And God Blessed My Broken Road…

Because it led me straight to him.

Today is my fourth wedding anniversary with my Dear Husband.  I found these questions on Legally Married recently and thought it would be a great way to commemorate our celebration. We’ll be going out to dinner and then of course, going to bed early so I can get up at the crack of dawn to watch another wedding – this one of a royal nature.

♥ How long have you been together?

We started dating in October, 2005. So we are going on six years of togetherness.

♥ How long did you know each other before you started dating?

We met briefly in our first year of college but lost touch until our senior year. We ran into each other and just let fate take it from there.

♥ How old are each of you?

I am 27 and he is 26, about to turn 27. I’m ten months older than him and he never lets me forget it.

♥ Whose siblings do/did you see the most?

We live in the same city as his immediate family, so we see them a fair amount. Mine lives in a different state and see him far less often.

♥ Do you have any children together?

With him in law school, I can’t imagine that I would ever find the time! Besides, we’re having fun – we’ll be able to settle down with kids soon.

♥ What about pets?

I want a dog but our apartment complex won’t allow them. Which is probably good, because I can’t keep a plant alive. We have to work up to those kids from the previous question.

♥ Which situation is the hardest on you as a couple?

I think moving in together and learning how to be a couple is hard enough. Add in law school and it’s just crazy.

♥ Did you go to the same school?

We met in college.

♥ Are you from the same home town?

Technically, yes. But he lived in a suburb and I was in a way different one. And then I moved to Texas in elementary school. So yes and no.

♥ Who is the most sensitive?

Me. By far.

♥ Where do you eat out most as a couple?

We both love Penn Station and the Kolache Factory. The latter usually on a Saturday morning of errands. Mmmm.

♥ Where is the furthest you two have traveled together as a couple?

He surprised me with a trip to Paris for our honeymoon. It was wonderful.

This was the view from our hotel room. It makes me smile just looking at it. :)

♥ Who has the worst temper?

Me, again by far. He’s better at controlling his emotions than I am.

♥ Who does the cooking?

We haven’t been doing a lot of cooking lately. But usually it’s me who doesn’t want to eat out again, so I’ll end up cooking something to sustain ourselves.

♥ Who is more social?

I think it kind of depends. He really enjoys going out with his law school friends now, but sometimes, I just want to be at home on the couch. But sometimes I’m just a social butterfly doing a million different things and loving it.

♥ Who is the neat-freak?

That’s me, definitely. I wish he would catch that bug!

♥ Who is the more stubborn?

I think we both would have to fight for that title. We’re both pretty strong with our opinions.

♥ Who hogs the bed?

He would claim it was me – but I disagree. He steals the covers.

♥ Who wakes up earlier?

I wake up when my alarm goes off – and usually hate it no matter when it is. He’s the same way.

♥ Where was your first date?

There’s a small Mexican restaurant on campus at our college and we ended up there for dinner. But it wasn’t a date when we started out. It became one. Sort of.

♥ Who has the bigger family?

For immediate family, we both have the one brother. But extended family, he wins by leaps and bounds. I think there are 15 first cousins and 8 of the next generation? Lots of kids!

♥ Do you get flowers often?
I adore flowers but usually only get them on Valentine’s Day.

 

♥ How do you spend the holidays?

Splitting them up between families is so difficult. With Dad gone now, we’ve just been playing it by ear to see how to manage that. It’s been really hard.

♥ How long did it take to get serious?

Well, my mother doesn’t like to hear this, but we started dating in October and were looking at rings in December. It happened quickly but I guess we just knew, as they say.

♥ Who does the laundry?

