7 Years!!!

7 years!!! That actually sounds like a significant amount of time. And considering Jay and I dated for 3 years before we got married, I've now known him for 1/3 of my life. So, I looked back at my post from our 6 year anniversary and noticed 2 things:
1) I said that one day I would be spending my anniversary on a cruise. Well, it's not exactly on our anniversary, but 2 weeks from now, we will be on our first ever cruise!!!! To the Bahamas! I am really excited. It's been a LONG time since I've been on a vacation like that and going somewhere tropical during this crappy weather is EXACTLY what I had in mind when I chose January for our wedding date.
2) Last year I answered the question I get asked the most, 'How did Jay and I meet?'. I also said that this year I'd answer the question 'How does Jay put up with me?'. Well, when I said that, I thought I was joking. Either that, or I'd have a whole year to come up with a brilliant romantic answer. Turns out neither of those is true.

So, anyone who knows me knows that I spend a lot of time stressed out. I would say that several times per week I lose something that is usually kind of important to me. My purse, my wallet, my keys, my phone, etc. Let me tell you, that's not fun. I'm also a bit forgetful and I get sidetracked VERY easily. When I first moved out to Minnesota, Jay came out to help me drive me and all my stuff out there. This was only our 4th time seeing each other and the morning we were supposed to leave, I discovered I lost my wallet. We searched for it. A lot. For a very long time. My car was packed (and at one point even running ready to go). Several hours later, we found it wedged between my door and the driver side seat (and we'd searched the car many times by this point). This was just the start of Jay having to deal with the chaos that somehow just seems to follow me. I can't tell you how many times I've called Jay in an absolute panic because I've lost my wallet (both at home and while traveling), lost my rental car keys, my suitcase, and many other things. Jay has learned that he should not be surprised when cops stop by our house to return my purse that they found in a park or if I call and tell him I'm on my way home but then take 2 hours to get there. In Minnesota I even lost my car keys in the snow outside his apartment in November and found them again in March when the snow melted! They were rusted... So, just how and why does he put up with me??? Well, to be honest, the only thing I can think of is that for 6 months we dated long distance. Either I didn't waste my time talking to him about the various things I had misplaced, or because he was so far away, it probably didn't have the same effect. By the time he learned all these things about me, it was too late and he was already 'hooked'. :)

Happy Anniversary Jay!!!! I love you and am so glad you 'put up with me' for 7 years now! :)

Oh, almost forgot... K for next year... 'Why do I put up with him?'

Well, that's different...

I'm out of town for work right now. I've travelled quite a bit over the last 5 years that I've worked at Boxworks, and the majority of the time I stay at Hilton/Hampton Hotels so I can get points for it. And yes, each hotel is a little different, but they usually have a lot of things in common. However, when I checked into my hotel here in Appleton, Wisconsin, this was in my bathroom:

A closer look:

Instead of the little bar of soap I usually find on my bathtub, there was a little rubber ducky. Why??? This is a hotel that advertises itself as being great for business travellers... Business travellers usually do not travel with small children. I really miss my kids and am not happy to be away from them, especially for 9 days. But, I really think that if there is a silver lining to being away from them, I would have thought it would be that I would not have to move a single toy before going to bed, sitting on a chair, or taking a shower. I was wrong..... I suppose the rubber ducky is a nice touch.

I guess it's been quite a while since I last updated my blog. I think I can sum up the last 3 months pretty well though in one word: sick. My poor little Gianna has been sick non-stop for months now. She had 4 ear infections in a 2 month period so we ended up having to get the tube surgery done on her. About 2 weeks later, she had her 5th ear infection...

Jamison is still enjoying preschool. Right before we left, he started soccer. I'm not sure if he likes it yet, but he really looks cute in his little shin guards and soccer cleats. I hope no serious injuries come out of it... he is by far the klutziest little boy I know.

Jay has convinced me to sign up for the Wasatch Back Ragnar Relay this year. He ran it last year and had a great time and my friend, Kari, is organizing a team again this year so we're signed up. In case you don't know, the Wasatch back is a 180 mile run from Logan to Park City. We are on a team with 12 people, so we'll all end up running between 13-18 miles divided into 3 legs. I'm a little nervous about it, but hopefully it will be fun. I've got a lot of work to do to be able to do it though! Jay is already ready for it and very excited. He just ran the Salt Lake 1/2 Marathon a couple weeks ago and did AWESOME!!!!! He ran it in 1 hour 51 minutes which is like an 8 1/2 minute mile over 13 miles! I am so very proud of him. AND, two contestents from this season's Biggest Loser also ran the 1/2 marathon (the black team, Blaine and Dane if anybody is watching) here in Salt Lake. I tried to catch a glimpse of them to see how they're doing, but I didn't see them. I guess they weren't wearing their Biggest Loser shirts... :)

Pictures and stuff

I have finally put a LOT of pictures up. I even put up our Christmas pictures even though it is almost March. I'm a little behind (we also have yet to take our Christmas lights down!). Right now I'm in upstate New York for work and I miss my little Gianna, Jamison and Jay so much. But I get to go home TODAY and I can't wait. :)

Since it's been awhile since I've posted about the kids, I thought I'd update on how they're both doing.

