10-year Anniversary!

 10 years ago we stood on a grassy shoreline shadowed by Diamond Head and said simple words with eternal meaning...

 10 years ago I had the privilege and honor of marrying this man (swoon!)

 10 years ago I was a young 21 year old woman with no clue on how to be a wife, but Nick loved me anyway :)

 Fastforward 10 years to this...our family.  Our mission in life that God has given us.  We feel so blessed by God for this life He has given us.  A life that 10 years ago would have taken my breath away and still does...it all is just better than I could have possibly imagined.

And 10 years later we have this kind of love.  We fight and make up every day.  We joke, we stay tease.  We tickle, we poke.  And last night after 10 years of marriage we still stayed up all night talking.  About everything.  About nothing.

Still so in love.  In love more than I ever could have dreamed.  Thank you so much Nicholas for making me your wife.  For leading our family in your calm and gently manner that is so characteristic of you.  You are the man God made for me and I love reminiscing on my favorite quote ever that you said: "You can''t thank me for being with you.  I didn't choose to be with you.  I'm stuck with you.  And you with me.  God made us for one another and that's that."

I'll be stuck with you anyday, Wit!  Till death and then beyond!  :)  Love you!

This past week...

This past week we didn't have anything really planned but somehow all of our days were suddenly taken up with being busy.  Busy, busy, busy to be exact!  

We are in the thick of things with T-ball and I will not be shy telling you that I CANNOT wait until it is over.  Thankfully we have one more week and then we are done!  Praise the Lord we have made it! Both of the children are on the same team with my hottie of a husband as their coach.  So when I say we are doing t-ball, we are DOING t-ball.  Something fierce :) 

 Here's Emma in her infamous dress jersey!  I promise the girlie is wearing shorts :)

  I don't know what it is and it's fine if  you think I'm nuts, but there is something really sexy about watching your husband as a coach.  It's that fathering thing but with other people's kids.  Very handsome :)

 Poor Nick.  One of the only kids he has trouble with is his own.  It's hard for him I know but I'm also glad he's there to give him direction.  This is how the two of them look most of the time on the field...

 Emma is really starting to enjoy the game and has been busy practicing her skills.

And in other news we started painting the house.  By we I mean Nick.  Do you think he planned to wear underpants that match the new paint?  Ooh,lalala!

I love the paint color and we've had neighbors tell us they like it too, which we are so glad about!  Last year the neighbors behind us painted their house a color that can only be compared to the color of dried vomit.  And while I've somewhat gotten used to it, still It's just gross.  We didn't want our color to be to the likeness of that for people :)

You'll have to forgive me for not writing often.  It's summer and a lot of time we are away from the computer trying to get ourselves into trouble!  We are still doing school (supposedly) which is really hard when all you want to do is be on summer break.  Still, we are persevering and trying to finish up.

Hope you all had a great week this past week!  Can't wait to see what fun things this week has in store for us!

8-Mile

This is my husband.  For those of you new to this planet, his name is Nick. 

Yeah, he's pretty great.  

He's a Bear's fan so this is one of his many, many Chicago Bear's hats. 

Yeah.  

When we are out choosing a Christmas tree in miserable weather, this hat is appropriate.  

When you wear in in the gym after swimming, your wife will call you "8-mile".  Just so we're all on the same page here.  

Thought I would write about Nick because, well, quite frankly life has been all about homeschooling and Christmas decorating lately, and a smaller amount about this guy.  

Not that he minds.  He's not very whiny.  Usually.  Slide a plate of beef towards him around dinner and he's usually complacent with whatever is going on around here.  

Oh there's a giant 2000 piece puzzle on the dining room table?  No problem.  

Oh you washed plaster down the drain?  No problem, I'll take care of it.  

Oh you put radiator fluid in our transmission?  thanks for letting me know.  

Seriously, all things considered, this guy puts up with a lot from me.  

That latest has been that Nick has this teeny-tiny problem called snoring.  So much so that I haven't been able to sleep and therefore function and therefore get along with anyone in the whole wide world.  

So Nick has started wearing Breathe-right strips to bed.  You can tell he hates wearing them but he does without complaining.  I love this man with my whole heart ladies.  

