Friday, February 19, 2016

A Walk Down Memory Lane - Part 1


If you've spent any amount of time on our blog lately, you would know that we are approaching 10 years of marriage later on this year.  Because of this milestone approaching, I've spent a lot of time thinking about our years together.  The good, the hard, the sad, the fun!  We've done a lot of living together!  I have decided to spend some time doing a series on our history together and what I can still remember of it!  

So we must start at the beginning, not at the very beginning, but the beginning of when we became "us".  

When I say we were two kids, I mean we were two kids.  We started our relationship at possibly the worst time ever and I would not recommend for anyone to start a relationship the summer before they start college.  But when it is meant to be, it is meant to be and nothing will stop fate I guess.

So, near the end of our senior year at our very small private school, we started becoming good friends. We started hanging out more and just getting to know each other.  I think while we may have been developing feelings for each other, we didn't really want to go there because we knew we were graduating soon and moving on with life. 

Well, things didn't quite work out that way.  On our grad night Peter kept debating whether or not to ask me out.  He finally worked up the nerve to ask, but then a bunch of classmates were around us so he backed down.  I'm not sure if he would have ever worked up the nerve to ask again, if it wasn't for our bus breaking down. We were stranded on the side of the road, waiting for a ride when he finally had ample time to ask me to be his girlfriend.  The whole conversation was a bit silly now, neither one of us wanting to admit our feelings first. But it ended with the words engraved inside my wedding band to this day "I'm interested" and us exiting the bus as a couple.

From there, we really just wanted to spend every moment of the summer together.  We knew that our time was limited but we tried not to think about that! We wanted to keep things as casual as possible because of this inevitable separation at the end of the summer, but within weeks we were dealing with very serious feelings for one another, ones we had never experienced before.  We suddenly found ourselves in a position where we couldn't imagine life without each other.  This was not the plan!

I remember spending many evenings together, wishing that we were older and more established in life so we could get married and be together.  But we were so young!  I had no idea what I was going to do with my life and Peter had four years of college ahead of him.  There was just no way we would make marriage work, even though that was all we wanted.  We were resigned to make our relationship work as best we could.  We knew it would be very difficult, but we also knew it was worth it!  We were two young kids, completely in love! If we had to wait 4 years to get married, we would wait 4 years to get married. 








I will never forget the end of the summer and our last day spent together.  We didn't want it to end.  I couldn't imagine him being away.  We tried to avoid the inevitable end of the evening.  After a fun day spent at the beach just hanging out and sitting in the sand, dreaming about our future, I burst into tears at dinner.  It was just too hard to know the goodbye was coming.  We stayed out as late as we could before that inevitable last hug and kiss that was supposed to last for the next several months. 

The first days of him being gone were so hard.  I felt depressed without him there and didn't know how we were going to survive without seeing each other.  But before long we got into a routine.  I started working and saving money, he studied during the day, and washed dishes in the evening to save up money for a ring. We were going to make this work.  We spent hours upon hours on the phone together until we'd literally fall asleep talking to each other.  We grew a lot during that time.  We got to know each other really well in a relatively short amount of time.  I went up to visit him in October, he came home for Thanksgiving and permanently at Christmas.  The distance was just too much for us, and our hearts knew what they knew.  As crazy as the dream seemed to others, we had to get married!  We would work as hard as we needed to make all the other details work, the only thing we knew is that we needed to face life together! 




Thursday, February 18, 2016

Valentine's Weekend

We had a really great Valentine's Weekend this year!  After a wonderful dinner out the night before just Peter and I, we wanted to spend the day celebrating with the kids. we had goodies galore!  


Malachi really wanted to help fix the dinner, so he helped make yummy spaghetti


Salad


And warm bread! 


Sabrina wanted to help set the table! 


It was a yummy and fun dinner! 




Then we asked the kids what they would like to do.  First they wanted to play duck, duck, goose 



Even little miss gave it a try! 



Then it was time for a dance party! 


LB is pretty good at that too! 




Then we were able to give DateBox a try for the first time. I'm a sucker for a good subscription box and love the concept of a date night planned for us!  We added a few items to the box ourselves, but it was the perfect start to a date night. Including a fun romantic spotify list and a paid online massage course that was also helpful! It was fun and I look forward to a new date next month! 



Wednesday, February 17, 2016

Eli's Birthday Celebration


There's something fun about the kids getting older, even if it definitely feels bittersweet.  This year we had a fun day planned with our birthday boy.  Starting off with a trip to Portland for some super yummy and free birthday donuts!  


