Six awesome years

Today is the sixth anniversary of my marriage to my husband. Here is how the day went, just in case you were a bit curious. And this is how we met if you were wondering even though I know that each one of my readers has combed my archives for these gems. We will not be having any thrilling or exciting alone time with each other on this special day as I was unable to secure a babysitter. However we will be saving that for later in the month when my parents will be here for a visit. There is nothing better than having a ton of free babysitting.

This is the money shot. I had wanted this exact picture ever since I was a young girl.

Tags: wedding anniversary, marriage

A new holiday

I have decided that tomorrow is Blame Everything on my Husband Day. I wanted to start it today but since it was late afternoon when I came to this conclusion it was moved to tomorrow.

Global warming? Yep it is my husband's fault that the planet has a fever.

Something spilled on the floor? My husband did something that caused the spill.

The kids are cranky? Yep his fault again even though he leaves the house before they wake up.

The weather is not as nice as you like it? Yup it is my husband's fault.

Anything goes tomorrow. Feel free to add your suggestions about things that are my husband's fault.

Twins?

A lovely evening

I had never been to an Eagle Scout court of honor before so it was a very interesting and novel experience for me. It was neat hearing about my brother-in-law from the leaders that had helped him on the path to this very high honor. It is easy to see him as a rather trying teenager rather than the good man that he is becoming.

I was the photographer for the event which was a bit tricky at first with two kids that wanted to run around and my husband up on the stage with his family (At a court of honor all other Eagle Scouts are invited to sit up front). Luckily my mother-in-law had thought to ask one of her friends to help me. Evan who was the loudest and friendliest went with this kind woman to run the hallways of the church while I hitched a cranky and sick Harry around on my hip. My husband's grandmother helped me entertain him the few times I did sit down by letting him play with her keys.

I am excited that there is a chance that my boys will be able to follow in their father's footsteps and have the chance to earn the highest scouting award. I did not get much exposure to scouting since I came from a family of all girls but it is a very worthy program. It will also be neat that my husband will have the chance to be involved in something like that with his sons.

How I met my husband

I was a fun carefree 21 year old and he was a carefree 21 year old almost 22 year old. I had moved "home" (my parents had moved on me my freshman year at college so it really was not home to me especially since it was in another state) so that I could earn money to go on a mission for my church.

I had had a disappointing year romantically since I was very attracted to nerdy shy guys. Nerdy shy guys who would rather play a computer game than actually get the nerve up to ask a girl out. I was so over running after them, so when my husband (who is a very nerdy shy guy) started working at the same Target I was I pretty much blew him off. He would sit at the same break room table as me and chat with my work friends and me but nary a date request was made. I was not going to chase him in any way shape or form especially since I was supposed to be concentrating on other things to help me get ready for my mission.

Then came his final day at work. He had put in his two weeks notice because he was not getting the hours he needed. It was the last break of the night when he finally got up the nerve to ask me out after "slyly" trying to find out if I had a boyfriend. He asked me if I ever went to movies with my boyfriend. I just about laughed out loud at him since it was pretty obvious what he had in mind by asking me that question.

Even since that rather odd date (another topic for another time) we have pretty much been inseparable. It truly was amazing how well we fit together. I knew by our second date that he was the man I wanted to marry, it took him a few weeks more to figure that out. The mission went by the wayside and I ended up going on a different sort of mission becoming a wife and then later on a mother. I could not be happier.

A classic blunder

Ha ha! You fool! You fell victim to one of the classic blunders! The most famous is never get involved in a land war in Asia, but only slightly less well-known is this: never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha...

I am adding another to the list of classic blunders. Never go up against Awesome Mom in trivia, especially science fiction trivia. I seem to have a wicked memory for all sorts of odd facts. This is something that my husband discovered today.

As I mentioned above I am very much into science fiction literature and tv shows. I grew up watching Star Trek: The Next Generation along with other sundry science fiction shows. I learned to discover actors that appear in more than one show even if in one show they were heavily coated in makeup and odd masks. My husband checked out the entire first season of Farscape from the base library and we have been watching it all week. He is also a fan of Stargate (a show which I like but would not go out of my way to watch). We have to get all of our sci fi shows in reruns because we are too cheap to spend the money for the good cable so we are not really up on the latest shows. We had not seen an episode of Stargate in awhile but there happened to be one on tv and imagine my surprise when one of the new main character of that show looked awfully familiar. The main character was Ben Browder who was also the main character of Farscape.

