13 Years

As of today I have been married 13 years. It has been 13 years full of surprise music mixes and funny things like this on my door-- 

How can you not love that?

Eleven Years of Bliss

Today Michael and I are celebrating eleven years of marital bliss, which is really quite an accomplishment when you consider I'm only twenty-six.

But you know its love when the guy you're dating brings an extra coat because he thinks that you'll forget yours and get cold, when the truth is that you actually chose not to bring it. (Sometimes a woman just has to make sacrifices for the sake of fashion.)

Then, four kids later, you get up in the morning and you're taking those kids to school, and you realize he put a bunch of brand new CDs in the car's CD player the night before, just for you. It's been a pretty good eleven years.

So how is my anniversary going so far? Well . . .

My day started off by reading an email from a friend who told me I am awesome--which is never a bad way to start a day. After taking the kids to school, I threatened to take University Health Care to Small Claims Court over a matter of five dollars. I am pleased to tell you that I can expect a check for those five dollars in my mailbox within three weeks.  To top it off, I just sold a pattern.

I'd say that so far today has been fantastic! Eleven years of marriage, kids at school, selling a pattern, a threatening phone call, five dollars in the mail, and being told I'm awesome all make for a pretty damn good start to the day. Now if I only had a Dr. Pepper . . . .

How Big Is Your Mama's Truck?

Michael's parents were stupid enough kind enough to volunteer to watch our kids for the weekend. Of course we took advantage of their stupidity kindness and took a belated anniversary trip.

On our trip we visited the Blue Moon Alpaca Ranch (you can read more about that here), stayed at an old farm house that is now a B&B, and had a steak at the Claim Jumper.

Shortly after we ordered our steaks three men were seated at the table next to us. They promptly began discussing the size of their girlfriend's mama's trucks. The size of their girlfriend's . . . mama's . . . trucks. They even had pictures.

When the waitress came to take their orders she asked guy number 1 where she knew him from. Guy number 2 said, "Maybe you fell out of my truck into his." "No," she said, "I did fall out of a guy's truck once, but it wasn't yours or his, it was my boyfriends. I got hurt pretty bad too."

After discovering they used to work at the same place several years ago guy number 1 ordered a 36 oz prime rib. I'm pretty sure Michael would have ordered this also but it wasn't on the menu. Guy number 2 ordered the teriyaki chicken. Maybe this is my naivete but don't you think a guy who orders a 36 oz steak would beat up a guy who ordered teriyaki chicken? Though, maybe if your girlfriend's mama has the biggest truck you can order teriyaki chicken and still be manly.

Anniversary Smanniversary

For our anniversary Michael had a painting made for me. It was done by Nate Ashby, and it is the coolest thing EVER.



Everything in the picture represents something memorable from our 10 years of marriage.

For example, we got engaged on Halloween so there is a mummy proposing to a witch. There may be more symbolism in that than I'd like to talk about.

There is a blue bird on one of the buildings because when Maddie was young we lived in the second story a dinky little apartment by Pioneer Park. A lot of homeless people sleep at this park and one night a drunk homeless man started wandering up and down the street yelling that he wanted everyone to call him Blue Bird. It was pretty hot that night so we didn't want to close our windows.

Needless to say the painting is pretty damn cool. You should come and see it in person.

10 Years Ago Today I Actually Talked Someone Into Marrying Me

That's right-- today is my ten year anniversary, and from the looks of this picture I got married when I was 17.

As a special anniversary present from the public school system my kids don't have school today. I decided to take this opportunity to sleep in until 8:15 when I heard my children say these two things--

Kai: "WOW! Look how many coco puffs I have! I think I need more!"

Chase: "I smell something STINKY!"

You'll be relieved to know that Kai hadn't filled his bowl with half a bag of coco puffs and no one was stinky. Apparently it just a ploy to get my lazy butt out of bed.

Happy Anniversary!