Hawaiian Holiday

In a little less than 24 hours, I’m getting on a plane with four amazing friends and flying to Hawaii. (WAHOO!) I’ve been meaning to write a quality post to share my excitement, but I’ve been too busy taking care of 297 other things that need to be done before I go. So, in lieu of a post from me, I’m just going to link to my friend Hilary’s blog. She did such a great job, there’s really no point in me putting forth the effort to write my own. The only rule is that if you go to Hil’s blog, no mocking the hair, the clothes, or the socks with sandals. :)

I’m super excited about this trip, but I’m a little freaked out about leaving the kids for a week. While I have complete confidence in Nate’s ability to be Mr. Mom, it still feels weird to just dump all of my responsibilities into his lap. Luckily, he already does a lot of the work around here, so I’m sure he can handle it. After a couple of training sessions on how to do the girls’ hair, I think he is fully equipped to take care of things on the home front while I am off playing with my friends.

All in a Day's Work

This is what my house looks like on Monday mornings (or in this case a Monday afternoon). Busy weekends and busy kids make for messy houses. I took these pictures as my motivational “before” shots. Things were looking considerably better an hour later, but still not quite up to par for “after” photos. Maybe tomorrow. :)

On the bright side, I could make up a cool I Spy game . . . I spy a half eaten banana, I spy last night’s pajamas, I spy a spool of thread . . . the list goes on and on.

*Heidi, do you feel better now? Hopefully this helps you get over your delusion that my house is always clean.

Blue and Gold Cake

Last week was Ben’s Blue and Gold Banquet. This year is the 100th birthday of the Boy Scouts, so they asked each boy to decorate a birthday cake to bring to the dinner. Ben got the idea for his design from the cover of Boy’s Life. I helped him make a pattern on the computer and transfer it to the cake after he had frosted it. Then we set him loose with the bag of blue frosting. I don’t know if I am more proud of him for decorating it, or proud of myself for letting him. It made me twitch just a little to watch him do it, but it turned out great. You could certainly tell which cakes were decorated by nine year old boys and which were decorated by their moms.

Happy Valentine's Day

My mom came and watched the kids on Friday so Nate and I could go out. Our usual date consists of going to dinner and then going shopping or to the temple. We wanted to break away from our routine for our anniversary date, so Nate asked his co-workers what they do on dates to get some fresh ideas. The response was unanimous . . . dinner and a movie. Every single time! That was no help. After finishing the movie room, we have no desire to spend $20 to watch a movie at a theater with 373 other people. Nate was creative and came up with a list of ideas for me to pick from . . . things like snowshoeing and trying out Flowrider. I was a bit worn out after a long week and wasn’t really up for that much effort. We ended up breaking way out of our routine by going to dinner and shopping in Salt Lake. :) We decided that we are okay with being boring old people that are in a dating rut. We love each other and have fun just hanging out. No need to be all fancy. Olive Garden, IKEA, and a night's worth of Seinfeld references are good enough for us.

The kids had loads of fun at their class parties and got tons of candy. Ben got his retainer on Wednesday and is already asking when he gets if off. It is hard to have a box full of Skittles and Laffy Taffy and not be able to eat it. I helped with Elise’s party on Thursday (but forgot to take any pictures while I was there) and Emily’s party on Friday. Abby is a trooper to tag along to parties where she doesn’t really get to join in the fun. At Elise's party, she was my Valentine Bingo assistant (she even helped a couple of kids who just really didn't get how to play the game.) She and Elise kept themselves entertained at Emily’s party by using their fingers to trace letters painted on the walls and playing with their friend Addy.

It was fun to have Valentine’s Day fall on a Sunday. I loved that Nate was home to make crepes for breakfast and that I had time to do some cute heart hairdos for the girls. After church, we had a candlelight dinner with the kids and let them open a couple of gifts. We gave them pajamas, a Scooby Doo DVD, and some treats. We watched the season premiere of The Amazing Race together and then let the kids have a slumber party while Nate and I learned how to play Stratego. Not so romantic, but pretty much a perfect day.

