a few things I have learned during my time of isolation.

Lots of new acronyms: A few  days after schools closed, my awesome 5th grade class and I started learning online. By far my favorite part of the experience has been still being able to connect and talk with my students through our Google Classroom. Unfortunately, often they will leave acronyms I have never seen. When I had a student send me “TYY” I had to decide whether my student was instructing me to ‘teach yourself yiddish’  or ‘teach yourself yodeling’. Either way, it’s clear my students are not impressed with my current hobby of still assigning them work. צום גליק, דער אינטערנעץ האָט מיר געהאָלפֿן צו ווערן גלאַט ייִדיש. (Luckily Google Translate is helping me pretend I speak Yiddish. I am sure my students will be ecstatic to find one of their lessons written entirely in this foreign language) Learning new acronyms has not only been happening in my classroom, but on Twitter. I will likely never disclose how long it took me to actually look up that ‘WHO’ stands for World Health Organization, but I will say that initially I thought it was odd that the Wizarding House Operations had so many ideas about social distancing.
                                   
Close all tabs before filming: To go along with our online learning, in the past few weeks I have been working on my lifelong dream of being a rich and famous Youtuber. While I am still patiently waiting for my converting customary measurement video to go viral, I have learned a lot of helpful tips and tricks to be a good Youtuber. First and foremost, I now close out of my bank account tabs before I start sharing my screen, avoiding recording all my personal account information and the fact that I went to Cafe Rio again.

The symptoms for COVID-19: Along with my morning ritual of brushing my teeth and eating breakfast, I have worked into my daily routine a clearing of my throat that makes me question my health entirely. Do I have a sore throat coming on? Are my headaches a sign of something more sinister than staring at my computer screen for 12 hours straight? Is my strategy of strictly snacking on sugary foods failing me?! As my morning tailspins and I quickly Google the symptoms, I am pleased to announce that after 27 times of doing this, I have the symptoms memorized. (Not that it will stop me from Googling it, but whatever.) 

A schedule that works for me: As many employees made the shift of working from home, some struggled with keeping the same productivity level and motivation. Helpful people on the internet shared their tips and schedules-making sure you get ready for the day, exercising, making your own office space, eating at the same time each day, etc. Unfortunately this was slightly too organized for someone like me who has the high hopes and aspirations of binge watching every show to ever be created, and I took more comfort in those who posted their schedule including lengthy sessions of napping, television and reading. I decided to pick a happy medium between the two types of schedules, and have organized my evenings into planned TV watching. This way, my 6pm-8 game shows never interfere with my rotating sitcom/drama/documentaries from 8-10. Obviously, I fall into the ‘highly productive’ category of isolation. 

As you can clearly see, while Isaac Newton developed one theory, I have actually learned four amazing things during isolation, and I’m just getting started! You be the judge of who’s the real genius. And if you’re not feeling productive? Don’t worry. Lots of amazing things like the Internet, trampolines, and do-it-yourself popcorn butter dispensers at the movie theaters were all created out of isolation.

Expectations for 2030

I will ask the questions that everyone has been thinking since the clock struck midnight on January 1, 2020: Where are our flying cars? Where are our personalized jet packs? Why I am still worried about the “Check Tire Pressure” light that flickered on in my car this afternoon when I was fully anticipating flying back to school on the first day back from winter break? It seems some of our hopes and dreams for the year 2020 haven’t fully been realized yet. Yes, there have been some amazing advances in technology in the past ten years, but perhaps there was a little too much focus on sending 17,000 personalized ads about cookie scoops to someone who only googled cookie scoops ONE TIME. To avoid disappointment when it comes to the year 2030, I have come up with some more *reasonable* expectations of things I hope develop over the next 10 years. 

1. I would love for this to be the year that kale doesn’t taste bad. The only time I enjoy eating kale is when it is drowning in cream. If kale ice cream becomes a thing, I will go directly to Costco to sample it.

2. Self-watering houseplants would be a great invention. The majority of 2019 was spent ignoring my houseplants and telling myself that they’re the kind of plants that only need to be watered monthly, and the rest was spent overwatering my plants, desperately trying to revive a brown, dead, clump of dirt.

3. I, for one, would not mind if tissue paper that is stuffed in gift bags became a thing of the past. Does anyone else feel weird buying this stuff? It’s like buying paper that’s going to go directly into the trash can because it’s been wrinkled once to fit in a bag. Perhaps we can start using all those political ads delivered to our door as tissue paper.

4. It’s the year 2020. THIS IS THE YEAR APPLE NEEDS TO START MAKING LONG CHARGING CORDS. I am currently typing this from the floor, but on the plus side it will make for a warm greeting when Tyler gets home and I jump out from the shadows like a hyena. 

5. Many people know I like to watch sports, but unless you have watched a game with me you probably didn’t know that I am a court critic. My little brother Tim and I keep a running document of the worst courts and fields and discuss rankings regularly. My hope for 2020 is that we have less courts that qualify themselves for our list. (And if that Utah Jazz decide to build a parquet court I vow to listen to all the games on the radio.) 

