6 Years!

Today is mine and Jay's 6 year anniversary! :) There were a few reasons that I chose January 11th for our wedding date, but one of those reasons was that I thought it would be fun to have a winter wedding with some beautiful pictures in the snow. I even had a gorgeous fur-lined cape to wear over my wedding dress for some outdoor pictures. But January 11th, 2003 turned out to be an overcast day with absolutely NO snow on the ground. But there was plenty of haze around so along with the snow missing from my pictures, the mountains are also missing. Regardless, my wedding day was one of the best days of my life. There's very little I would change about that day and I have no regrets. Well... maybe we wouldn't have stayed in the same hotel on our wedding night as Jay's entire family. It also was a little wierd flying out on our honeymoon at the same time and one gate over from Jay's family who were flying home. But other than that, it was great. I still like to watch my wedding video from time to time and I still enjoy looking at my wedding pictures. Probably because I had a LOT of work done that morning to be to get me to look like that and I'm not sure I'll ever look that good again. One of the other reasons I thought a winter wedding would be nice was that I thought it would be a great excuse to celebrate our anniversary in some sort of warm tropical place. I imagined that every year would be spent in Hawaii, Cancun, on a Carribbean cruise or somewhere else where we could escape the cold weather. But, as it turns out, we haven't even made it as far south as St. George to celebrate our anniversary. And many of the years, one or both of us have ended up sick (as we both are now with colds). Oh well, one day in the future, I'll be on a cruise for our anniversary... although at this point it's looking more like it's going to be a Disney Cruise, but that's okay, I'll take what I can get!

Anyways, I'm sure I could spend a lot of time reminiscing about my wedding or listing the reasons that I'm so happy I married Jay, but I'm not going to. I will, however, answer the #1 question I'm asked about mine and Jay's relationship... How did we meet? I get asked this ALL the time which is wierd because I rarely ask that question to anyone else. Maybe I'm just a little too self-involved or something? Or maybe people ask me because they know Jay's not a Utah-native like myself. Well, to answer anyone's question, we met at a wedding in Minnesota. Actually, we were kind of set up. My mom is from Minnesota so I have family out there. I went out there for my cousin, Emily's wedding. My other cousin, Carolyn, was dating Jay's best friend Chaz. She spent quite a bit of time talking Jay up and telling me that we really should meet. I could only imagine that they said similar things to Jay so when we actually got introduced at Emily's rehearsal, it was a little awkward. I had just started dating someone here at the time, so I really wasn't interested, but as soon as we were introduced, it was love at first sight..... Okay, so that's not true at all. It was awkward being introduced to someone who I thought might be interested in me since I knew I was not interested in him, but Jay shook my hand and promptly ignored me for the rest of the night. It even seemed like he made a special effort to not sit by me at the rehearsal dinner. Despite my attempts at flirting, it appeared that my worries about having to 'let him down gently' were all for nothing. So I tried harder. And we've been together ever since. :)

So, for anyone who is reading this (still) and is married, please comment and let me know how you all met your spouses. And Jay, if you read this, HAPPY 6 YEAR ANNIVERSARY!!! Next year, I'll answer the 2nd most asked question of me and Jay: How does he put up with me? :)

What's in the water lately?

I just got back from my cousins baby shower today. She's having twins. One day in the not so far future she is going to go from no babies to being outnumbered by babies. It makes me tired to think about it, yet I kind of admit I'm a little jealous that in 3 years, her boys will be playing trains with EACH OTHER. And it's not that I don't enjoy playing trains... it can be pretty fun (especially when Jamison is in a chatty mood), but Jamison wants to play trains 24 hours a day. And I don't even get to play with a train. While Jamison has about 15 Thomas characters connected in one looooong train, instead I am given the role of the truck. The truck drives up to the train track and stops and waits for the train to drive by. The truck then is instructed to shout out in excitement ('Look, a train!') and then properly say goodbye to the train when it has passed. Then the truck drives in a circle and stops again to wait for the train to come by. Over and over and over and over again we do this. For hours. And I SWEAR that I was given a book that states very clearly that a 3-year old has less than a 10 minute attention span. Due to Jamison being the only child in my family and friends (well, in this timezone at least), a playmate has not been an option. But FINALLY and slowly, babies started coming. Starting with my cousin's baby Jaxon, then my own Gianna. And now it seems as though the entire world is pregnant! I feel like every time I see someone, I'm constantly trying to remember when they are due, trying to calculate how far along they are, and thinking about whether I know if they are having a boy or a girl. Let me just recap here:

50% of the women I work with are pregnant
67% of the female cousins on my dad's side are pregnant
Of the 7 (well, 7 that I know of) pregnant women at the baby shower today, 71% of them have names that start with the letter 'M'
Of these same 7 people, 58% tried for well over a year (some for several years) to get pregnant and then they ALL got pregnant at the same time!
100% of all the people I know named Mindy are pregnant
Less than 10% of the pregnant women I know are having girls (although not everyone knows yet what they are having)

Crazy. It's like something happened to the water here in Utah or something. And I know 11 currently pregnant women that I talk to or associate with somewhat regularly right now. That's a lot of hormones to watch out for. Fortunately, none of them seem to be as crazy emotional as I got, especially with my first pregnancy. I think I was a little nuts. Oh, and mean. I didn't want to be mean, but I honestly believed that with each passing day of my pregnancy that people just got stupider. And I just wasn't in the mood to deal with stupid people. Well, needless to say, I am absolutely THRILLED about the fact that there are so many babies being expected this coming year. I'm excited to be an aunt for the first time (well, sort of, I did marry into being an aunt). And I'm very happy for all of you out there who are currently expecting. Congratulations to all of you!

*** Disclaimer: I would just like to state for the record that I am NOT one of these pregnant people, nor do I plan on becoming one of these pregnant people anytime in the future. ***