February 12, 1999 - Post Script

I’m not sure why I thought it would be cute to wear a lumberjack shirt on the day that I got engaged, but other than that I loved Nate’s post! I had forgotten some of those little details. I do remember talking to my fellow teachers in the faculty room at lunch on the 12th and telling them that I was getting a little bugged that Nate hadn’t really asked me yet. My friend told me that she was in a similar situation (20 years earlier) and decided to show her boyfriend how mad she was by pouting all night and being a complete jerk. Her proposal ended up with her future husband throwing a ring box in her lap in the parking lot of a grocery store and saying “Here!” Thankfully, I learned from her mistake and decided to be patient and pleasant. Good choice. I’m glad that we can just have good memories from that day. And, I’m glad that we both look better eleven years later (in my humble opinion).

February 12, 1999

In the tradition of Malinda’s friend Hilary, I thought I would jot down a few memories for posterity. Today is, after all, our “anniversary”. Not that Anniversary, but our engagement anniversary. Most people probably don’t really recognize, let alone celebrate the day they were engaged, but it has been a fun little tradition for us for the past ten years. Plus, it does take some pressure off for Valentine’s day since we mostly have our celebrating done by the time it rolls around.

Although Malinda made note of our anniversary two years ago, she didn’t really include any details. I guess that’s my job. Please be aware that this post is long and more detailed than most anybody else will care to read. You’ve been warned.

Where to start? Well, we first met on October 25^th of 1998 at a fireside for Malinda’s singles ward. She was in charge of arranging the speaker, and she asked my dad (who was teaching Seminary at North Ogden Jr. High at the time) if he would do it. Being an old bachelor (25 years old- practically ancient in Utah mormondom), yet not quite yet a menace to society, my dad was on the lookout for ways to get me married off. Knowing that Malinda was single, he thought it would be great to have me come along to the fireside so the two of us could meet. I reluctantly came, and I honestly don’t remember anything about that fireside, except for when my dad introduced me to Malinda during refreshments. She remembers thinking that I looked like an orthodontist (?) and that I was weird because I didn’t like caramel apples which they were serving for the refreshments. We didn’t say more than a few words to each other, but I did think that she was cute and I decided that I would try to ask her out. I shortly did ask her out, for that Saturday night to a Halloween party thrown by some friends. I had a great time on that date, and from that point on we were seeing each other pretty much on a daily basis.

After two short months I decided to really put our relationship to the test. I asked her to come with me on a road trip over the Christmas break. The purpose of this was twofold. First, to have my best friend, Sean, (who was married and living in Tucson, AZ), meet her and get his seal of approval. Second, even though we had seen each other for many hours every day over several weeks, I thought a road trip with us being together 24/7 for several days in a row would really help me decide if this was the girl for me.

I guess the success of the trip became apparent when we had a long conversation on the drive back to Utah. Although we decided that we weren’t making it officially “official”, the sum total of that long conversation was that we were definitely headed in the marriage direction.

We each took a couple more weeks thinking and praying before we made it “unofficially official” on January 16th, making the decision to get married. We agreed that at some point in the near future, it would become “officially official” when a ring was selected and a proposal was made.

We took the next couple of weeks to pick out a ring, and I guess I really did stretch out the waiting a bit. I wanted to surprise her with a proposal, but she was anticipating it so much that I had to employ several tricks to throw her off the trail. The week before I proposed, I actually showed up for a ‘normal date’ dressed in a suit and tie and told her that I wanted to take her someplace special for dinner. Then I went to use the bathroom and came out wearing jeans and a T-shirt. Cruel, I know. But, it had to be done. See, it was all part of the master plan, he he he he (evil laugh)!

The next weekend was Valentine’s day, and just before it, the 12^th. A Valentine’s day proposal just seemed to cheesy and predictable, so that was out of the question. We had already decided on getting married on June 12^th, so I figured that Friday the 12^th would be a great day to propose (and a Malinda-approved date, what with her preoccupation with even-numbered dates). Of course she was anticipating that I would propose on that day, so to avoid early detection, I had to come up with some good diversionary tactics. I told her that we were going to go out to eat with my parents. When she was at my parent’s house on Thursday night, I had my mom ask her where she wanted to go out to eat. After all, who would propose after going to an unromantic dinner with their parents, right? The next day I emailed her to ask whether she preferred for us to go to a movie or to play racquetball after dinner with my parents. By this time, she was feeling pretty blue that it wasn’t going to happen that night. She was a trooper and didn’t let her disappointment show when I went to pick her up that night. I brought some daisies in a vase, but made her even more disappointed when I told her that they weren’t for her.