My husband was incredulous. I had to finally look online to get him to stop denying the obvious. I had no idea why he would not believe me since it was not like Ben Bowder was in any alien makeup at all in either show. Stargate and Farscape also share another common actress Claudia Black who has a reoccurring but semi-minor role in Stargate but is the love interest for Ben Browder's character in Farscape.

He then moved on to discussing Star Trek with me. He said that we should add it to our collection of TV shows. He mentioned that there were probably tons of seasons to collect. I of course had to beg to differ. I knew that the Star Trek had not even run for the five seasons that were hinted at with the whole "five year mission" in the introduction. I was not entirely sure exactly how many seasons had run but I knew it was not the seven seasons my husband was thinking of (which of course any trekkie knows is the standard length for the spin off Star Trek shows excepting Enterprise) . Wikipedia solved that argument by stating that the show had run for three years. Score another one for Awesome Mom. Who knew there was still some brains left in me after having two kids? I sure did not.

I am giving an autographed picture of my kids to whomever can guess what movie the above quote came from.

Hi Honey!

I hope that today is much busier today that it was yesterday. It must stink to be so bored at work that you have nothing better to do than read my blog for entertainment. You might want to cover your tracks so that your buddies at work do not know that you can fit a whopper in your belly button.

Names

HowManyOfMe.com

There are: 7 people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

I am incredibly special! There are a mere 7 people with the same name as me. I bet all of them have different middle names so that means that the chances are quite high that no one has the same exact name as me. There are 692,927 people with my first name, which came as no surprise to me since it was a rather popular name at the time I was born. I had three other girls with the same name as me in my high school math class one year.

My lovely last name is apparently quite rare. Only 3,240 people in the US have it. This again is no surprise, as before I met my husband I had no idea that my last name was even a last name. I don't really hate my last name but it sure is a bit of a thorn in my side at times. I can't complain to much as I could have kept my maiden name when I got married.

My maiden name was a good last name. According to the website 422,956 people in the US have it. It was also quite high in the alphabet and easy to spell. There was no confusion with pronunciation. When I got married I got a last name that is in the dictionary. It is pronounced differently depending on if it is a noun or a verb (we use the noun pronunciation). I always spell it for people because for some reason people do not understand that it is spelled exactly how it sounds.

My last name has greatly restricted my naming choices for my children. I had to keep to rather normal names that are spelled correctly. I just could not in good conscious name my kids some of the names I thought were totally cool when I was a teenager. It was bad enough that they have a tricky last name and then to add a weird first name, I just could not do it to them.

Sadly my in laws were not quite as conscientious as I was. My poor husband is the only person in the US with the name that is on his birth certificate. He has an awful and much hated family name saddled on him. The funny thing is that on his social security card his name is his nick name. So in reality he has two legal names. In the church and the military he is the name on his birth certificate but in other places he is his nick name. My husband tried to argue the military into putting his nickname on their records but being the military you can guess how well that went. He insisted that when we decided to name Harry Harold but call him Harry that Harold was on all his official documents. He did not want Harry to go through the same name battles that he has been fighting his whole life.

Star Trek

I grew up watching Star Trek: The Next Generation with my family. I was and still am a huge fan of science fiction because of this show. My husband is a big fan of science fiction TV shows too. I thought this was a match made in heaven. Then he started watching the original Star Trek.

I can not believe that this is the show that kicked off the whole Star Trek series. The corny lines, the horrible science, the lame plot lines, and the bad acting, it all befuddles me. I spend most of the show just mocking it. It is just too horrible to watch, kind of like a train wreck. Sadly my husband does not take too well to my mocking so here I am mocking him and his show where he doesn't know I am mocking him.

