This Weekend - Celebrating the Past and Future

Last night, we celebrated my father-in-law and mother-in-law's 50th wedding anniversary.

It was really beautiful and inspiring. These two, they have been through so much together - married young, not having much money, war, four children, ups and downs, and so many years. And they made it work, and I am sure sometimes it was not as easy as they make it look. Such inspiration, for which I am so thankful!

I love this family!

Henry was so, so tired! He came for picture-duty and then went home with a sitter - he crashed in the car on the 5 minute drive home!

Amelia with her uncle Kent, who hung the moon in her eyes, and her Aunt Nicki, her sweet Godmother. Whenever I pine for Maine - which has been a LOT this hot, hot summer! - I think about how wonderful it is that my kids get to grow up with such great family nearby.

Sophia and her cousin Wilson - these two are joined at the hip and play so sweetly together. They will now be going to the same school (though different classes - Wilson is a year younger, so he'll be in Kindergarten) and are so excited about it.

There are hundreds and hundreds of pictures from last night, but I knew if I waited to review and edit them all, I would never get them posted. One of my favorites we took because my sister in law joked that every family should have a stuffy portrait around an old wingback chair!

Today, we visited a wonderful new church (not a new church, just new to us!) and school starts this week... I finally feel like we are on our way to moving forward from the sadness of losing our school/church. Really, I have been stuck in that sadness all summer and have dreaded finding a new church/starting a new school - like climbing up, up, up the ladder to a really scary water slide. I have had knots in my tummy and kept thinking about how I just want to go back DOWN where it's safe and normal.

This afternoon we had a church service with many of the families and staff from our old school, and it opened up a lot of the hurt again. Hearing Sophia sing all those songs, hearing the choir from the school reunited, I just felt once again everything that has been lost. I have that same pounding headache from crying too much that I had after the end-of-school service. Sophia asked me if her new school had a chapel, and we had a long talk about why her new school doesn't. But this afternoon's service was also healing, and I needed it before I could move forward. The first hymn today was the last hymn from that service in May - and it did feel like the wound was fresh again, but that bandaid needed to come off so the healing could really take place. And it did. The dread and the knots are gone.

I just know after this week I will be flying down that water slide, and the water will feel good - once we are IN the water and forced to stay afloat with back-to-school popsicle parties and packing lunches and homework and permission slips, my focus will shift back to my children, where it always should have been anways - seeing them learning and making new friends, it will heal those wounds. And finding a church that once again fills me with hope and not sadness, I know, every little thing's gonna be alright.

Amelia's School Program and Other News

It has been such a busy, busy week and weekend! This week, Davis and I will be taking our very first child-free vacation since our honeymoon - TEN YEARS AGO! It's our tenth anniversary on Thursday. To say I'm excited is a huge understatement. I've been a little distracted lately, as I drool over pictures of our hotel room and descriptions of breakfast at the B&B we'll be traveling to. I'm also a LOT nervous about the kids, who have never been away from both of us overnight (much less five nights!) BUT they will be in very, very good hands, and they are excited.

In so many ways, these ten years have flown by and they have been happy, happy years. I just cannot imagine my life without my best friend at my side, and I am thankful for him every day! I know these first years of building our home and our family will be years I look back on very fondly. But things have also been hard - law school, three kids in five years, four miscarriages, a child with medical needs and out of state surgeries, they have taken their toll. It's hard to find time to just reconnect and enjoy being a couple among all the other "stuff" going on. And so that is what we are doing next week - we will be in Boston for two days (a city Davis loves and I have never been to), enjoying a fancy hotel, where I intend to SLEEP IN and order room service! And then we are driving up to Maine, where we will spend three days at a little bed and breakfast on the coast. Lobster here I come! I will not be taking my laptop (and unless you have my children and are calling with an emergency, I also will not be answering my phone!) so I'll be taking a little blogging break. I can't wait to tell you all about our trip when we get back!

(Oh and if you're a crazy internet stalking burglar, we have an alarm and a housesitter, sorry!)

So, it's been busy as we pack and prepare. We've done lots of things I haven't taken pictures of, like I took Sophia to a fancy restaurant for spaghetti (her choice) as a thank you for being such a HUGE help on our trip to California. We've been playing this memory game at family night - I love it because the four of us (Davis, me, the girls) are really equally good at it, so it's fun.

AND since I wrote my post about Henry, he has really started walking! He still crawls if he's in a big hurry, but most of the time now he walks. YAY!

Yeah I know, no pants. Again.

Friday was Amelia's school program. It was SO sweet! I love her preschool, and I'm so sad this is her last year there. Henry will start there in a year and a half, just a couple of mornings a week. I love that place and will miss it until then!