Yesterday Nick got a ticket on our street for not using his turn signal.  We live in a neighborhood and our street is short...on our side of the street there are only 3 houses for crying out loud.  Oh yes, and it was 4 in the morning.  lots of people out, ya know.  Anyway, I'm not mad about the ticket or anything, we just find it kind of weird.  But we also find it nice to know that the police are out and about protecting us while we are all sleeping.  

Anywho, Nick just felt really stressed about it and I feel bad that he feels stressed.  He shouldn't have to worry about things.  He works so hard and does so much for all of us.  

Including listening to me nag him. 

And he lets me call him 8-mile. :)

Weekend Amazingness

Well this past weekend I can't say that we did anything spectacular.  Except one thing...

we got to love on Nick! 

Friday was the start of a three day weekend for him and we had so much fun with him!  It was his first day off in a month...no weekends off, and he's gone about 15 hours a day so when he does get home there's not much time for him to do much of anything other than eat dinner, shower, and go to bed. 

It was wonderful having our family all back together.  And kind of funny.  Nick hasn't been around so much that he kept trying to get the kids down for a nap (who don't take naps anymore), sending the kids up to their rooms with toys that we now keep downstairs, and trying to get them to watch programs we don't watch.  So funny.  I can't imagine what it would be like having a husband deployed or something...

We visited a lot of amish, went on a field trip, went to church, our zoo's halloween festivities, carved pumpkins, and laughed a lot. 

It was so wonderful.  We are so blessed.  Nick Sunday at dinner told us thank you for such a great weekend. 

But it's us that should be telling him Thank You. 

I'm sure there are so many guys who wouldn't be home on their first days off.

They'd be at the golf course.
Or a buddy's house.
Or a bar. 

But not Nick.  Nope.  He has no where else he'd rather be than at home with us.  With our messes and our tantrums, our loud playing, and our sword fights. 

And that to me, is amazing. 


Sidenote: I have pictures somewhere on my camera...goal today is to find camera :)

Welcome to the Gun Show

How cute is this picture? 
This is my husband in case you are just tuning in. Not some random man I'm taking pictures of in the middle of an electrical field apparently. 
We were at the pumpkin patch. 
His name is Nick. 
He likes to do funny things when I try to take his picture. 
He's hot. 
And now we're caught up. 

My husband has been working tirelessly every.single.day.  for the past three weeks.  He puts in at least 12 hours, usually more.  Then drives his 45 minute drive back home.  He doesn't complain.  He doesn't get mad.  He's perfect. 

But there's me back home complaining becuase he's gone.  Because it's every day.  I know it's not his fault.   I know that he would rather be home with us. 

I love him so much and he is such a great guy.  Thursday when I came down with what was obviously the plague, he just put me in bed.  He took care of everything. 

This weekend at the market we were checking out and I spied Macaroons in the cart.  "I didn't know you liked macaroons!" I exclaimed. 

"I don't.  But you do." He said.  Swoon :)

My husband has never been a romantic man.  Sometimes that bothers me more than other times.  It's something I work on.  It's something he works on.  Once he gave me a watch, a beautiful expensive watch.  We were broke.  He forgot wrapping paper and proceeded to dump out a box of tampons and give it to me in the tampon box...unwrapped.  This is a true story folks, you can't make crap like this up. 

Anyway, back to now...he doesn't plan these elaborate things but he's always there to tuck me in bed, take my earrings out when I'm too sleepy, he comes home with a bottle of wine, he sticks macaroons in the cart. 

I love him so much and I am so thankful for him.  And I'm thankful that I'm the only one who gets to go to his gun show :)

Random Thoughts that a Monday Afternoon Produces...

Homeschooling is done, the children are napping, and I find myself with the devil and angel on my shoulders...

Relax!

Get to work! 

So I did...kind of. 

I ordered these jeans from Lands' End for Nick...cute right?  They are 14.99 on clearance and if you use the promotion code "Discover" with the number 6956 you'll get an additional 25% off and free shipping (no minimum required)!  Awesome, huh?  Thanks Money Saving Mom for, well, saving this Mom some Money!

A side note is, if you don't shop at Lands' End then I really recommend that you do.  They are always having super great bargains!  And they stand behind the quality of their products which is something I love and respect about them.  I buy almost all of my clothes from there and I love them!  I also love that they are sold at Sears so I can find some super great bargains there and I can return something there if it doesn't work out...none of the having to mail it back business! 