Tips from Awesome Mom

Since school is now back in session and as usual apparently short of money the fundraiser season is upon us. Now I don't want to seem like a Grinch or anything but the whole idea of the fundraiser annoys the heck out of me. I hate them big time. Those companies use cute kids to hawk their goods and only give a small percentage to the school. They avoid all sorts of labor laws and make a huge profit off of crappy merchandise.

I was contacted by a local child (by contacted I mean that the kid rang my door bell in the same manner that Evan does) who attempted to hawk goods to me. I was already annoyed that this person who should know better was "ding dong ding dong ding donging" my door bell in an annoying manner and interrupting my dinner preparation. I was also very worried that her annoying abuse of my door bell was going to wake up Harry who had gone down for a rare dinner prep time nap so that I could make dinner in relative peace. I guess she felt I was being rude when I didn't even let here get her spiel out of her mouth and I promptly took her to task about her rude abuse of my door bell and then simply shut my door again praying that the baby did not wake up.

My wonderful tip is this: If you want to have even the slimmest hope of maybe selling me some of your cheap crap, do not abuse my doorbell by ringing it like a two year old would. Ring it once and if I don't answer even though all my windows are open and you can hear me preparing dinner act as if I am not home and GO AWAY already. There is no law that says I have to answer the door and I can choose to ignore the door bell when I am otherwise busy and not expecting a dear friend to drop by.

Part of a conversation I overheard while my husband was talking on the phone with his mother

H: What did you want to do for Thanksgiving this year? What did we do last year? I can't remember.

Me butting in: We had Harry!

H: Oh yeah, that's right we had Harry!

Wow!

At my husband's suggestion I am recording this for posterity. My husband actually mopped the kitchen floor. He forgot to put the chairs back, but I will take what I can get.

It is paranoia if there are really people out to get you?

My husband is a complete and utter wierdo sometimes, well actually a lot of the time. He is totally convinced that some how I have done something to one of our computer games so that it favors me over him. Chuzzle is a fun but simple puzzle game. It is best played when tired because if you over think moves you don't do as well. I of course am frequently tired so I tend to do well.

We have the full version on our computer which means that our high scores are recorded for all to see. I bet you can guess who owns the high score board. My husband can briefly get on it now and then but I am able to quickly stomp that score down. I think the competition makes me a better and more motivated player.

We brought the game with us when we were on vacation and my husband swears that he beat my high score on my parent's computer. That is the basis of his claim that I have tampered with the program. As if! First off I am in no way a computer programmer. I would not know my way around the code. It has tempted me to look online to see if there are cheat codes for this game. I would love to really mess with his paranoid mind.

Blah

I have been feeling out of sorts lately. I have been wanting to write an entertaining post but when I started one last night I got interrupted by my husband. He just had to have the computer (it was an hour before he normally goes to bed) to get some studying done for an advancement test that he was taking today. What totally floored me was his rude way of demanding the computer and his lack of preparation in general. We had just gotten back from a nice long vacation and he had not studied a bit while we were gone despite the fact that he had emailed himself the address of the test preparation link before we left. He had to wait until just before bed time to cram for the test.

Needless to say I am grumpy this morning and doubtful that he will pass the test due to his lack of preparation. This is not the first time he has done something like this and I find it very irritating that he makes his lack of preparation my fault. He will even try and blame his lack of study time on the kids, claiming that he HAS to take care of them. Oddly enough when I was getting dinner ready he was playing a computer game instead of watching the kids or studying. It kind makes you go hmmmm.

Five Years

Today is my fifth anniversary of my marriage to my husband. Time sure flies fast. It seems like yesterday that we were nervously waiting for the ceremony to begin.

It was a crazy day that started early. I was super excited and scared so I did not sleep well that night. The morning was quickly filled with a flurry of last minute things that needed to get done. The flowers needed to be picked up, my hair needed to be one, the tent for our reception needed to be set up in my parent's back yard. Before I knew it was time to leave for the ceremony.

I rode with my husband to be because he had the room in his car to carry my dress. We followed my parents in their van. On the freeway when we were almost there we saw them swerve around something. We did not have enough time to do the same and ended up hitting a metal object. Running over this object caused a flat tire. My husband, in his suit, had to change his tire on the side of the highway.

