The culmination of 2008… of my whole entire life came down to these words….

“Now that Alex and Monica have given themselves to each other by
solemn vows, with the joining of hands and the giving and
receiving of a ring, I pronounce that they are husband and wife,
in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

Those whom God has joined together let no one put asunder.”

Amen.

As everyone knows, on July 4th 2008 I, a simple man, sweating and chocking, with a heart that pounded like an ancient war drum, under the eyes of God, in front of close friends and family, gave my life to my beloved Monica. I gave her my heart and my solemn vow to love her through it all, for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and cherish her, until we are parted by death…

My 2008 was defined by those words, those vows that have changed our lives forever. This was the year of dreams, at least for me. “Good guy in love is blessed by marrying precious girl.” That’s my headline for 2008. But it was not all honey, all year. The start of the 2008 was actually quite the opposite. I started the year faced with the adversity of debt, no job and broke. I was feeling very unfulfilled. I had left the mortgage industry after a long run that had gradually slowed down until it took a nasty dive. I decided that since I was going to get married I needed to find a job that was salary, something I had never had before since all my previous jobs where either 100% commission or with a bare salary plus commission, with commission being the bread maker. Problem was that I couldn’t find anything. No door was opening for me… until I got on my knees and prayed and prayed. I prayed earnestly, asking God to open that door for that job that he wanted me to go to. And behold, through a conversation with my boy Dan “The White Man,” he told me there was an opening. I went to an interview and got a job. Whoohoo!

So now I had a job and slowly but surely we started paying down most of our debt. Monica put me on a strict Sadam Hussein style regimen budget of just $10 a week to spend on food and entertainment. I am not exaggerating. Since we had to save for the wedding, she cooked and therefore I had no excuse to go to any restaurant or fast food joint for lunch. Through this readjustment process we started taking a budget course and premarital counseling with my mentor, and cool Deacon Jerry Brown and Kathy, his wife of 43 years. We had some awkward moments at times, especially when he talked about sex. It was like having the talk about the birds and the bees all over again, but from a spiritual perspective. Awkward and funny nonetheless.

So this was our ritual for the first 6 months of the year. Come home, I worked on the wedding website, Monica cooked or worked on the wedding planning, we worked out for the honeymoon, went to counseling or soccer, repeat the next day. I actually lost weight and was down to 141lbs. No worries though, I am back to 155 pounds of fury. So yeah, other than the daily ritual of work and wedding planning, nothing exciting happened. We hardly went out, only for birthdays. Oh! We got our Open Water Certification in preparation to our honeymoon. I will write about this later.

Then came the wedding day. Oh boy, it was perfect. Almost. We had an outdoor wedding at the Glenview Mansion in Rockville Maryland. There were warnings of rain and scattered thunderstorms but we remained hopeful that it was going to stay away from our location. It didn’t. We were scheduled to get married at 6PM and it was raining hard for periods of time. Upstairs in the Groom’s room, we were all having a good old time reminiscing about the younger days of infamy and notoriety and I was constantly being asked “Are you sure man? This is it, there’s no backing out! We can still help you make a run for it!” (Thank you guys for holding me down when I did take you on that offer and tried to jump out the window and make a run for it! Just kidding Beautiful, that never happened… really!) In the bride’s room however, I heard that chaos was going on. Women were fighting each other for mirror space to put on their make up on, elbows flying, bridesmaids were fainting, moms were crying, rumors of a runaway groom were circulating. Ok, so none of that was actually going on, but there was a constant “What do you want us to do? What do you want us to do???” from people regarding moving the ceremony inside because of the rain. The beautiful bride sent a messenger to the groom’s room that she wanted to have it outside but if it was really bad we could move it inside. I then decided to take action and went outside to investigate. The rain hadn’t ceased. However, I said to myself, “If the bride wants an outside wedding, she’ll get an outside wedding even if it means that the best man and the maid of honor will be holding umbrellas over us!”

