26 in the eyes of Christin...4 whole days to go

I know Maria is thinking "Holy Boobs!" again, but this is one of my favorite pictures of my birthday party. Twenty-six was a great year. Which is good, considering that I had looked forward to this year for a long long time! Basically, I had always thought that life would come together at 26; that I would probably get married; start my career; and have everything together. Not all of this happened, but I did turn out to be great.
For my birthday, my roommates and I went to Tapas Estrella, dressed up, and ate fancy food in a red velvet booth.
I spent my first Christmas away from home. My roommates all had interesting family dynamics, and Christmas just wasn't the same for them growing up as it had been for me. So I became the Christmas mom of our apartment that year. We all arranged to fill each other's stockings and give great gifts. We read all my favorite childhood books together and Luke 2, while we arranged the Nativity scene, just like when I was little. They all said it was their best Christmas ever, and I felt so blessed to spend Christmas with people I loved so much. And then the year really started...
So...in 2006, I had made the alternate list for the nursing program, which meant, once again, I did not get in. I was third on that list. The advisor told me nobody ever drops out of this program, and that the chance of me getting in by being an alternate was basically zero. But in January, two weeks before school started, I got a phone call at work. The nursing program was trying to track my down to let me know that, miraculously, three people had just dropped out of the program. I was in. It was a miracle I will be forever grateful for.
I quit all 3 jobs from 2005 and started working at Murphy's, the best serving job I ever had. I loved the people I worked with, especially Kevin, who teased me relentlessly and whom I just loved. It was great money, fabulous food, and a wonderful wonderful time. Getting that job was another miracle for sure, as the timing was just right.
I started cooking more; this probably began in 2005, but Williams-Sonoma healthy kitchen cookbooks helped me make huge leaps in discovering food I didn't know existed.
I met Rebekah Granat, my Jewish agnostic hippie rock-climber friend whom I love to death. I instantly thought the first day of nursing school that she was way too cool to be friends with me (and that she had the most amazing arms ever), but she ended up becoming my best friend in the program. We really wouldn't have made it without each other. She is still as cool as I thought she was that first day.
I started "dating" Josh Olson. I put dating in quotes because he wasn't Mormon so we told each other we weren't really dating, but we had a blast together. (We met through my roommates, who had been friends with him for awhile.) Even after he moved to Colorado two months after we met, I was pretty smitten and we had fun sending each other crazy little packages in the mail. We saw each other every few months, and even made the newspaper when we were saying good-bye at the airport!!
Because of him, I loved Boise a lot more, and we went exploring all over the valley, went fishing in Idaho City, and listened to Jimi Hendrix together. And went shooting. Basically, we just had fun together all the time.
In 2006, I started to love Boise and I started to become a nurse and I made a few amazing friends. And 26 was a fabulous year.