We were late getting to the Salt Lake Temple but they built in a lot of leeway time. My husband to be had gotten his shirt very filthy so he ended up having to borrow one. Once we got all dressed and ready we were ushered into a very beautiful waiting area while our family was settled in the sealing room. It was amazing looking around and realizing that everything had been done by hand.

Soon it was time for the ceremony. After the words were said that bound our lives together for eternity my mother started crying with joy. I started crying a bit too. It was kind of strange knowing that now I was not just me any more but I was now a wife.

We had a ton of pictures taken, our photographer was great. We sent the rest of the family on ahead to our wedding dinner because we wanted some extra shots of just us. That turned out to not have been the best decision because once we got into the car and on our way to the dinner we got caught in a horrible traffic jam. The freeway was backed up for miles. We tried getting off and taking the back roads but by the time we got out of it so much time had passed and it was no time for our reception.

I had decided to go cheap so our reception was in my parent's back yard. I had not actually even wanted one since neither of us had grown up in Utah but my husband's grandma had decided to schedule the family reunion on the same weekend as our wedding so that more family could come to it. He had a very odd assortment of relatives let me tell you but it was pretty fun. My husband's stepgrandfather who is now over 100 was there cracking everyone up.

It has been a frustrating, wonderful, frightening insane and loving five years. I am glad that I picked my husband as my partner. He is a very good and kind man and I am lucky to have him.

But will it bloom?

My husband got some orchids about a year ago. A coworker was giving away part of his collection and my husband got two plants, kind of on a whim. My husband is a huge plant lover so we have an odd collection of greenery. He just can't seem to pass up a new or different plant. I was doubtful about the orchids since I was not sure we had room for them or even a place with half way decent lighting.

My husband finally convinced me that we should put them in our room with an old fish tank acting as a bit of a terrium (fish tanks are another of our hobbies) to help keep the humidity up. I was very hesitant since I was not sure that there would be enough light and I just was not sure that he had the finesse that it took to even grow orchids in the first place. I had witnessed my mother kill many orchids before she found her groove with them so I was pretty sure that these would bite the dust.

I was looking at them today as I was packing up for my vacation and I noticed that they were putting up flower spikes. That showed me that my husband, despite my doubts, had the orchid touch. It is not difficult to just keep a plant alive, if they have the bare minimums they will cling on to life. The true test is if you can get the plant to bloom. That shows that the plant has the right amount of every thing and has the energy to reproduce. I am excited to see the blooms and I am happy that I was wrong about my husband's endeavor.

We finally have an oven!!!!

After two weeks without an oven we finally had it installed this morning. I am so glad that we can bake and cook stuff on the stove top!

On an unrelated note, my huband is just TODAY realizing that Mother's Day is on Sunday. Grrr!!!!! I have had his Father's Day present for months now and I managed to purchase it while I had both kids with me. Imagine that, having one or both kids with you does not prevent you from being able to go out to a store and buy something. Having kids does not automatically mean that you have to stay at home. We have extra car seats so he can't even use that as an excuse. I don't even expect all that much. He could have had Evan scribble on a piece of paper and then written "Happy Mother's Day" on it and I would have been happy.

5 Easy Steps to Pissing Off Your Wife

This post is a guide for men that may stumble across this blog and not know the finer points of how to piss off you wife. Every step that I talk about was done in one day to me by my very accomplished husband. He is the master of pissing his wife off. He needs a medal for it or something.

