Magical Healing Properties

That's what my old blanket has. Every time Elsie bonks or gets an owie, it needs a kiss. But for the really hard bonks and owies, it needs a kiss and the blanket. She'll sit on the couch and hold her owie under the blanket and it makes it all better.

"Elsie hurt. I need bacon. Need orange bacon on the couch. There, all better."

I was on such a roll

And then we had the great blogger outage of 2011, and I got off track. It's amazing how if I let myself miss one day how much easier it is to miss the next day. My blog posts are hardly inspired, but posting everyday helps me keep up on what's going on here and helps me journal our adventures, no matter how small they are. It also helps me feel a little more connected to family. It's a little lonely being so far away from everyone, but I know they read it even if they don't say anything. :)
I've been trying to find more things to do all day while Alan is at work. I've been trying to get Elsie to be more self-entertained with things like coloring and projects so I have a little time to myself. I've caught up on my scrapbook to were I printed out pictures last, which sadly was August of 2009. Once I sort through and print out more I'll be able to catch up. I've also been working a lot on menu planning and cooking really yummy dinners. But I still feel like there are more hours in the day then I have things to do. Yeah, there are always things like housework and laundry that need to be done, but those aren't really all that exciting. What do you do to fill the long hours? What other things can I be doing to better myself or to just have fun with? I can only read Max and Ruby so many times to Elsie before I go crazy...

Sleep problems

There is not enough sleep to go around these days. Surprisingly enough, it's not Alice that's giving us the problem. Elsie has been having a rough time sleeping, and it's taking it's toll on me and Alan. She has been having a hard time falling asleep, and so she keeps getting up and coming out of her room. Our new apartment has french door handles, so our regular child proof doorknob covers don't work. She hasn't been getting to sleep until 8:30, 9, or even 9:30 some nights. To make matters worse, she's been waking up earlier and earlier. It started out getting up at 6am, but yesterday she woke up at 4am and wouldn't go back to sleep. This morning she was up at 3:30am and it took her an hour or so to get back to bed. She might have slept in a little more this morning, but around 6am Alice (my champion sleeper) woke up crying because her little leg got caught in the crib bars. Poor kid. There was no going back to sleep after that.

Elsie is driving me nuts with this, and I don't know how to fix it. Is her nap too late in the day and so she's not tired at bed time? Is it time to give up her nap altogether? Do we just need another lock on the door so she can't come out and she'll give up and go to sleep? I still find it amazing that my 3 months old sleeps so much better than my 2 year old...

The Rest of the Story...

Sarah texted me yesterday while I was at work and said, “So, I know you’re going to hate me for asking…” I had to wait in suspense for the next text to know what I was going to hate. She asked me to write “our how we met/started dating story” without looking at her version—I cheated; I read hers.

I got home from my mission in June of 2007. Two months later I moved back down to Provo to go to BYU. I did one year at BYU before my mission and lived in the dorms. All of us that were in the dorms together left on our missions within a few months of each other and were all getting home around the same time. A bunch of us had some apartments reserved so that we could all live together at the Riv. When I went to sign my contract, the Riv had already given several of my group’s reserved rooms to other people. I—as well as several other guys—ended up having to find an apartment elsewhere. The apartment that I was supposed to be in was directly across from Sarah's apartment, but even though I had to find another place to live it all worked out in the end.

I had been in my apartment for about a week just working when several of the other dorm guys started moving in to the apartment that we were all supposed to be in. I left work early to go meet up with the other guys since we hadn't seen each other for over two years. One of the guys, Lee, had served in Spain and was showing me a really old Spanish Hymnbook that he had gotten on his mission. We walked out of the bedroom singing one of the Spanish hymns. (At this point it’s important to note that in many missions missionaries joke that the more adversity a missionary faces—getting spit on, hit with rocks, etc—and the more he tracts in the rain, the hotter his future wife will be. You get “wife points.”) Lee and I walked out and *BAM* there was Sarah and all of those days knocking in the rain and racking up wife points paid off ;-)

5 ½ weeks later we were engaged. 12 weeks after that we were married. In all it was 4 months and 1 day from the day we met that we were sealed in the Portland temple. During those 4 months the only days that we weren’t together were between Sarah driving home for Christmas and me getting there with my family to get ready or the wedding. We spent a lot of time together. We got trapped in the sprinklers trying to have a bonfire up the canyon. Sarah smacked another girl in the head with a racquetball the first time I took her to play. Her Bishop caught us kissing in Sarah’s apartment when he walked out of the building across the street and had a straight view into her kitchen; he then called her over on Sunday to ask her about me. We walked A LOT—I used to walk to the nursing home where Sarah worked to pick her up from her shift and walk her home. We often stopped at Denny’s or The Olive Garden to eat while walking back from the nursing home. Sarah got in an accident and smashed in the front of our car while she was in Oregon for Christmas. She called me while I was on the road with my family crying that she’d crashed our car and was so worried that I would be mad at her—it was a crappy car in the first place; I paid more for her ring than we ultimately were able to sell that car for (not that we didn’t appreciate the car. It was wonderful to have until we could afford something better…). We met, had our first kiss, and got engaged at the Riviera apartments. Everyone thought—and some told us—that we were crazy.