6. When I was in middle school, I was obsessed with the movie National Treasure. The first day I watched it, I watched it twice because I was just that excited. Once the second movie came out I was just as excited, and as it left things on a cliffhanger I couldn’t wait for the third. At least once a week I would come home and launch a full blown investigation, reading every article possible on production rumors on the next movie. Nicholas Cage, it’s time. 

Cheers to the New Year! 

Rerouting: A California Blog

To say I love vacation would be an understatement. When I was growing up, each dinner conversation about daily activities, friends, and homework was put on pause as I practically yelled from excitement, “Where are we going on our vacation?!” We usually only traveled in the summer, and I would ask beginning in the fall, so my family had many dinner conversations of this to endure. Traveling has been a passion of mine for many reasons, ranging from not having to go to work to the delicious waffles you can prepare for yourself at continental breakfasts. Traveling is also enjoyable to me because you get to learn things about a place that you may not learn by a simple Google search. For Fall Break, Tyler and I went to Los Angeles, which I hadn’t visited in years, so I compiled a list of things I learned there.

The fact that the traffic is not deemed a national emergency is shocking to me. I would say traffic is terrible, but the word “terrible” is too positive to describe it. I had been told traffic would be bad, so my expectations were low. Once we got to LA, however, I realized how optimistic I had been. How do people get places there? I spent the majority of our trip trying to figure out how many celebrities live there. How are you on time to your movies you are filming? Do you have some sort of elite celebrity underground freeway system? How does every Hollywood red carpet interview not start off with a celebrity desperately trying to fan the sweat off their face from having to run the last 19 miles in their formal wear? (I know there are a lot of A-list celebrities that read my blog, so please either comment or drop a pin for me so I can find said celebrity freeway.)

The witches and wizards of Harry Potter are apparently all children of Jeff Bezos. On our first day of adventuring through Los Angeles, Tyler and I went to Universal Studios. As we are both Harry Potter fans, we reread the books last summer and decided we needed to visit the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. Perhaps it was written in magical invisible ink in the margins of one of the first chapters of the series, but somewhere it must mention that the wizards and witches attending Hogwarts are secret billionaires. Why do I say this? Because when we stopped in to the Three Broomsticks to order lunch and some butterbeer, the cost of our meal came to the same price as OUR GROCERY BILL FOR THE WEEK. FOR ONE MEAL. WITH NO LEFTOVERS. I remember watching The Sorcerer’s Stone and being in awe of the scene where Hagrid takes Harry to Gringotts to find that his parents left him stacks and stacks of gold. I thought they must have left him millions, but turns out they left him just enough to buy one butterbeer, but certainly not enough to get that butterbeer in a collector’s item cup. 

Warner Brother’s Need to Invest in Plastic Mugs: Anther fun stop we made was to the Warner Brother’s Studio Tour. We got to see sets for TV shows, props for movies, and drive past a lot of people I thought were celebrities until I realized that the celebrities were probably all enjoying their underground freeway. Unfortunately I am not allowed to disclose much of the information I learned on this tour as it may spoil shows that are not out yet, but all I will say is that when you see the bookshelf that is in the revamp of Lizzie McGuire, you will all go *CRAZY*. We also got to sit in the set of Friends, where an employee kindly took our picture. She was telling us how to pose and told us to clink the ceramic mugs together. As the good people are, we obliged, and as the good but apparently oblivious people we are, we practically smashed the mugs together, almost breaking them. We quickly thanked the employee and hurried away before they made us pay for damages in butterbeer. 

California Needs More Music About Itself. (Yes, this is another traffic rant): There are a lot of songs dedicated to California. We found a playlist to listen to while we were driving from place to place, and it was great!...for the first portion of the trip. Sadly, not enough songs about California exist that we could listen to en route to the beach unless we listened to “It Never Rains in Southern California” 78 times on repeat. One night, we decided to go to the Griffith Observatory, which is in the movie La La Land. Obviously we had to listen to the soundtrack on the way there. It was less than five miles away, but we listened to the whole soundtrack, from start to finish, BEFORE WE EVEN GOT OFF SUNSET BOULEVARD. Not only is the traffic bad, but using Google Maps there is like being part of a weird, intense game of telephone. I would put a location in Maps, it would give us the directions, and we would be on our way. Once we got on the freeway, Maps would very quickly reroute us, claiming it had a faster route for us. I would go from telling Tyler he was fine to get in the far left lane to 13 seconds later panicking, “You have to get off this exit in 7 feet!!!” Once Tyler had maneuvered around the cars and safely gotten us of the exit, we would go on the new route for no more than 4 minutes before the phone chirped again, “REROUTING!” By the 819th reroute, we decided we would not be moving to California anytime soon. 

All in all, it was a great trip that gave me a greater appreciation for the warriors who work in the California division of Google Maps.