Then a trip to OMSI for a bit to play and discover! 





Then the trip to the toy store, which we'd been hearing all about Minecraft legos for weeks.


He left pretty darn happy! 


Some yummy pizza lunch! 


And a stop for free birthday ice cream! 




And of course no birthday would be complete without some cake and candles and singing! 




A few days later and it was party time!  With of course, a Minecraft theme! 



                                                                    He was so excited!






We had a wonderful time celebrating a special 5th birthday boy!  Now if only we can get the next 5 years to go a bit slower!  





Monday, February 15, 2016

1st Basketball Season

We just wrapped up Malachi's first season of basketball.  I was excited to see this as an option for a kindergartner, but as basketball didn't start when I was a kid until 3rd grade, I was really wondering how in the world they were going to figure out how to play it at this age.  Well, I will say, at this age it is a bit rough!  The season was broken up into two parts. The first half being Saturday morning round robin style practice sessions, followed by the second half of the season being split up into teams and playing games.  Malachi started a bit timid and hadn't the first clue on how to even dribble a ball, but after weeks of hearing a ball bounce around our house in practice, he was getting the hang of it by the end of the season and was really starting to enjoy the game! 








Not gonna lie, it was a bit hard to watch this year, but I can see a clear advantage to getting the basic concepts figured out and I am sure by the time they are in 3rd grade, where I just started to learn, they'll have a really good understanding and be better for it!  On to the next season - full of swimming lessons for the boys!  

Sunday, February 14, 2016

Catching Up On The Year!

This first part of the year has passed as a bit of blir. Maybe because our house has been battling the cold from hell for the first 5 weeks of the year.  We're finally digging out of the haze and I've been able to scrape myself off the couch!  So there's going to be a lot of updates coming your way!  So when we've not been laying around and coughing coughing coughing, here's a bit of what we've been up to!  


I don't know what it is about sleeping pictures with the kids, but I love to watch them sleep!  This was a night they decided to steal our bed! 



The kids are still loving Taekwondo and have recently gotten their green belts!



This is a big throw back, to New Years Eve, where we let the kids test their endurance and see if they could make it all the way to midnight.  We filled them up with as much junk food as we could to try and let them ride the sugar high all night long. 

But alas, most of the children could not make it.  Our sweet princess was quite the party animal though and made it to ring in the New Year, even when her brothers looked like this on the couch:



Our little knight obsessed boy loved his knight castle he got for Christmas! 


Sweet baby girl is growing way too fast!  

Silly Princess


He's seriously the best big brother a kid could ever ask for! He loves all his siblings so well! 


and just in general, he's a sweetheart!


And we've got a pretty good big sister too! 


The sickness all started while daddy was working ridiculously long hours.  He was exhausted by the end of it and the kids missed him a lot! (the Mr is gonna LOVE that I shared this one with the blog world)!


Along with the 5 week long (and counting) cold bug, someone also got a really yucky and scary tummy bug. She didn't move an inch for almost 2 days.  





But when the silly girl returned, we knew she was on the mend! 


I just love these boys! 


Spring has sprung a little early, and the kids wanted to try their hand at running with me.  Eli made it 3/4 of a mile! 


Bina made it 1/4 mile


And this dude made it 2 miles easy at a pretty decent pace!  Excited to run more with him this spring! 


The onset of spring means more time spent outside!  The kids have loved some bike time! Eli got a brand spanking new bike for his birthday that he's enjoyed learning on! 


A princess and her big wheel! 


And this bike fit him last summer, but apparently he's grown a little since then! 



We've also busied ourselves trying to get some winter indoor projects done before we hit the outside projects again here soon.  The kids room is getting the most attention. Bina has spent the majority of the last year sleeping on the floor in "brudders" room.  The room was pretty cluttered and full with their beds and her on the floor.  So we decided it was time for bunk beds with a trundle so she at least had a bed to sleep on!  Their room also is on the end of a long circuit for the furnace so their room is always cold in the winter and hot in the summer.  Unfortunately there is no solution when it comes to the actual furnace, but we did decide to replace their windows and see if that makes a difference.  I'm hopeful it will help!  They also finally got stripes on their magnetic road and trim!  Yes, so many uncompleted projects from when we bought this place that we're finally getting around to.  But they love their new/old room! 


And just in case she ever does decide to sleep in her room, the toddler bed is down and she has a big girl bed now, which she's proud of even if she won't use it! 



So that's what we've been up to. More updates to come!