It was an exciting 4 months. It’s been an exciting 3 ½ years. It’ll be exciting to see what the future has in store.

And now you know the rest of the story.

Of course

The one time I actually have a blog post set to publish the next day, blogger crashes. Luckily, Alan saved his version of our story in a word document, so if it doesn't show up with my lost posts, at least we have a back up.

I'll give blogger til the end of the day and if it isn't back by then, I'll re-post everything.

How did we get here?

Alan and I were sitting around talking last night and something sparked that question. It was one of those moments where we looked around and said "do we really have two kids and live in Wisconsin? How did that happen?"

Alan and I met at the end of August right before school started in 2007. I was a Sunday School teacher in my singles' ward at the time, and so I already had a pretty good feel of the new guys moving into the apartment complex. I had picked out a promising apartment, and proceeded to make friends with them. I was over at their apartment visiting when I heard a rich, deep, voice coming out of one of the back rooms. Out walks a tall, dark haired, really cute guy singing church hymns in spanish with one of the other guys. He didn't live in my apartment complex, but he had been roommates with a lot of the guys in my ward before they all left on their missions.

I think my first thought was "whoa, a cute guy who is not afraid to sing. I need to met him". We chatted for a little bit before I had to get back to doing other things. Later that night a group of us got together to talk and play games. Alan tagged along with his friends. I remember sitting on an end table talking and laughing with everyone and trying not to be too obvious that I kept looking at Alan.

Over the next few days he was conveniently always hanging out with his old roommates, until he finally gave up that pretense and just came over to be with me. We went to a trampoline/gymnastics center, had a bonfire up in the canyon, hiked up Bridal Veil Falls, had a barbecue, and went to a BYU football game. We watched a movie where he ALMOST put his arm around me, and then another one where he actually did. We were in Salt Lake watching the Joseph Smith movie in the visitors center the first time he held my hand. The next day, after playing racquetball, he kissed me for the first time outside in the courtyard in front of my apartment.

The next few weeks were such a blur. We were together everyday, talking, laughing, playing, studying, and just enjoying one anothers company. I remember coming home from a football game thinking "I could marry this guy", then thinking I was crazy because it had only been such a short time. He must have been thinking the same thing, because a few nights later he asked me, "if I were to ask you to marry me, would you say yes?"

Alan wanted to take me ring shopping in his hometown. I remember him telling his mom on the phone why we were coming up for the day and hearing her response on the other end. "Are you serious?" I think we both knew how crazy we looked, but it didn't matter any more. I had dated enough guys to know what I wanted and what I needed, and I had never been more sure about anything. I remember trying to explain it (very badly) to a couple of my worried siblings who didn't think I knew what I was getting into.

It was a rainy day the day Alan proposed. It was conference weekend, and we were supposed to catch a bus early in the morning to go up to West Jordan to be with Alan's family and then later met my parents in Salt Lake (they were coming to Utah to met Alan). Somehow, I had forgotten to set my alarm. I woke up to the sound of Alan knocking at my door. Then frantic, I rushed around trying to get ready in time to catch the bus. When I was finally ready to go out the door, Alan started dragging his feet. We walked towards the bus station and he was still stalling the whole time. Finally he stopped me and said it was alright if we were a little late. Then, after saying some nice things about me, in the raining parking lot of my apartment complex, he got down on one knee and asked me to marry him.

So, I guess that's how we ended up in Wisconsin with two kids. At least, that's how it happened from my point of view...

Sick...

Ugh, I hate these days. Sore throat, sore ears, running nose, cough, the works. We watched a lot of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse today, and I even put on Tangled as the day wore on. Hopefully tomorrow will be better.

In other news, it has suddenly become summer here. 80ish degrees all week long. The girls wore shorts and t-shirts today. I moved a chair and Elsie's little table out on our balcony, so when Elsie got tired of laying on the couch with me I could sit outside and read a book while she colored and played.
Oh, and this was my Mother's Day dinner. Fantastic.