{The White Board of Our Lives}

I would like to publicly announce that the situation on the home front is not as bad as I made it sound in my previous post. All right? Kyle and I are still married, and happily so. Yes, he's played his Xbox 360 more frequently since Christmas, but that's because we got two new games on or around Christmas. And he's been on holidays from work, too. And, truth be told, I enjoy my fair share of Guitar Hero and Rock Band, too. (In fact, I just might be a more gifted rocker than Kyle...but I'm trying to mend my fences, not build vast walls. So I'll leave that tender subject for a day when we've grown thicker skins.)

Aside from that, though, I've not got much to post about. Besides my amazing cinnamon rolls and surprisingly tasty truffles. Unfortunately, I would really like to post accompanying photos of those two culinary delights, so that update will have to wait, too.

The only thing I do have photos of right now is our white board. Kyle bought a white board shortly after moving into this house [about a year before we got married]. Even though at the time I lived in AZ and he lived in Canada, we talked on the phone at least once a day, and sometimes more. [The problem with that was...how much can you really talk about, after knowing a person so well for so long? Soon, I was compiling lists of things I could tell Kyle during our daily phone calls, so I could keep myself interesting to him, and consequently, he would not break up with me. (Ironically enough, it's a system I used with lots of the guys I dated, and Kyle was the only one to keep up with me. He must have had his own list. That's why I never felt compelled to break up with him--we never ran out of things to talk about.)]


But I digress. He bought a white board while we were not yet engaged, and since I was living far away from him, it happened to be one of the things he mentioned during one of our phone conversations. When he told me he bought a white board, I thought, "Oh, you should have gone with a chalk board. They're much cuter." Before long, though, I came up for a visit, during which Kyle proposed and we became engaged. After spreading the news to the world, it somehow ended up on the Whiteboard (we've always had a lot of people in and out of our home, and I've since lost track of who's written what):

"Kyle has a girl frind," it proudly proclaims, and below, as an afterthought, "go Camille!"

And suddenly, the white board didn't bother me so much. The next trip I made up to Canada was during the Christmas season, and one afternoon, tempted by the festive dry-erase markers, I left a surprise note for Kyle (which he never noticed until much later):


My two subsequent visits to Canada also occurred near various holidays, and I decided to keep with the tradition for Easter and Canada Day:



Someone else even joined in on the holiday cheer and added "Happy Halloween" to the mix (compliments of one "Maddy," as you can see):


And scattered among the holiday drawings are random doodles created by neighbor kids whose parents ship 'em over here when they fancy a nap. Doodles like this:


They actually remind me of rudimentary cave drawings from the homo habilis era. Or something. I mean, look at that top one--doesn't it look strangely like a sketch of Stonehenge? (I've been there, by the way. It was in...cred...i...ble.)

My favourite neighbor kid sketch is this one, though:

That's right. "Yo yo yo dood." It makes me feel right at home (read: Central Arizona), where our cinder block wall is always getting tagged (with poor spelling) by gangs. Eestside! Westside! Sowthside iz gunnu kik yo's as!!!

And then came the era of the board that saw many house guests all at once: our pre-reception. A houseful of Americans; we were bound to get at least one declaring The Greatness that is our country:

That's my sister's writing. I can tell.

Then, someone saw fit to leave another pro-U.S.A. mark:

No wonder every other country in the world hates America. We're so cocky.

I loved this note the driving friends left us on their way back to AZ (very clearly in Derrick's writing):


But after all the house guests left, Kyle & I officially got married and took a honeymoon and things quieted down. We got into the routine of newlywedhood. We unpacked boxes and hung photos of ourselves. We're in a groove. And when everything's quiet around our house, and we reflect on the exciting events of the past few months, it's nice to be reminded occasionally--we really are married: