And thus we finish my pre-birthday look back at what’s been going on around my previous 20 birthdays. Not a whole lot that affected people beyond my immediate friends and families, but then that’s probably true for most of us. (By the way, if you missed the first installments, here they are: Part 1 & Part 2.)

One thing that I find interesting is how the sections describing the longer-ago times are relatively short, while the past eight years or so have been so milestone-filled that they had to be broken off into separate chunks. This could be because my college and early work years just weren’t all that memorable because I was just getting started with this adulthood business. But perhaps it’s because events that seemed so significant when they were recent become less important with the perspective of many years’ distance.

At any rate: here’s the final segment. Enjoy!

Three years ago, our January 2009 involved a lot of breaking the news of my pregnancy to our friends.

A few months later, to celebrate our anniversary and our impending parenthood, we’d fly to Washington D.C. for a week of touristing. While we were there, my sister’s daughter would be born and we would officially be aunt and uncle on both sides of our extended family.

July would find us celebrating the birth of a tiny little Kiddo. And then learning all the challenges of parenting a newborn.

Not quite two months later, Husband and I and a handful of friends hosted Seattle’s first instantiation of DASH, a multi-city on-foot puzzle event. I impressed myself with how easy it was to do things with a child attached to me. That would change. Oh, how that would change.

Two years ago it was 2010 and life had settled into a pattern for us. Baby, baby, baby, and then baby.

Things hadn’t gotten really bad at work, but the downhill slide would start later that year.

We would buy our first new car in years, and drive it to Lake Chelan for a week with my parents and siblings.

Kiddo would learn to eat “real” food, and to walk–both skills that continue to challenge us.

I would join Twitter after declaring for years that I didn’t see the point, and also start this blog.

One year ago, 2011, and it was going to be another big year for us.

In April I would walk away from the company to which I’d given almost 12 years of my life. Six weeks later I’d start over at a new job, which is less stressful and more enjoyable.

In August we’d take a two-week family road trip that took us across the Continental Divide half a dozen times, reunite me with some of my high school classmates, and get the whole Smith family together for some summer family time.

In November we’d host Thanksgiving. I’d also attempt to keep up with the blog-every-day NaBloPoMo. I fell off the wagon shortly after the holiday, but I learned some interesting things – one of them being that if I take the time to write in this blog, people take the time to read it.

And that brings us back to here. It’s been an interesting trip so far. Here’s to the next twenty years.

Here’s the second part of my pre-birthday look back at how the past 20 years have gotten me to where I am now. You can find part 1 here; part 3 will be up soon.

Eight years ago it was 2004, and a lot of big stuff was about to happen that year.

I surprised even myself by volunteering to join the small core of PuzzleDay leads. Guess who else was on that core group? Hint: I’m married to him now.

Come April, Office 2004 for Macintosh would finally be released to manufacturing. I’d been pouring a lot of effort into work that spring, and it was reflected in my performance reviews. Just for fun, I put a big gold star on my office door like a Hollywood starlet.

That summer I’d face for the first time the tough decision to put one of our two ferrets to sleep. I’d never lost a pet before, and it was very, very hard on me. On both me and my then-husband, I think, but instead of bringing us together, it was the first step of the eventual end of the marriage.

In the fall, a few of my friends and I would form a team to play in my first driving Game, Shinteki:Untamed. The four-person team we assembled is still together, with the addition of a few others to come later.

In December, I would make another tough decision: I asked my soon-to-be-ex-husband for a trial separation.

Seven years ago it was 2005, and perhaps one of the most pivotal periods in my life to date.

For my birthday, one of my PuzzleDay co-leads invited me to join him and some of our friends to play remotely in that year’s weekend-long MIT Mystery Hunt. Sometime late Friday night, I walked out of our conference room for a few minutes and returned to find he’d arranged for a birthday cake for me. I got an inkling that there might be some mutual attraction.

I moved into my very first all-my-own apartment. My ex and I filed for divorce. It would be officially a done deal just eight months later.

I started dating the aforementioned PuzzleDay co-lead.

That summer I would run one leg of a marathon relay, along with my sisters and mom. My new boyfriend and I ran Bay to Breakers too. That ended up being the last time I did any significant running, either competitively or just for myself.

In August I would play in my first full-length Game, with my teammates from Shinteki and two other guys. One of them later moved to Germany, and the other is the fifth member of our current Game team.

In October, I’d sign the papers and hand over a great big change, in exchange for the keys and deed to a cute little condo in Kirkland.

Five years ago in 2007, I kicked off the year by moving out of that cute little condo and into my boyfriend’s house. I had some reluctance doing so because I sure loved that condo, but it seemed like the right move for us at the time. I would eventually sell it in November for a very nice profit, just as the housing bubble was starting to collapse.