I also spent a lot of time on the phone which I hate doing but sometimes it just can't be helped.  Nick and I's debit cards expired in August but weren't replaced. Weird, we haven't had debit cards.  Well we got them...we got 4 cards total...all with different numbers.  So now which ones are we to use?  I was a little frustrated that the girl told me to take them ALL to the ATM and try to use our old pin numbers as they should be  the same.  At that point I was so frustrated I just said "okay".  Okay not meaning okay but rather meaning, I'm making my husband call about this...

My final call was to the Parks Department of our City.  Again, frustrated with them.  I have spoken numerous times with the lady in charge there about getting our neighborhood's park playground equipment updated.  She assured me in the Spring that something would be done, but now it is officially Autumn and nothing has been done.  I try to think that it would be nice to have it done, but it's nothing that I'm owed or something. But then when I think that we pay taxes and should be able to ENJOY our park, then I get a little torked off.  Is that how you spell torked???   I also spoke to someone about the tennis courts in our neighborhood.  We have some wicked nice tennis courts, let me tell you.  No exagerating people come from all over the country to play on our courts.  But for us common folk they are hardly ever open.  And I have a couple of kiddos who just want their Daddy to teach them how to play.  So I was on the phone with them for that.  Apparently you have to ask about 7.25 people before you find someone who knows about tennis courts.  Weird, wild stuff going on around here. 

My final question/random thought here as I ramble on has to do with homeschooling.  I've been printing off things for Emma and things are either too hard or too easy.  So here's my question for all of you, and you don't have to be a homeschooling mom to answer...if your child can breeze through things do you give them MORE of that to practice (oh say, addition worksheets?) or do you make them try to get something harder (multiplication? Fractions?) Emma's only a Kindergartener but I've been using first grade curriculum and she's finishing everything in about half the time they say to work with her on it.  I don't know if that means I should give her more practice or if she's ready for 2nd grade material.  And yes, I do feel kind of stupid asking this.  Just so ya know...

Happy Monday!  Make some coffee and perk yourself over that midday slump we're in now :)

And a Quick Vent...

I've been told recently that our marriage seems perfect. 

Oh boy I am so sorry if I have been portraying everything in that manner.

The truth is...

sometimes I just want to kill this husband of mine. 

I love him so much.  Please don't get me wrong.  In fact there are two things you should know:

1) I love him so much
2) I am so, so not perfect

My resons for fighting with Nick usually stem from two things:

1) Nick forgets things
2) Our differing parenting styles

Tonight I am going out with some girlfriends.  So, So excited.  I've had this set up for a couple of weeks.  I reminded him last night.  We were good to go. 

This afternoon I get a call from Nick saying that he has a meeting tonight.  The poor guy, I just wanted to kill him.  After a few minutes to compose myself and a few phone calls to girlfriends later and I had the situation solved.  So I called Nick and appologized for screaming at him. 

I don't share a lot of spats with you because, quite frankly, its not the purpose of my blog.  And my job as a wife is to be as uplifting as possible.   I am to submit to my husband and honor him.  Me bashing him all of the time doesn't really fulfill that purpose, now does it?

So there you go, we are definitely not perfect.  We fight all of the time.  Do you hear me???  All of the time!

But that's the way its been since the beginning. We fight, we make up, and we're done.  We are both passionate, we fight hard and make up even harder :)  We do try to shelter our kids from BIG fights, but our children know that Mommy and Daddy fight, we make up, and it will never change anything...we always love one another and our family.  Bottom line. 

So that's where we are, I assure you that we are so far from perfect.  This afternoon was just one of many examples.  I'm sure there will be lots more. 

The Birthday Boy!

Okay this is a terrible picture to post as it's not of anything special except one thing...look how much hair Nick has!  This was a picture of Nick on our honeymoon and today he celebrates his 33rd Birthday!  I love him so much and I feel so honored to get to share my life with him.  Happy Birthday Honey!!!!

Fair Time

Wednesday we made it to the fair.  We went in the middle of the day and it was very caliente, hot!  Next year we are totally going at night.  I think it's fun at night with the lights and all of the action, but it was definitely less crowded during the day which was a nice advantage.  This was also the first year that the kids could actually ride some rides together.  Last year Cal was too little and Emma was barely able to ride a couple of rides so while she rode those two rides she was tall enough we tried to console a grumpy two year old who didn't understand the concept of not being tall enough. Plus, last year Cal wasn't potty trained so we had the diaper bag, and the sippy cups, and the stroller, and on and on.  Boy what a difference a year makes!  It was nice to just go to the fair.  Just to get out of the car and go.  No gear, no bags, nothing. 