Before the program started, Henry decided to test out the chairs

Here they come!

Unfortunately, we didn't have a good shot of Amelia - can you see her? She's on the right in the middle row

The program was great. I love their new music teacher, Miss Amy - she really taught the kids some great musical terms and concepts this year

Here is Amelia with her little friend Stella - I LOVE Stella, she is just the sweetest little girl! I went to law school with her dad and her mom is really cool too, and I'm looking forward to getting the girls together lots this summer

After the program, they had snack - but not before praying

Amelia made me laugh SO hard with her cupcake!

She was all business - she got that wrapper off and ate that cupcake in two bites. All the other kids were just starting theirs, and hers was GONE!

Here is Amelia with her teacher, Miss Martha

We love Miss Martha! I have myself all worked up already, knowing which teachers I want Henry to have there... isn't that bad? Luckily all the teachers are fabulous, so it's not a big deal if it doesn't work out that way.

Here is an artfully composed picture that Davis took ha ha!

To celebrate what a great job she did, I made Amelia's favorite dessert this weekend - strawberry shortcake! (it's my favorite too)

Is there anything happier than sprinkles? Not if you're a 4 or 5 (or 32) year old girl!

Sophia and I have been working on sight words, and I have some flash cards we run through sometimes at breakfast or during random times. Amelia was feeling left out, so now she tells us what the lowercase letters are, and Sophia tells me what the words are

The weather is GORGEOUS here this weekend!! I am packing and cleaning and doing laundry, but I keep running outside to check on the kids playing in the yard, and lingering a little to soak up the sun and the smell of freshly cut grass (not ours, unfortunately ha ha! But the neighbors have all been mowing) I wish I had the time to really work in the yard - it needs it SO badly, but there are eleventy billion other things that have taken priority lately, and it's a wreck.

Happy Sunday, friends!

Happy Anniversary to Us!

I forgot to get a sitter. I remembered, then I forgot again, then it was too late. So we all went out to dinner and had a fabulous time!

Somehow it seems like a perfect way to celebrate nine years of marriage.

The *sniff* Wedding

My baby brother got married today (actually, technically yesterday, since it's 12:45 a.m. *yawn*) I only bawled for a second, when I saw my little brother, his friend who I used to babysit and my even baby-er cousin standing up there in tuxes looking so handsome and grown up. The ceremony was beautiful and touching and upbeat and just made me smile from the inside out.

I love how weddings just reaffirm my commitment to stay married FOREVER!!

I love the girl he married and the wedding was perfect! Really, it was the most lovely wedding I've been to, other than my own. The girls were flower girls, and they did a great job. In fact, they did great all the way until we left the party at 11 p.m. - the latest they have ever stayed up!

It was great to catch up with a lot of family friends who I don't see very often, most of whom met Sophia and Amelia for the first time. The food was yuuuummy and just everything about the wedding was stunning.

Okay, I can't really put together many coherent thoughts (and I'm the only person over 21 at the wedding who did NOT drink!) so I'm just going to share a few pictures and go to sleep!

Amelia was in L-O-V-E with herself when I put her flower girl dress on her

Sophia practiced her paparazzi smile all day







YUM!





during picture time, Davis just chased the girls down over and over again, while they ran off all that pent up energy



Amelia was a little camera-obsessed... she would say "take a picture of me!"



and then she would want to take a picture of me



At the end of the night, Sophia started dancing... and I mean wild and wonderful jumping around dancing! She danced for TWO HOURS pretty much non-stop





Amelia, on the other hand, slowly became sleepy and just wanted to do this







which was FINE with me, because see these shoes? they made me want to sit down



Victor and Brittany - I love these two! Aren't they gorgeous?



Look at my brother's face - is he in love or what?!



and then, when we got home and we slipped Amelia's dress off of her, she did this



Good night!

Dating

I was going to avoid any more reeeeeeeally long word-heavy (picture poor) posts for a while, and this one has been sitting in my draft folder for a while... but I have a feeling it might be timely for someone out there so here it goes...

I don't really know a lot about being married, and eight years really isn't that long... but I do know that having young children, especially during stressful times (like, oh, being pregnant and taking the bar exam four days before your child has major surgery) can put a strain on your relationship. And I have just one piece of advice there: have a date night every month.

I remember the first date Davis and I went on after Amelia's birth. We hadn't really spent alone time together that year before, just because things were so busy and our focus was so much on Sophia and her surgeries. We were also broke from the trips to Texas, and I was pregnant and couldn't drink (so that hardly makes getting a sitter worth it ha!)