I go through clothes a bit more quickly than he does, so I end up doing most of the laundry. A few months ago, we split the loads into his and hers and he’s supposed to take care of his. But, I always end up throwing some t-shirts and boxers in with my things. It’s the nice wifely thing to do – I can’t let him have nothing to wear!

~~~~~~~~~~~~

I absolutely adore my dear husband. I can’t imagine the last four years of my life without him. Standing there on our wedding day in a big poofy marshmallow of a dress, I was the happiest woman on earth. Still am. :)

An Easter Weekend in Pictures

I have been such a poor blogger lately. Please forgive me. I offer up pictures from the crazy weekend we had!

Friday Night – Friend’s Birthday Celebration

Bar food is great, but fried green beans with ranch is just the top.

Gotta love amaretto sours. The best.

Saturday – Baseball Game and Easter Fire

It was Red Schoendienst commemorative statue night!

 

I was fascinated by how many people they brought in to get the tarp on the field when it started raining. It was so neat to see! We were on a rain delay for a bit but then had to leave to get to St. Charles for the Easter fire. But we did a picture of us…

My FIL asked hubs to help build a fire for the Easter Vigil services. Due to the rain, we had to go to Plan B: a fire pit. Still a great fire, but not as impressive as the inferno they’ve done in the past, or so I’ve been told.

  

We had to wait until it was all out and then hubs and BIL helped dispose of the embers. 

Sunday – Easter with LOTS of family; BIL’s birthday

We had brunch with my mother-in-law and father-in-law, plus brother-in-law and his girlfriend. Then, Hubs’ first cousin was there with her family (husband and three kids). Of course, we added in cousin’s huband’s mother and stepfather. Then there was cousin’s husband’s sister and her three kids. Oh and cousin’s husband’s stepfather also had his niece in town. So there were 19 of us. Yeah.

Don’t get between me and my chocolate bunny. For reals.

 

The kids got a big basket – gotta love it.

MIL with little Moose, our godson. He has definitely gone from toddler to little boy.

 

Scrappy really enjoyed the chocolate fountain.

 

Then again, so did I. :) That’s my plate!

We clean up pretty good, I think!

MIL made her niece (hubs’ cousin) a scrapbook of old family photos that she had found. We spent a bit of Saturday shopping for the paper and embellishments. Makes me hope I’ll have more time to continue my scrapbooking!

 

BIL and his adorable girlfriend.

After a few hours of rest after brunch, we were eating again for BIL’s birthday. But first, he had to ride the saddle while we all “yihaa-ed” at him. I love Texas Roadhouse. :)

We had lots of peanuts, and what else did we need? Cake. Lots of ice cream cake. :) BIL was a little intimidated by all those candles.

Husband also picked out an awesome card – that didn’t really open! Hehe.

 

It was an absolutely wonderful, hysterical, exhausting weekend.

Why Does Working Out Hurt?

On the way home from work tonight, I decided I was going to hit up the gym for the first time (again) of the Couch to 5K program. After all, it’s part of my 101 in 1001 list.  When I mentioned it to Husband at dinner, he said to wait for him and he’d go with me!

Spending time together with my dear husband just makes me smile, whether it’s sitting at the kitchen table working on our separate projects, working out, or snuggling on the couch watching tv. I love it. :)

We worked out to our Cto5K program on our own little treadmills – and I was rocking out to the playlist he made me a few days ago. Let’s just say that running to NKOTB’s “Right Stuff” was awesome to the max.

But walking back from the gym in the rain, with lighting in the distance and then walking up the stairs, I think I might regret this whole working out thing. It’s gonna suck when I wake up tomorrow morning.

Not Exactly a Thrifty Weekend

Over the weekend, a work friend who has become a real life friend invited me to a Girls Day Out Fashion Show. She had two friends, one from volunteering at my work and another one from college, who were very artistic folks. One is a jewelry maker and one is a seamstress. She put the two of them together for a fun fashion show on Saturday!

Holly of Au Naturale Jewelry had her jewelry out for display before the show started, in case we wanted to browse. Well, I did more than browse!

I fell in love with this necklace and could NOT pass it up.

So you can see the whole outfit. :) It works perfectly!

A bit more detail – it’s uncut citrine with brown beads in between and a great wood pendant.

Holly also has an Etsy site as well – you can find it here.

The seamstress, Allison, also has an Etsy shop called Blue Silk Rose. She has created some awesome pieces, but I didn’t get pictures of them. Since she started out in the costume shop of the theatre, she is a pro at period pieces. They had displayed one of her civil war dresses and a Shakespeare-era dress, with all the different layers and pieces that go along with both of those garments. Allison told me it took 100 hours of work to create everything you see on a Civil War dress – and 50 hours to create the things you don’t see! So that would be the corset, the pantaloons and the hoop skirt and all the rest. I was SO impressed.

