Four and a half years ago, JR and I were new parents. We spent a lot of time tired, as well as at home. I spent the majority of my time sitting in my chair in our living room, nursing Gabriel. Aside from my days as a ten-year old in grade school, when I would read a book every day or two, I did some of the most reading of my life during that period. I also watched a lot of television: Gillmore Girls, Scrubs, and probably some other series that I no longer remember. There was also a new series that JR began watching:  Chuck.

Chuck seemed an unlikely match for my tastes. A spy show full of violence and immorality? An unlikely match indeed, for a theologian. As it turned out; however, sometimes overall plots, themes, cultural references, and characters make a television series. Sometimes inadvertently, someone finds that an unlikely television series is important to them. Chuck himself was a pretty lovable character and easy to relate to. He was about the same age as JR and I, and, like so many other people, he was underemployed, working in tech support as a member of the Nerd Herd and living with his older sister; he was stuck in a rut and unsure of what to do with his life. He was just a nice guy, who happened to end up with The Intersect and began working with the CIA through an unlikely set of circumstances that he had no real control over. Of course, the characters in Chuck have developed over the years. In these last two seasons, the progression of Chuck seems to be aimed at the “normal” place that Chuck desired since the beginning: working in a technical career with a wife and child(ren). While most of us are not spies, few arrive at their “happy ending” without overcoming obstacles along the way.

Earlier this evening, JR and I watched the Chuck series finale. I followed along on Twitter and GetGlue to see others’ responses. Chuck has a very loyal following, it trended worldwide under three different hashtags on Twitter, and was in the top position on GetGlue.

Although I have known this day was coming since last spring, it’s still been a bit of an emotional season for me. Not so much because I am a super emotional person who gets really wrapped up in “her shows” (I’m not), but because, the beginning and ending of Chuck happens to coincide with the end of a season in my life. I vividly remember nursing both of my sons as newborns through two seasons of Chuck. Those same children are now four and two years old. Lately, we have even been catching glimpses of the light at the end of the Tunnel of Parenthood. Five seasons of Chuck, and (almost) five years of parenthood. JR and I came to really look forward to watching Chuck together during this time. Though there are rumors of a Chuck movie, the constant that has come in the form of ninety-one episodes over the past five seasons is gone.

Not so different from Chuck and Sarah in the series finale, our path is a little uncertain, but new adventures await us. It’s exciting and intimidating at the same time. While parenting babies and toddlers is a lot of work, we (mostly) know what we are doing now, and the complexities of parenting older children is uncharted territory in our lives. I have no doubt that it will be a wonderful time in our lives, yet it’s still a new-to-us adventure when compared to these past years.

While it is possible that I’ve taken some very generous liberties by comparing an end of an era in my life to the end of a television series, the fact remains that my mind associates it as such. Chuck has been a relatively small and insignificant part of my life these past years, yet plays a prominent role in my memories of them. As my memories and associations of the time that we have spent in the tunnel of parenthood will remain, I suspect that Chuck will remain in my memory bank as well, evidenced by my inability to enter a Best Buy store without referencing Chuck, the Buy More, or the Nerd Herd. If, one day in the future, most likely when I’m nursing a newborn, I mention that I am re-watching Chuck, you’ll know why. For me, Chuck will forever be associated with these early years of motherhood.

— 1 —

We had a lovely Christmas this year. JR, Gabriel, Joshua, and I enjoyed Christmas day together as a family. JR’s sister and her family visited from North Carolina for a few days during the week after Christmas, and we celebrated Christmas with my family on New Year’s Day. We really enjoyed being able to spread out the celebrations and not feel like we were rushing through the holidays this year.

— 2 —

It’s not really my news, but my brother and sister-in-law’s first baby (a girl) was born on Sunday, December 11. When I married JR, I automatically became an aunt to his older sister’s children. I’m the oldest in my family though, so this is the first of my siblings to have a baby.

— 3 —

I finished the coursework for my e-business degree last month. Unless I change my mind in the future, I am officially finished with the college stage of my life. Anyone looking for someone with my background and life experiences for work in e-business and/or social media?

— 4 —

Since four takes catches me up on the past several weeks, and I have other deadlines to work on, I’m going to take my leave at only four takes this week!

For more Quick Takes, visit Conversion Diary!

Five years ago today, I started this blog. In those days, I was a newly wed, and expecting my first child. I stopped qualifying as a newlywed years ago, and have two children now:  a four year old and a two year old. Amongst all the events of my life (pregnancy, birth, life with a newborn, life with a toddler, moving, job loss, and more) over these past five years, my blog has remained a constant.

Here’s to five years as a blogger, and, God willing, a future that contains many, many more!

Every year around this time, I’ll come in contact with someone complaining about the use of Xmas instead of Christmas and how it is directly related to the secularization of Christmas as society seeks to remove God (and Christ) from most aspects of public life. In reality, Xmas is a legitimate Christian abbreviation for Christmas. Χριστος (Khristos) is the Greek word for Christ. Yes, the Greek alphabet causes it to look radically different from our English version, but the pronunciation is quite similar, and it is easy to hear that our “Christ” is derived from the Greek Χριστος.

It is not often that I use Xmas in a manner that others are going to see. I am probably most likely to pen a shopping list that reads, “pick up JR’s Xmas gift,” in a hurry. It would probably appear next to “buy O.J.” and “go to USPS.” A couple of ways in which you may see me use Xmas in real life are on Twitter or in text messages. The number of characters count in these situations, and I will use Xmas instead of Christmas if it means one cohesive tweet or text message instead of two separate parts of the same idea. Unless I am in a super rush, I will probably never write someone a letter (or even an email) in which I use Xmas instead of Christmas. And I would certainly never say Xmas instead of Christmas. Xmas is exactly what it is:  an abbreviation for Christmas. Proper use of an abbreviation is fine with me.

I always try to send thank you cards out in recognition of gifts or kind deeds, but sometimes those thank you cards do not make it in the mail quite as promptly as I would hope to get them there. This year, I have Christmas thank you cards ready and waiting, personalized with our family name on them:

Magi Gifts Brown Thank You Card

Click here to browse our popular thank you card designs.

View the entire collection of cards.

With such handsome, personalized stationary, I’m really looking forward to getting our thank you cards out the first chance that I get this year.

Do you send thank yous, Christmas or otherwise? Have you found that nice stationary products make you more likely to correspond via non-electronic means?

* I will receive a $10 Shutterfly credit in exchange for sharing this project, but all opinions shared within this post are my own.

I’m calling it:  I completed NaBloPoMo 2011.

Sure, I realize that there’s technically tomorrow left, but I already have a Wordless Wednesday post set to auto-publish. Thus, I think it’s close enough to call it now.

I think that I probably ‘phoned it in’ more days than not this month, but I always enjoy NaBloPoMo because it forces me to come up with something, no matter how half thought-out or incomplete, and hit publish.  The rest of the year, I spend days working on a post, that never gets finished quite the way I want it to, so it stays in my drafts folder, waiting for me to get back to it one day when I find the time. There are several posts that I’ll probably never publish, simply because I’ve waited so long that whatever I was going to say doesn’t really matter/isn’t pertinent anymore. Every year that I’ve done NaBloPoMo, however, paints a better-than-average picture on this blog of what my life is actually like, rather than the meticulously composed posts that I only manage to pull off occasionally. My life, it’s not actually always meticulously thought-out, folks. I don’t want you to think that I always phone it in, either – but some days, I do feel lucky to pull off the bare minimum. Like this blog, my life falls somewhere between the two. That’s okay. It’s the point that me, and my blog, are both at right now.