Anyway, so we went to a restaurant (Doe's - yum!) We sat down and ordered beer and steaks and potatoes. We had the conversation that we always had when we sat down for dinner at home (you know, what are we doing this weekend, did you pay the electric bill, how many times did Amelia poop that day...) and after fifteen minutes we were done. At home, 15 minutes is the end of dinner - that's when Sophia would start climbing out of her high chair and Amelia would start crying to be nursed and we would be shoveling the last of our food into our mouths while clearing the table and feeding the dogs and starting the bath water.

Well, at Doe's, not only was fifteen minutes not the end of dinner... our food hadn't even arrived! So we sat there, and we looked at each other, and we stared at the walls, and we started peeling the labels off our beer, and we both though what on earth did we ever used to talk about?!

If you had been sitting there at Doe's that night, and you had seen us, you would have felt really awkward - like you were watching some horrible first date between two people who had absolutely nothing in common. We kind of felt that way. We were both thinking I think maybe we should head home to check on the kids.

But we went downtown and had a few drinks and then took a long walk along the river, and slowly we started remembering what we used to talk about. We started remembering the things we had in common that had nothing to do with dirty diapers. We started reconnecting and laughing and just being together. I'll leave off the rest of what happened on that walk. But I will tell you that at the end of that date we were thinking we have to start going out more often!

Since then, we have tried really hard to have a date night every month. Occasionally we can't find a sitter and have a movie and popcorn date on the couch. When we're extra broke we might just pay a sitter and then go get some pizza and take a walk rather than a fancy dinner or a movie (when did movies become a really expensive date?!)

This month we're actually exchanging babysitting with some good friends of ours - one night I'm going to their house to babysit their kids while they go out, and then my friend is coming over to babysit our kids while Davis and I go out. Free babysitting!

It's hard sometimes, when I work all day, to give up time in the evenings with my girls. But I think it's important for them to see us taking the time to be together and making our marriage a priority. It's so interesting too, that I can notice a difference in our marriage - when we've gone too many weeks without a date, we are more snippy with each other and there are more misunderstandings, and we're generally not as happy together as when we make that time to be together. It's so worth it.



I love how date photos are always dorky and bad... my goal for our next date: get a decent picture of the two of us together!

Fours

On a gorgeous, sunny, cool May afternoon exactly eight years ago, in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, my husband at I got married after four years of dating. Four years later we had our first baby. I guess we like to do big things in four year cycles, which means we're in for something big this year ;)

Marriage, or, Why You Should Argue in Front of the Kids

I want to start off by saying this post is just my opinion... I know all of my posts are just my opinion, but this one in particular is not based on scripture, on any books I've read, or any great wisdom I've gleaned from another source, it's just what I think. It's also pretty personal, but I feel compelled to write it.

I want to start by saying that I LOVE my husband. I have spend more than a third of my life with him, and he is my rock. For all of its ups and downs and in-betweens, I truly believe that I have a fabulous marriage.

My parents never fought in front of my brother and me. Not once. I found out later that they never fought, period. Then, when I was eleven years old, my dad moved to another state and they got divorced. Sound sudden and a little surprising? It was. Apparently there were irreconcilable differences.

Now I'm not saying you should fight in front of your kids so that when you get divorced they won't be shocked. But I am going to make a case for arguing, and even arguing in front of your children. Please hear me out (or don't, if you don't want - that's the cool thing about blogs).

The end of our first year of marriage was very difficult, and I've discovered that it is for a lot of couples, and I have a theory about why. When you're dating, you try really hard to keep the relationship alive, because you know that if you don't, you'll break up. You also discuss and argue over differences, because you want to make sure your partner knows what's bothering you. You're laying down the ground-rules for them inhabiting a spot in your heart. Well, the day you get married, you get handed this piece of paper that says you can't break up now. And you think phew! After that, you (completely subconsciously) stop trying as hard. You don't try as hard to keep the relationship alive, because you know it can't die. You also stop discussing your differences, because you figure it doesn't matter - I mean, I'm not going to divorce him over the whole sock-on-the-floor issue, so why bring it up? We happily skated along like that our whole first year of marriage, and then suddenly, everything seemed to crash down. After just one year, we were developing "differences" (I imagine after 14 years, like with my parents, they may have become "irreconcilable"), we had "drifted apart" and "changed."

When I listen to friends of mine justify divorce, I am always dumbfounded by a few phrases that I hear over and over again...

He/she changed
Thank God (no really, I thank Him) I am a different person than I was when I was twenty-one! Can you imagine what the world would be like if everyone stayed exactly the same after their wedding day? If you and your spouse don't make a point of connecting in a meaningful way every little life-changing step of the way, how will your marriage survive something hugely life-changing? We're not supposed to stay the same. We grow, we realize we've made mistakes, we change. Just don't forget to take your spouse along for the ride. Remember the whole co-sleeping thing? I can't tell you how many arguments we've had, because I was adamant about keeping our bed just for us and not letting the kids in. Well I changed my mind. I'm not the same person I was two weeks ago.