But more than that, she’s starting to do modern clothes as well. She had some great dresses that can be made to order – and for less than what you’d find at a store! I think I may have to request one of her dresses for a present in the future. They were SO pretty but I had already spent my money on a necklace. :)

If you’re looking for a fun new shop to check out, please visit their shops! They are sweet ladies and would love custom orders – or take something straight from their shop. I vouch for both of ‘em!

[I was not compensated for this post. I just like her stuff!]

Facebook – The Final Frontier

I feel like I have a split personality on Facebook.

On the one hand, I use it to keep in touch with friends across the country, family across the world and my husband in the next room. However, I also use it for business reasons. There are so many of my contacts from work on Facebook, both their personal profiles whom I’m friended and the business pages that they run.

With over 560 friends (wow, that sounds super conceited, doesn’t it?) and probably 100 fan pages, it’s gotten to be too much to keep up. I created privacy lists to make the division between work and personal a bit more clear but there are somethings I’m not sure how to draw that line for.

Do you show other people pictures from the weekend? Your status posts? What about fun videos you find on YouTube?

For most people at work, I feel like I draw that line on the more conservative side, so I don’t insult anyone with my random videos or whatnot. But there are some people in the office who show everyone everything they do on Facebook (I think).

How do you keep that division between work and your personal life on Facebook? Because I need some serious help in that department.

Nannies – Not Just Mary Poppins Any More

I was listening to my favorite non-Disney podcast, Stuff Mom Never Told You the other day, as I’m wont to do. Sometimes, I can’t listen to NPR anymore in one day, and I turn to the iPod.

This particular episode I heard that day dealt with the guilt that women have when hiring nannies to take care of their children and why that is.

I’ve spoken with Husband about it and I’m totally up for hiring a nanny. Or an au pair in order to teach the kid a different language.

I mean, how else am I going to be an awesome wedding planner with lots of client meetings to attend every day? Someone’s gotta take care of those kiddos at home, right?

When I was growing up, we had a nanny take care of me and my brother in every city we lived in. The first move I can remember, when I was in third grade, was awful because we had to “break up” with our nanny. We were close with all of our nannies, no matter how long they had been with us. Dad retired when I was in high school and that ended the long line of nannies – because he was able to be a stay-home dad, which was awesome! I don’t expect Husband will want to do that, though. ;)

But the podcast talked about the guilt that moms have when they leave the children with another person to take care of. I guess this is a different type of guilt than dropping off your kid at daycare. The connection between children and a nanny is very close, because you spend so much time with them! 

Well, I’m pretty sure that my mom DOES NOT have that guilt for hiring nannies to help take care of us while she and dad were at the office. They both had awesome jobs that they LOVED – and while they loved us beyond belief, they wanted to be fulfilled in other ways, and that includes their job.

I don’t understand why women have to chose between a career and their children – there’s a way that you can balance those things, I think.

But remind me of that when I have that first kid of ours. :)

The Master of the Mix Tape

My husband is a master of the mix tape. I mean, seriously, with his iTunes catalog he makes some amazing lists of songs.

I’ve been bugging him for MONTHS to create another mix for me. Back in the day, when we first started dating, one of the first things he gave me [I think it might have been the FIRST present of our dating career] a fabulous mix tape – entitled “Jess in Time.” I still have all those songs on my iTunes list. I love them. Just the fact that he took the time to create a mix just for me, that was the best.

So this afternoon, he came bounding downstairs with a CD in his hand and he passed it to me saying, HERE. He had put together a great mix tape for me!

Here are the songs…

• Alejandro - Lady Gaga   
• Break My Stride - Mathew Wilder
• C'est La Vie - B*Witched
• California Girls - Katy Perry
• Dynamite - Taio Cruz
• F**k You - Cee Lo Greene
• Fireflies - Owl City
• Home - Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros
• Magic - B.o.B.
• Right Stuff - New Kids on the Block
• Telephone - Lady Gaga
• The Warrior - Pat Benatar

So yeah, I’ve been blaring the CD all afternoon.

I have the best husband.

Sometimes, I Don’t Like it When the Phone Rings