Gianna is really close to crawling. Actually, for all I know, she may be crawling... I haven't seen her since Monday! But last I saw, she gets up on all fours and rocks back and forth. She also tries to crawl and ends up pushing herself backwards instead. This makes her very angry and she usually starts to cry at this point. For the last couple months, she's been going to the daycare that Jamison went to as a baby. She does pretty well there, but I can tell she misses the attention she used to get when she stayed home with me or Staci (who used to be our nanny). And of course, pretty much as soon as she started daycare she also started getting sick. She's had horrible colds for the last 2 months and has had 2 sets of ear infections. She's been on some sort of medication almost non-stop and has just in general been miserable. I really can't wait until the weather gets a little better and hopefully she can get better. I feel so bad for her! Other than that though, she's doing well. She loves to dance to every kind of music she hears and she absolutely loves Jamison. On the days she's been really sick, he's the only one who can make her smile.

Which brings me to Jamison. Lately, he seems to think that it is part of his job to entertain Gianna. He talks to her, plays with her, makes faces at her, and if she cries, he immediately runs to her and tries to make her happy. And it usually works too. He really gets down on her level which means that he will lay down and put his face right next to hers and scream. She then laughs and screams back. They repeat this a few dozen times. It's quite loud but they both love it. Jamison has switched schools now and is doing incredibly well. I was a bit worried about switching him since he has grown very fond of riding the bus and really liked his teachers and all 'the friends' (those are his words). But logistically, it just didn't work out so we now have him at a school by Jay's work. He LOVES it! Every day, Jay takes him to school and Jamison tells him that he has to go do his 'work' now. He's learning a lot and his teachers love him there. Jamison has also finally learned the meaning of the word 'why'. That's fun. Actually it is pretty cute and conversations with him are hilarious most of the time.

K, that's all for now, but if anybody is bored, check out all their new pictures in the 'Picures' section. I added 4 new folders starting with the 12/11/2008 one.

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. ***

Jamison & Gianna

I know that I haven't updated in quite some time. I do have tons of new pictures from Christmas to post, but I'll do that later. We did have a great Christmas though and both Gianna and Jamison are doing well. Can you believe Gianna's almost 7 months now??? Anyways, here is a video of my little people. Gianna got a little dog that makes music and she's learning to dance (while being interrupted from Jamison). They are so cute!

This is my first attempt at a video so hopefully it worked!

Hello.

Okay, I know that I was really bad this month with updating, but as it turns out, sometimes my life just isn't all that interesting... :) However, I do have more pictures to update. Both Jamison and Gianna are doing well. Gianna is really getting big. Sometimes she looks like a little girl more than a 5 month old baby. Must be all the hair... :)

She is actually sitting up on her own, although she tips over easily. Strangely, she doesn't care much for rolling over, but she can sit. I feel like she's close to getting a tooth. She bites on everything and drools quite a bit sometimes.

She also experienced her very first Presidential Election (and at the same time, her first snow storm) and even got to participate in the voting process. The voting people thought she deserved her very own 'I voted' sticker.

Jamison is still enjoying school. He's learning so much and his teacher, Miss Catherine, is just great! She's been helping with his speech and Jamison can now make 'y', 'k' and 'g' sounds which have been missing from his little vocabulary. Interestingly enough, he still has his old habits so all familiar words are still missing these sounds (for example he says lellow instead of yellow), but for new words, he is learning them correctly. He also got new hearing aids since somehow his old ones broke and were not helping him too much so we sent them in for repair and ended up with brand new ones. He seems to like these better and even tries to put them on himself sometimes.

And also, my kids have a new cousin! My sister-in-law Tracy had baby Alayna Rose on 10/21/2008 weighing in at an impressive 8 lbs, 12 oz. and 21 1/2". Congratulations Tracy!!!! Isn't she cute???

If you want to check out all the pictures I've added, click on the 'Pictures' section. :)