We drifted apart
The whole point of marriage is to stay tethered together. You only drift if you allow yourself to drift.

There were irreconcilable differences
Here's really where the whole point of this post comes in... how "irreconcilable" are those differences if you've never tried to reconcile them? Hashing out your differences - big and small - is vital for maintaining that meaningful connection. If you bottle up the small things that bother you, resentment will build and grow into something much harder to manage. We all have our differences. It drives me crazy that my husband sucks at doing anything special for my birthday, or even remembering it! But you know what? If I trade him in for another guy who is really super great at birthday gifts, THAT guy will have faults too and we'll have our differences too. Two people together will always have differences, and if you trade in one marriage for another, you're just trading in one set of differences for another. Which brings me to another reason arguing is good...

Infidelity
My husband and I have dealt with infidelity on both sides before we were married, so I speak from experience. Please don't skip this paragraph because you are immune from the effects of infidelity - we must always guard against it, because when we let our guard down, we are most vulnerable to it. Even though with all of my heart I am determined to stay faithful to my husband, even though I know this is important enough to God that it is a Commandment, I know that temptation can creep in when we are not vigilant.

When you are not hashing things out with your spouse, when you've let small things turn into big resentment, you are opening a door to infidelity. Almost all affairs I have witnessed have started this way - a spouse is unhappy with his or her partner, and slowly they begin to discuss their grievances not with their spouse but with someone else. A coworker, a friend, a neighbor, a stranger. But instead of being productive, these discussions just help to reaffirm the resentment, and the person gets validation from this other person. You know where it goes from there. The point is, it could have been avoided if instead of confiding in another person, the unfaithful spouse had confided in his or her spouse. And by confide I do mean oh-my-gosh-you-are-absolutely-driving-me-to-the-edge-of-insanity!

Now, about the children... I cannot tell you how often I hear people tell me they would never argue in front of their children, like this is the new Golden Rule. Well, let me go completely against the grain and tell you - we argue in front of our children.

I think we do our children a disservice if we lead them to believe that marriage is easy, that when you marry the perfect person there are no disagreements. Despite the staggering divorce rate, I still encounter so many young people (okay I can't say that... I'm not old!) who still believe that when they marry their soul mate everything will be perfect forever and there will be no fights. Then when reality hits, they assume they married the wrong person and get divorced. No, marriage is hard work. Sometimes, it sucks. Sometimes, you just stay together to stay together and "ride it out" for a few days, weeks, months, until the storm passes. But for every obstacle you overcome, your marriage becomes stronger.

Arguing in front of your children shows them what a real marriage is like. And in the process, it can teach them a few other lessons.

I see disagreements between us as spiritual exercise. Both for me as a person, but also as a model for my children, learning to argue meaningfully and respectfully stretches and builds up a few character traits I need to exercise regularly. Honesty is so important to me (did you know Vera means "truth?") I believe honesty is a cornerstone of a good marriage, and is vital if differences are to be worked out. Certain behaviors - like name calling - are completely unproductive and should be banned (in front of the children or not). Let this be a lesson in self control. A huge part of productive arguing is listening, and acknowledging when you're wrong. By nature I'm horrible at this, but I use my marriage as a daily test to help me be more humble. Forgive and be compassionate.

Sometimes, my husband and I will argue over something with the children near. I might tell Sophia afterwards "I'm frustrated with Daddy right now, but you know I love him so much!" and a little while later she will witness that love when we kiss and make up. We apologize and come to some understanding. We do an extra kind thing for each other. We stay together.

I promise my kids are not going to grow up saying "my parents were at each other's throats all. the. time." But neither will they grow up thinking that our marriage was "perfect" in the sense that it was easy or we were somehow so compatible that we had no differences.

My husband and I have differences. If we don't try to reconcile those differences constantly, they will feel irreconcilable. We are two people, and therefore by nature will drift apart when we do not make an effort to stay together. We are changing every day. I am not the same person he married, and he is not the same person I married. Hopefully in a few years we won't be the same people we are today.

I leave you with this conversation between one of my best friends, A, and her former student, S, who was three years old:

A: are you okay? You look tired.
S: No, I couldn't sleep. My parents were yelling at each other all night long.
A: Oh, I'm sorry.
S: Yeah, Mommy was sitting at the computer. And then Daddy went and got her wallet, and he got out all of her baseball cards and cut them up with scissors.