I hate bad news phone calls. I’ve received WAY too many of them over the past two years.

First, my aunt has a stroke and I drive to KC the next day to do nothing but sit in the ICU waiting room with my only cousin on that side of the family, his new wife of four months and my mom. Yeah, I didn’t do a whole lot but the cousin really appreciated that I was there. It made me feel like I was doing something.

Then, last June, when I was making coffee for a meeting, I get the phone call that just changed everything. When I make coffee now, every once in a while, I get a little bit weepy because it reminds me of that morning.

When Mom called me on Monday night, I didn’t think it was going to be another one of those phone calls. But it was. She freaked me out – but let me just say that everyone is ok and no one died! But Mom did have a procedure in Tulsa of all places.

She had been visiting an old friend in Arizona over the weekend. Monday afternoon, she was on a flight back home and had just been served her drink. Apparently, there was something in her juice. She swallowed it. And it got stuck.

After consulting with the flight attendants, they determined that she could make it on to Tulsa, and wouldn’t have to make an emergency landing. After all, she could still breathe – whatever it is was just lodged in her throat and hurting like hell. She could feel it in her esophagus every time she took a breath.

When they landed in Tulsa, the flight attendants escorted the EMTs on to the plane to examine her. They suggested she go to the hospital and deal with that thing. Obviously. I could have told you that one!

At the hospital, they gave her endoscopy to see what she swallowed. You won’t even believe it.

It was a triangular piece of plastic about an inch wide, they said. Like the corner of a plastic clamshell package or something similar.

It could have been so much worse. It could have torn her esophagus. It could have lodged in a way that prevented her from breathing. It could have gotten past her stomach and torn something else.

It wasn’t, though. She was kept overnight and then released to finish her trip home. She’s ok, if albeit with a sore throat.

But you know what? She was writing thank you notes for funeral flowers as she was flying home that day. She was thinking about my dad. And he was with her. He’s our guardian angel now and he’s looking out for us, no matter where we are or what we’re doing. He’s with us no matter what.

And on Monday afternoon, on a flight home, I’m so glad he was there with Mom.

Saturday Night in the City

I’ve been awfully quiet here the past few days – because I’ve been crazy busy!

Last Friday night was a law school future spouse’s bachelorette party. The girls and I had a great time out on the town, visiting lots of bars and giggling as the bride-to-be did lots of dares. Bachelorette parties always draw lots of attention and ours was no exception. I would post pictures here but then I’d have to kill you… and change my blog identity. Some of those girls are serious party gals! Also, people like my cousins and mother and mother-in-law read this blog – and I’m just not going to subject them to that. Ick.

But Saturday night takes the cake for the best night we’ve had in a LONG time – we attended the Bob Costas benefit featuring Conan O’Brian and Faith Hill.

Oh. My. Goodness.

It was the best night ever.

First, we started off at the Scottish Arms with two couples that we absolutely love hanging out with. One of the gentlemen with us had invited us along, because he got the tickets from his dad. Boy, were we in for a treat and we didn’t even know it!

And then we went to the Fox for the big event.

Conan O’Brian was hysterical, of course. He tailored his set to St. Louis and it was great.

But the lady in the picture above – Faith Hill? Brought down the house. Seriously, I didn’t realize how many of her songs I knew every single word to! Every new song she started had me bouncing in my seat, singing along, and even crying.

Especially this one - “Wild One”. Do you remember that one?

She's a wild one
With an angel's face
She's a woman-child
In a state of grace
When she was 3 years old on her daddy's knee
He said you can be anything you want to be
She's a wild one
Runnin' free

Faith Hill was one of Dad’s favorites – along with Shania Twain. This song would always remind me of him, even before. Because he told me I could do anything I wanted. So when Faith started singing this song in St. Louis, I was a little weepy in my plush Fox Theatre seat. But that’s ok – because music is supposed to touch the soul.

We had a great time that night, with my husband and our friends. Being out and listening to great songs and a funny comedian is an awesome Saturday night. :)

Great way to start a Thursday…

Yesterday, I came into the office and found these on my desk:

While picking up jelly beans for the communal candy bowl, my boss saw these pretty tulips and thought they looked like me. Isn’t that sweet? When I asked her why, she said that I had been working like a crazy person and deserved a treat.

It’s nice to be loved at the office!