 The first thing the kids wanted to ride were these motorcycles.  Notice how happy Emma is.  She loves it. and then you have...

 Mr. Serious.  He was intent the entire time.  I really think he legitimately thought he was driving this motorcycle. It was his job and he wasn't about to take it lightly.  So cute. 

 Here's Cal with his 4-H project.  See how nicely he stayed in the lines?  NOT!  He's so cute!  This was his first year so he was excited to find his project.  Not as excited as he was to try to tear down everyone's model building projects, but still excited.  Don't worry...no models were harmed! 

 Here's Emma...she did a sewing project.  Hard to see, sorry!  It was a butterfly and when we turned it in the fair people thought there was no way she did it on her own.  I'm not the doing my 5-year old's fair project, type of Mom, you know. 

 My little hear swelled a little when the kids passed up another ride in favor of the carousel.  So many kids think they are boring but our kids LOVE them.  They watched the mechanics the entire time!  Emma picked a horse away from Cal and I was so worried she was going to fall off and die in some fiery crash.  I kept asking "Are you okay?" And by the end she sounded like a teenager answering "ugh, YES, maummm.  Leave me aloooone!"  Okay, okay.

Here are Cal and I...he's such a happy little guy!  I love his hat!  We scored it at the GAP.  If you like the GAP you should go.  They had things on sale and then an additional 40% off.  His hat was some crazy cheap price like 2.00.  Holy Moly. 

 I love these three people so much it makes my brain hurt thinking about it. 

Here is my favorite moment of the fair.  Nick took them on this ride.  I have never been on it.  My mom would never, ever let me go and as a result I am now terrified of it. But Nick wanted the kids to experience it as it was always the thing he looked forward to do (isn't that just the cutest thing?) So he took both kids up.  I was really expecting that Emma would get out there and chicken out.  But she didn't...she loved it.  She screamed the entire time coming down!  I guess as a result of me not going I got this cute picture so it was worth it.  :)

 A fair's not a fair without some weird side show race thing, right?  Here we have the "weiner dog" races...don't you just love their costumes? 

And here are the pig races.  Seriously my husband was more excited than anyone to see them and I have no idea why.  They were pretty cute though.  We had fun and then went home. 
The End.

The Three-Piece Suit

There can't be anything sexier than a man in a three-piece suit. Right? That is unless you are talking about my husband when he has taken off the jacket from his three-piece suit and then...
ow-ow!

(whistle, whistle)
That's one fine package of man meat wrapped up there.
Sorry family...just had to say it.
I love this man. Glad he's mine.
He is fyyyyyine.
He makes my heart skip a beat.
With butterflies.
And goose pimples.
I think I need to go find that guy.
Bye.

He sat in the middle of the store. On a little kid bench. Legs sprawled, he hunched over to play paper dolls with Emma. I stood in line to buy jeans and felt a huge lump in my throat.









I am not going to cry while standing in line at this store.









A giant of a man to me. So tall. So brave. So handsome.









Suddenly in a clump, practically on the floor, willing to do anything with his daughter.









I'm sure so often this guy feels like he's carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders: bills, a huge work schedule, a naggy wife, tons to do around the house. How often through the day does he secretly feel like a clump? So close to the ground when he should be standing tall?









It's my job as a wife to make him feel like the tall giant of a man he is. He's huge in my eyes. He's the tallest, bravest, smartest, kindest man in the whole wide world.









I hope I always make him feel tall and never make him feel like a clump.

Lymphoma Free

Thank you all for your prayers and support! Nick called the doctor's office today and they reported that his tests and x-rays all came back looking great.

PRAISE THE LORD!!!

I guess we had been nervous over nothing! Diabetes was also something that we were thinking may be wrong, but it looks like he is fine.

He called me this morning and said "well it looks like I'm not going to die...yet." He is just so funny :)

Freaking Out

Quick update on Nick...

Yesterday was his appointment with the doctor. The cute little goofball scheduled the appointment during Emma's ballet lesson so I couldn't be there. Geesh.

He went in for his foot to see why it's been hurty again.

