Wrangler Dani

Seeing as how today is January 13, I’m pretty late this party. However, Val made me grin and grin with her list and so she inspired me to write this anyway. 2014, you were a good one.

Top Three Books of 2014

On Writing by Stephen King. I have been told to read this book by approximately eleventy-million people for about a hundred years, and I have never done so until now. It was great – freeing, thoughtful, quirky and a little weird. It reminded me of why writing is fun and why worrying about publishing and politics and trends is over-rated.

Bread and Wine by Shauna Niequiest. If you know me, you know I love to feed people – I have since I was making giant cookie sheets of “man-food” in our college-house kitchen. Shauna’s stories and recipes reminded me to keep fighting for what matters – in the midst of looking for a house, finding one and ripping out the old grody kitchen, worrying about next steps – food and love and friendship matter, and they matter deeply. Now that our kitchen is “nearly there” I am once again cooking for parties and humming my way through cookbooks and inviting people over and it feels so good.

Why We Love the Church by Kevin DeYoung and Ted Kluck. Every single Millennial Christian NEEDS to read this book. Church is an oft-maligned institution and even those with the best of intentions so often get it wrong; but with humor, grace and solid reasoning DeYoung and Kluck make a compelling case for not leaving the church, but rather leaving it better than you found it. Inspiring, heart-felt and often scathingly witty. So, so good for the cynical soul.

Honorable Mentions: A Million Miles in a Thousand Years by Donald Miller, Lone Survivor by Marcus Luttrell, Infamous Scribblers by Eric Burns, The Hundred-Foot Journey by Richard C. Morais, Enemies of the Heart by Andy Stanley, The Giver by Lois Lowry, Wild by Cheryl Strayed.

Top Three Movies of 2014

Lone Survivor. I freaking love Marcus Luttrell and I love this story. It’s raw and often painful to watch, but gosh it’s an essential story, picked out of the thousands of essential stories that our service men and women live through every day and never tell. Old fogeys are fond of saying that America is headed for disaster, but while we still have courageous men like Marcus and his buddies, and while we still have talented storytellers willing to bring us their stories, I think there’s plenty of hope to be found.

Captain America the Winter Soldier. AMERICA! Cap is the heartiest, most sincere Avenger, and we love him for it. It’s refreshing that Marvel lets Cap be a 1940’s American hero, and this allows them to play with themes usually off-limits for a popcorn franchise – collectivism and the State vs. freedom and the individual, and what it means to have true liberty: even the liberty to make bad choices. Great movie, great themes, great action, great cheekbones.

Interstellar. I wasn’t sure what to think about this movie from the previews, but I LOVED it. Adam and I talked about it for weeks after we saw it, and it was such a fun mind-bending ride. I loved the earthy, grittiness of it, and how the future didn’t suddenly look whitewashed or impenetrable, but rather much like now but with better rocket-ships. See it.

Honorable mentions: Unbroken, Guardians of the Galaxy, Mockingjay Part 1, Million-Dollar Arm.

Top Three Moments of 2014

Five-Year Anniversary/St Martin. In 2014, we celebrated five years of marriage. We were living in a little two-bedroom apartment on the East side of Bend, and we’d both started to get rather glum. We were burnt out at work, disappointed in our fruitless house-hunt and a little restless for change – so we flew to the Caribbean! One of my favorite memories of this trip is actually in the Portland airport before we even left Oregon – I bought a chocolate bar and Adam was making me laugh and we were giggling like little kids at recess while waiting for our flight.

We rented an apartment on the beach and ate baguettes and stinky cheese and walked the four-mile beach every morning. We listened to French rap and bought chicken, pineapples and ribs from smiling locals, we took a boat to a little island, geocached up a mountain, ate our most swanky and expensive meal(s) to date, Adam translated French for me admirably and we drove a car the size of a tin can.

Most of all, we laughed. It had been such a tough year and St. Martin was the turning of a new page, a time of reconnecting and falling in love all over again. Adam likes to say that there are many kinds of debts we can owe; it’s important to note that the ones to our marriage are often the easiest to ignore. In St Martin, we paid off our debt and racked up capital for the months to come, and it was a wonderful, wonderful thing.

Buying a house. I don’t really even know if this qualifies as a moment, because it was a process that completely changed our lives and I still feel like it’s been a wild ride. But coming over here and getting keys to OUR HOUSE was an experience like I have never, ever felt. It was such a long time coming, and we had worked and saved and yearned for so long that I just couldn’t believe it when it finally happened! It’s easy to get caught up in the work that came later and is still to come, the popcorn ceiling scraping, bathroom ripping out, painting, cleaning, kitchen remodel – but I will never forget that first walk around OUR HOUSE – ugly fake wood paneling, dead grass and all. We sat in camp chairs and popped champagne and looked at each other and laughed like crazy people. God is so good, and this house is proof positive.

Guinness. I really wanted to get a dog, and found myself becoming attached to puppies I found on Craigslist (bad idea). I told Adam he had to find a dog for us if getting a dog was the right thing to do, and promptly forgot all about it. I figured that Adam would get a dog in a year or two, taking his time like he always does. So imagine my surprise when “going out for a beer and errand with Casey” turned into this little furball in our lives! It was so fun to have friends here for the surprise, and Guinness has brought so much joy and energy to our little family. We just love her, and we love that we finally have a home for pets and cows and eventually kids.

So many more moments which also deserve to be noted and can hardly be called mere Honorable Mentions: adventures with out-of-state visitors, whitewater on the Deschutes, helping on my Dad’s Congressional campaign, the Green Egg smoker, new kitchen remodel, Ashley’s wedding, trip to Portland with Holli, signing up to adopt/passing a homestudy, trip to Victoria with friends, getting Bandit, buying cows.

In 2014, we saw God move and we made amazing memories. 2015, the gauntlet has officially been thrown.