While sorting through papers, I found my friend Julia’s email address, and wrote to her hoping to rekindle our friendship. One of the first things I learned was that she’d been diagnosed with an aggressive form of lung cancer the previous December in spite of never smoking a cigarette in her life.

In April my boyfriend and I would go on a Carribean cruise. It had seemed like the perfect opportunity for him to propose marriage, and I found myself a little disappointed when he didn’t. Little did I know that in May, he’d scheme with the organizers of another Game to make the first event a marriage proposal instead of a puzzle. I remembered to say yes.

November would find us running Microsoft Puzzlehunt 11.0. This wasn’t just for interns, but for anyone who could put together a 12-person team that contained at least six Microsoft employees. I wrote a choose your own adventure type installation puzzle that sent people roaming through a huge underground parking garage. It was awesome.

Four years ago it was 2008. In March, my moments-away-husband and I would stand up in front of dozens of our friends and family members and vow that this time around, we’d do it right. (So far: success.)

My friend Julia wouldn’t be able to make it to our wedding, as her cancer was getting the upper hand. I’d find out at the end of May that she’d died a few days earlier. How can it be possibel to miss someone so much when you haven’t seen then in twenty years? Even now I still get a little teary-eyed remembering her.

In October we’d get a little plus sign on a little pink stick. (So would my sister, although hers happened a couple months earlier that year.) Life was about to change again.

My birthday (ahem) is fast approaching, like the lights in the tunnels that turn out to be oncoming trains, only without the impending sense of doom. This one has some special significance, as it will be the last one I have before I turn 40. This means I’ll have only one more year to plan my 40th Birthday Party Grand Extravaganza. I haven’t decided yet whether I’ll need to prebook the flying giraffes, or if I should just stick with the dancing unicorns. Thoughts?

Semi-seriously though, as it’s both the beginning of a calendar year and a chronological year, it seems like a good time to take stock of where I am and where I’ve come. Apparently I’ve come quite a way, because this got so long I had to split it into three separate posts. Parts 2 and 3 will show up tomorrow and the next day, respectively.

Twenty years ago (good lord) in January 1992, I was a college freshman at The University of Montana, majoring in Journalism and minoring in Spanish, having been talking out of a Latin minor by the assistant dean of the Journalism School.

I was dating a guy six years older than me who was wrong for me in so, so many reasons. But he was my first boyfriend and I was in luuuuuuuurve. I still was in touch with some of my high school friends, but since I hadn’t had many close friends in high school it’s no surprise that some of the friendships I’d had were already fading. One that wasn’t, though, was a connection I’d made a few years earlier with a girl named Julia. We’d met at a choir festival during our junior year that both our respective high schools attended. Julia and I wrote letters to each other for the next ten years or so–she more faithfully than me–and I was sure that we’d be one of those pairs of friends who reunite after 25 years of never having seen each other in person.

I hadn’t yet met my eventual first husband, but that would happen only a couple of months down the road.

Fifteen years ago, it was 1997 and I was a graduate student in computer science at Montana State University. I’d complete my B.A. in Journalism (Print emphasis) two years previous, looked around for a year or so, and then decided that journalism was going to be a highly competitive, low-paying field. I’d been intrigued by comp sci and decided to take some nondegree classes, and eventually got talked into officially going for my Master’s.

I’d been dating my about-to-be fiance for about a year. He proposed on my birthday. We (mostly I) decided the following week to have the wedding that summer rather than waiting two years so his engaged sister could have her wedding first. I dove into wedding planning with all the enthusiasm of an early-20s-year-old excited about being a princess for a day and, oh yeah, getting hitched to my life partner. He joked that he’d only proposed so that I’d come with him if he took a job out of state. Solid foundations there.

Interesting note: One of my classmates was the guy who would eventually marry one of my current really good friends. I don’t know whether he even remembers this.

Ten years ago in January 2002, my then-husband and I took a week-long trip to Hawaii for my birthday, and returned to learn that his company was closing their Seattle office, and everyone who worked there was being laid off.

At that time, I’d been working at Microsoft for 2 1/2 years in the Macintosh Business Unit. We made Office for Macintosh. I think I was still a software tester on Word at that point. I’d made a lot of friends but was just getting to know the one who would eventually preside at my second wedding.

Later that year, I would join the staff of Microsoft Intern PuzzleDay and write my first two puzzles. One was pretty good, and the other was so-so. It was either that summer or the next where I’d meet my eventual current (second) husband. Both of us were married to other people at the time, and neither of us had any idea what fate had planned for us.

… to be continued …