#Reverb12 Day 8: Relationships

For the month of December, I'm working on doing the daily series of Reverb prompts to help me reflect on the prior year and hope/plan for the upcoming year. If you're interested, join in; I found this to be a very useful exercise when I did it two years ago.

#reverb12 Day 8: Your most important relationship?
Considering the idea that nothing lasts forever: what was the most important relationship that you fostered in 2012?

How will you continue to nurture it in 2013?

Now I'm kind of regretting that yesterday morning I got caught up on the #reverb posts, because yesterday's prompt was about what you most want to take with you into 2013.  I chose my happy marriage.  And of course now, it seems like today's post is almost a dupe of what I wrote about yesterday.  It's funny that for me, I've now had two topics repeat -- travel (for the last year of my life, and for a dream destination), and the husband (for taking with me and the most important relationship).

Now that the record is clear that I'd consider my most important relationship to be that with my husband, I feel like I'm free to devote this post to other important relationships. 

This year, one of my resolutions was to spend more time with my two best girlfriends, one who is local, one who is in Charlottesville, VA. 

I'm going to have to do an official resolutions-check-in at the end of Dec. or in early January, but this one went well overall, though of course more would have been better. 

My bestie in town has had a busy year largely due to a job change/promotion.  She's basically on call all the time (it's a very busy spokesperson job for the Dallas part of a very well known and busy entity that is frequently in the news).  The best part of the year with her was probably spending at least three days together in other cities in Texas.  For Memorial Day, we went to her parents' house about an hour from Dallas.  We ran a half marathon and spent a day by the pool.  In mid-June, we went to Nacogdoches, where her sister's widow and daughter live.  We spent a night on the town and then a day at the blueberry festival.  And finally, right around her bday, we drove to San Antonio together and ran the first 10 miles of the race there together -- then she peeled off for the half and I went on for the full.  There were other good times in Dallas, particularly a Bon Jovi tribute band concert, and our rehearsal dinner anniversary party.  But given that we used to run together at least three days a week, I miss her a lot and still feel like I didn't get enough "us" time in 2012.  The very exciting thing though is what's on the calendar for 2013 -- she is going to run Berlin too!  That means fun together in Berlin and likely a few days in Munich at Oktoberfest afterward!  And even fun planning the trip before we go, and maybe some training miles together! 

My bestie in Virginia sadly I sometimes go an entire calendar year without seeing each other.  She doesn't have much disposable income to travel (plus twins, which are expensive and time-consuming), and I don't have any vacation time not spent on the annual vacation extravaganza with hubby.  But we should still spend a lot more time on the phone even on years with no visit.  But 2012 held a lot more time together than in recent years.  Two separate visits!  She and her family have always gone to Mardi Gras in Alabama (Mobile), and now she brings her husband and kids too.  Hubby doesn't particularly enjoy it (he thinks it's a little cheesy, a little racist, and a little elitist), but we make an effort to go most years.  In 2012, it was particularly easy because we went to Birmingham before Mobile to spend a couple night with one of hubby's best friends, then we went down to Mobile for a couple nights there with my best friend.  But we don't always get tons of time together there.  She has her kids, which take up a lot of time, and we always feel pulled in a lot of different directions, so this year, it was particularly wonderful that she and her husband came to visit for 5 days near Labor Day.  They stayed with us and didn't bring their kids so it was totally awesome.  We went out to eat at all our old favorite places (she lived here from 2001 - 2006, and her husband was here about 2002 or 2003-2006).  We just got to spend tons of time hanging out, which was so nice.  And in 2013, I think I've convinced hubby to do Mardi Gras again, so if I add in some regular phone calls, that relationship will be nurtured as well in 2013.