1. When your wife asks you to do the dishes because there are only three clean bottles giver her lip about it. Mention that you might like a day off now and then from doing chores. Never mind that doing the dishes is your only chore and the reason there are only three clean bottles is that you did not do the dishes YESTERDAY! Also ignore the fact that she never gets a break from her work.
2. When she is busy making a new and complex dinner recipe allow the baby to work himself into a frenzy of crying. Then proceed to ignore all of her advice on how to calm the baby. Bring the screaming child into the kitchen and complain that nothing is working. When she suggests taking him on a walk outside, walk five feet from the front door then come back and complain that the walk didn't work. Put the baby in his crib and then take the toddler on a walk so YOU don't have to hear the baby crying because it is giving YOU a headache.
3. Flick water onto your wife's face. After having such a stressful dinner she is sure to be in a fun and playful mood. Act surprised when she gets very mad at having to clean the water off of her glasses.
4. Allow the bath water to get very deep so that some must be drained out so that the baby will not drown in the tub. Complain that you were so busy with bathing the toddler that you could not possible pay attention to something as trivial as the depth of the water. Ignore the fact that only days earlier you scolded for being unable to multi task because she burnt part of dinner.
5. Throw a towel in her face because you are mad at her for being mad at you about the water. Then get all passive aggressive and state that since nothing you have done today meets with her approval then you will do nothing in future. Then tell her that she does nothing in the house and you do everything. Feel all superior because about once a month you clean the kitchen (ignoring the floor that has not been mopped in weeks) and you fold some of the laundry now and then. Ignore the fact that everything else that is needed to run the household is done by her.

I swear some days I want to run away and hide. I want him to be stuck at home with the kids all freaking day. I want him to know what it feels like to know that if you want to go anywhere you have to drag two children along. I want him to quit thinking that because he goes to work he is entitled to slack off when he gets home. I want him to stop acting like the kids keep him from his hobbies. He spends an awful lot of time on the computer for someone that "has to take care of the kids the second he gets home" I want him to listen to my suggestions about how to calm the baby. I swear the second that baby starts crying his brain shuts down.

My husband can be the most frustrating person alive. It seems to me that the days he does the sweetest things (like get me 1 gig of memory for my digital camera as a birthday gift) and then hours later he becomes the biggest ass ever.

Another 6 Years

Today my husband just reenlisted in the military for another six years. This pretty much guarantees that he will be going career since you either invest 20 years in the military or you get no retirement. My husband was very much on the fence about this pre Evan. He had this thought that there was this perfect job out there where no one would annoy him and the working position would be perfect.

Reality, in the form of Evan's heart defect, convinced him that it is best for the family that he stay in. Evan's heart defect means that insurance will be a huge problem for us. He could make more money on the outside but then we would have to pay insane premiums for bad coverage which would eat up any gains we would make in salary. We would also most likely be making too much money to qualify for state aide, which I would not even want my son on unless we really had to. I don't want him to be treated like a charity case.

We also get a nice bonus which will be saved for the day when we move to a state without insane housing prices. My husband longs for a house of his own, he has since we got married. He was a real estate agent pre-military but he is such a nice guy that he only managed to sell one house and it was to his sister. The funny thing is that house was only a few houses away from my parents so they keep in better contact with them that we do. He had us looking at houses when all we could qualify for was a $60, 000 loan. Even in a place without the insane prices of California (we were in Utah at the time) that much does not buy you a lot.

I think that all in all the military is a good place for our family right now. We will have to be moving around a lot, but I kind of like the thrill of moving to a place I have never seen before and finding housing in 10 days. I have met a lot of neat people and with the internet I do not have to loose contact with them. I love that this job provides enough money for the family that I am able to stay at home with the kids. Here's to another six years!!! Cheers!

Annoyances

I love my husband, I really do.

BUT Today he was driving me up the freaking wall. I work with the youth in my church and they were having a talent night tonight so of course I wanted to attend. I did not have a specific assignment at the activity since I have been out of commission for a while with Evan's cath and other crap that has been going on. I just wanted to get out of the damn house already. It has been over a month since I spent an evening out of the house minus the kids.

My husband hates it when I leave him alone with Harry. Why? Harry cries hysterically whenever my husband picks him up. This child will not even eat for anyone but me. If I have to be away Harry will grudgingly eat as little as he can get away with making known his displeasure the whole time.

The sad thing is that I really have been enabling this behavior because it is just easier to do it myself. I have been letting my husband guilt me into staying at home or at the very least taking the baby with me. This is just so frustrating because I want Harry to like his father. I also thought that the biggest advantage to bottle feeding would be the ability to have anyone feed him. This theory was completely shot to hell with my stubborn little man. I know that eventually he will grow out of this but right now it is making life very difficult.

After all the drama it ended up that Harry slept the entire time that I was gone. I am betting that the little bugger is going to be up at the crack of dawn now.