And then they kind of shocked us. Nick's been having these other problems on top of the foot so they did some blood work and x-rays. We are waiting to hear back on if he has Lymphoma. Oh. Great.

I am trusting God the best that I can that he doesn't have it. I keep looking at him thinking "he'd be kind of gray-ish if he were sick, right?" He would be weak and sick. Nick is always so stoic...it's one of his great traits that drives me insane!

So we are waiting. Waiting and waiting. I praise God that they had all of the stuff in the office to take his blood and do the x-rays...he could have been referred to somewhere else and then that could have taken days and days. Hopefully we will hear the results today.

Yesterday to get our (read my) mind off things I took Nick up on his offer to go buy a new coffee maker. A little history on the coffee maker. We have a Cuisinart Mill and Brew. I hate it. We've had it for 2 years maybe? The thing keeps turning off when it's making coffee.

Yesterday it turned off 4 times.

So we went coffeemaker shopping. We found one at Bed Bath and Beyond that was $200.00. Nick was set on that one...it was nice. But here's my problem...I don't work and I'm the only one who drinks coffee...I have a really hard time justifying something like that for just me in my head when it is $200.00. So we kept looking. We went to this place called the Christmas Tree Shop.

They had one I really liked...Cuisinart which stinks, but still...new and stainless steel...ooh, la, la. The only problem was they only had the floor model. Bummer. Nick tracked someone down and found out they would let us buy it for $40.00! Are you kidding me??? So we snatched it up and took it home. It can break next month and I think I will have gotten my money out of the thing.

Anyway, the only reason I tell that story is because I felt as if it were God smacking me upside the head with a coffee maker saying "do you see this? I always take care of you. Even in the little things. Stop. Freaking. Out" God has to tell me to stop freaking out a lot in life.

Please just keep us in your prayers. I'll let you know as soon as we know anything and in the meantime I am going to stop freaking out.

Happiness in Marriage is a Choice

Okay to be fair here I told him to give me a really goofy face...promise :)

In case no one has told you Nick and I are delieriously in love! Ah, young love! Except idon't know if we have what you would call YOUNG love considering we've been together for close to 10 years. We met when I was 19 and he was 22. It just seems so young and innocent now and back then I felt so grown-up.

Anywho we married when I was 21 which now seems so young to be getting married. But it was the same age that my Grandmother was when she got married and definitely not fresh out of high school or anything.

We have known so many people who have gotten a divorce, who have split up, broken up, are just plain fed up. Whenever I hear that this has happened it absolutely scares me to death. I think "what was it that made them end? were they happy like us?"

I am in no way saying that I know everything about marriage or that I am some type of advce expert but I do believe that what Nick and I have is a pretty good thing and I have SCADS of people tell me that they wish they were as in love as we are. In all honesty we have to work to make this work. A LOT of work.

Dates, talking, laughing, making a point to not get too stressed about living, and making sure God is in our center. I was told once by a dear older lady that life is 20% circumstances and 80% attitude. I think that this completely applies to life. We all know people who have are unhappy because its just not exciting anymore or the spark is just gone. But what those people don't realize is that you are going through life with the person you love and life quite frankly just isn't very exciting sometimes. Nope...in fact its scary and traumatic and boring and stressful in a lot of areas with exciting being very far away. But you choose to be with that person because what an honor to have someone choose YOU to be with.

I feel absolutely honored and blessed that Nick is with me. He chose me to snuggle with in the middle of the night, to bear his children, to get him aspirin when he has a headache.

We have a friend who divorced because he and his wife were just best friends. Seriously? Isn't that the way it should be? You can CHOOSE to be in love, to talk, to stay up in the wee hours of the night talking, to love one another truly and deeply. I am not saying that we have not had our share of marriage counseling, slammed doors, nights on the couch, or a handful of other painful, painful memories but we have muddled through.

I know that a lot of marriages are pretty one sided and that sucks. I am so blessed with Nick that has has fought with me tooth and nail to get this to work.

His mom had the kids Monday and he got a lot done on our living room (yeah!) but you know what else we also did? We laid on the couch and talked and laughed and were just silly. For the life of me I can't remember what we talked about but we talked and connected.

My prayer for you today is that your life contains such a relationship and if not that you may figure out how to get it there. God showed us how to love and I am so thankful He did because it is so amazing.