So the plans continued as they were. Except that at 6PM, the skies cleared. God turned off the faucet in the heavens. So we all hurried into position. And at 615 or so, that woman, who was a blessing to my life, walked down the aisle towards this man, who was awaiting her since forever. I took her hand and melted. I looked at her eyes and I loved her more than all the days combined. And then we became whole. Thanks to God, we had enough time to go through with the ceremony, take a nice carriage ride and take plenty of pictures. Once we were done with all that, it started raining again…

Click the image below to see some of the pictures from the wedding:

Then came our honeymoon, which I have blogged about here:

Day 1 – Honeymoon, here we come!

Day 2 – Welcome to Big Corn Island!

Day 3 – Little Corn Island, Paradise Found! *Reader Recommended*

Day 4 – Paradise lost?

Day 5 – Scuba Diving in Little Corn Island *Reader Recommended*

Day 6 – Diving with Sharks *Reader Recommended*

Day 7 – Back to Big Corn Island

Day 8 – Goodbye Paradise *Reader Recommended*  Also one of my favorites.

Click the image below for some of the honeymoon pics:

And there’s the second part of our honeymoon that I will soon write about.

Following the tradition of the PJ/Lingerie Party of ’06, the madness of the Toga Party of ’07, I threw a “Let There Be Free Love” Disco Party for my birthday. It was a great time. Thank you everyone for coming! Thank you Erick for trusting me with your house when you were in Bolivia! Thank you to Venechi for coming over and keeping everyone dancing ‘til 5 in morning. And thank you beautiful for convincing me to go through with the party. Click the image below for some of the pics from the party:

In November Jerry took my two brothers, Alvin and Richard, and I on a duck hunting trip to West Virginia. It was awesome! I have also determined that my brother Richard is a tree hugging secret PETA member since he didn’t shoot any duck. As a matter of fact, he didn’t even get off a single shot. He pretty much fell asleep while we waited for the birds to pass by. I don’t blame him though, we were up since 3AM and we were cold. We saw our guides rip open the duck and gut it. Then we took them home with us and it tasted like liver. Weird. I thought it would taste like chicken.

In December, we set out to conquer the mountains of Pennsylvania. We went snow boarding for the first time to White Tail. Unfortunately, our conquest didn’t make it past the bunny slope. Man, snow boarding was hard! Monica almost broke her tail bone, Bianca almost split her head open, and I took some nasty falls that felt like I threw my lungs out of my mouth on impact. The problem was that there was no snow, it was all ice. So when you fell, it felt like you were hitting concrete. We had a pass until 10PM but left at 6PM after we were done, taking a beating. It was 25% fun, 75% torture. But we are willing to give it another shot. “Perfect the Bunny Slope!” is Bianca’s war cry and we are going again in February.

As for the lessons learned in 2008… I’ve learned to give importance to those that matter. I have neglected my family for many years because I’ve been busy living my life. So to you, Redford my dear father, I ask for your forgiveness and hope that this new year brings us the bond of father and child we once had. To you mother, I must remind you that I love you and am very thankful for your sacrifices, your prayers, your unconditional love and for believing in me. And for you two Gordos, maybe one day you’ll be as cool as me. Hehe. I am proud of you two and how you guys are maturing every month.

We have learned much from Jerry Brown who has taught a lot about love from the spiritual standpoint.  He has been a blessing to us and we thank God has placed you in our lives. Thanks for your time, your patience, your wisdom.

With every year come new friends. I am happy of the new friends I’ve made this year. Lindsey and Karen, you two are the coolest, awesomest and most hardcore girls in the field of battle. I am happy of the strong bonds that continue to hold the friendship of my old time friends from a decade ago. We are at that stage in our lives where everyone is getting engaged, married or having kids, which is great! We are moving on with the cycle of life. We have traded the freaky freaky parties for baby showers and “First Birthday” parties filled with the future.

And to think that we are headed towards that route. To think that it all started that rainy afternoon I gave her my life and all my goals. That Friday when I named her my lady, my queen, the matriarch of our lineage, the mother of the legacy that will survive us. On that day, the hands on the heavenly clock started moving, moving towards a day when our love child will be conceived and nourished by the love that we share. And one day when we are old and wrinkly, watching our grandkids, we’ll look back to this year, 2008, when we became one.