I had concocted a plan to get her where I wanted to propose without her suspecting. I told her that my younger high-school age brother Aaron was answering Heidi for a dance, and that he asked me to help him get a scavenger hunt ready for her. We were to take the daisies with a note to the top of North Ogden Pass where she would find them later. When we got to the top and got out of the car, I took her over to a big stone monument and had her sit on top. I got down on my knee and told her that the flowers really were for her and that I wanted to marry her. She thought I was fooling her yet again, until I pulled out the ring box. I had to open it and put it on her finger for her to finally believe me.

A co-worker had given me the idea to get it all on film, since that’s what a friend’s husband had done when he proposed. I staked out a good spot from which to watch, created a little camouflaged dugout, and asked my friend Nolan and his wife Lori to wait there and take photos of the whole event.

After the proposal, I had some time to kill before our dinner plans were going to be ready, so I took her on a tour of important historical places from our relationship. I first took her to Leatham’s house in Liberty where we had our first date, then to the house in North Ogden where we first met that night of the fireside. After that, we stopped by the condo that I was in the process of buying (before I had even met her) that was still in the sheetrock stage of being finished. I had planned a fancy dinner with wine glasses and roses and take-out food from La Ferrovia (a favorite of ours). We had a great time, and finished the night off watching Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (one of Malinda’s favorite movies).

It’s hard to believe that it’s been eleven years since that night. Time is a funny thing. I remember that night like it was yesterday, and at the same time it seems a lifetime ago. I’m so glad that I asked this cute girl to marry me, and that she’s stuck with me through so many crazy and fun times since then.

Happy Anniversary, babe! I Love You!

Rabid Reader

I love these pictures of Ben. I’m not sure why it surprises me that he loves to read, but it does. It also makes me very happy. He came up the other day and told us that he had read every book on his bookshelf and needed something to read. I didn’t entirely believe him, so I looked. It was true. He really had read every stinking book on there. We decided that it might be a good time to introduce him to Harry Potter. Since we have the audiobook, we thought it would be fun for him to listen while he read. Nate would load up a couple of chapters for him on an MP3 player every night before bed and Ben would follow along in the book while he listened. He loved it! He finished the first two books and is now re-reading the first book (sans audio . . . we don’t want him to become addicted to that).

Our Harry Potter rule is that the kids have to read the books before they can see the movies. On Friday night, we let the girls have a slumber party in the yellow room so Ben could watch Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone with me and Nate. He kept saying “that isn’t how I pictured it in my imagination” and “this part is different than how it was in the book,” but he still loved it.

Chain Reaction

Emily started a bit of a chain reaction when she got her hair cut short. My niece loved Emily’s hair and got hers cut a couple of weeks later. Elise thought it was great when Emily got hers cut, but when her cousin/best friend/soul mate got hers done, Elise couldn’t wait to join the ranks of cute, short-haired girls. I talked her into waiting one month (aka one half inch) so it would be long enough to donate without having to cut it super short. Yesterday was the big day. I absolutely love her new look!

Piano and Folk Dancing

Emily had her first piano recital a couple of weeks ago. She played “Once There Was a Princess” and “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing.” It was Ben’s third recital. He played “Star Traveler” and “Our Detective Agency.” They were both more nervous than I have seen them get for anything. I think their nerves got to them because they both made a couple of mistakes in the songs that they had been playing flawlessly for weeks. Still, they did a fabulous job overall and we are super proud of them for working so hard.

Last Thursday the kids got to participate in a folk dancing performance at the high school. The PTA at their school pays for a professional dance instructor to come for a couple of weeks and teach the kids different dances from around the world. Emily’s class got to do a dance from Germany and Ben’s class did a Japanese dance. They both did a great job and had lots of fun. Ben isn’t known for being particularly coordinated, so I was especially impressed (aka shocked) that he was able to learn some quality dance moves.

XXXVII

We celebrated Nate’s 37th birthday yesterday. I didn’t take one picture the whole day. I’m not sure how that happened. Like most grownup birthdays, it was really just a typical day with a few extras thrown in. Nate left for work at 5:30 in the morning, Ben and I went to scouts after school, Nate helped the kids practice piano, and I took Elise to dance after dinner. In between all of that, we gave Nate some fun presents, ate apricot chicken for dinner, played some Lego Indiana Jones and Super Smash Bros. on the Wii, played the Planet Earth DVD game, and had cheesecake. Luckily Nate is easy to please and he had a great day.