Anniversary!

12/28/08

Whoo! It's Mark and I's 7th anniversary!!! We didn't get to celebrate much, due to my determined attempts to hack up a lung all weekend (bronchitis)--but a doctor prescribed me some antibiotics and narcotic cough syrup today. I didn't know there was such a thing as narcotic cough syrup, but I sure wish I'd had some like, two weeks ago. Could have numbed my stress riiiiight out. Er, I mean, Madelyn could have used some for her cough as well.

As is customary in the blogging world, I will show you some of our old pictures:

This was us the Sunday before Mark left on his mission in July 1999 (That's almost 10 years ago, people.) We had been dating all of three weeks or so. It was hard for us to separate for two years after having just started getting to know each other. I was 18 and Mark was almost 21.
Stop laughing at our hair and clothes.

This was just one of our fabulous portraits that my dad took a couple months before the wedding in late 2001. I'm trying to restrain myself from posting all 50,000 of our wedding photos.
Oh, all right. I'll show one more.

Well, this was taken by a professional and so is not supposed to be on here. Shhhhh! But I love this picture.

And now I am going to do my hubby tag (thanks Jen).

Where we met: At church. Hurricane 9th ward Sunday school class for 17-18 year olds in the spring of '99. His dad was the teacher and he had just moved there from Las Vegas. Thus his presence as a 20-year old in a teeny-bopper class.

We went on our first date: to the Pasta Factory! DEE-LISH. I love that place. He ordered the shrimp alfredo, which I thought was weird because no one I knew ate shrimp. He's from the "Outer Banks" of North Carolina and spent years on the beach surfing and working at seafood restaurants, so I'm sure he thought I was weird for the exact same reason.

How long we dated before we got hitched: If you count the mission (dating via letters from Brazil to Utah) , 2 3/4 years.

How long have we been married: Seven years today!

What is my favorite feature about him: His squinty eyes, broad shoulders and pecs, smile and laugh. And he has cute ears. Always loved the ears.

What's my favorite quality about him: His gentleness and tendency to not freak out about things nearly as much as I do.

What's his nickname for me: Dearest, Wiffy or Big Miss (because Madelyn is Little Miss)

His favorite color: Blue, especially the blue of clear ocean water

His favorite sport: Surfing, but snowboarding and skating have had to suffice since he's landlocked now.

Mark (in his bronzed glory) and his surf partner/roommate George in Nags Head, NC 1996

Who said the L word first: I did, on Christmas day when he called home from Brazil. I was at his parent's house and I thought I might as well tell him in case he caught dengue fever or something down there and I never saw him again. (Also because I loved him.)

First kiss, where and when: In Apple Valley about one week before he left for his mission. I know. What impeccable timing the universe had arranged for us.

Favorite couple thing to do: Geek out over our favorite documentaries and mutual love of Lord of the Rings and Angels and Airwaves, etc.

His hidden talent: He makes incredible chocolate chip cookies and can quote a movie after only seeing it once.

His favorite music: He likes alternative stuff like Angels and Airwaves, some skate punk, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Stevie Ray Vaughn, U2, and he loves Vivaldi's Four Seasons.

What I admire most about him: He is a great father to our little girl, and he is an all-around sweet, lovable guy. And he's about to graduate and finally start making some $$$. Well, give him another four months or so, but what's that compared to seven years of poverty? (No one can say I married him for his money--let's just put it that way.)

His favorite past times: Playing computer games, watching movies and doing board sports when he gets a chance. He also enjoys building computers and is a WWII buff.

Will he read this: Yes, he likes to see what on earth it is that I spend hours and hours writing about on here.

I tag: Liz and Katie Bell :)

I love you my dearest! Happy Anniversary!!!!

Merry Christmas!

12/25/08

PHEW. This has been one crazy Christmas season. I'm relieved to see the end of it! (Hopefully next year we won't be moving the week before...that would help...And perhaps if we were all healthy and had a titch more than 3 hours of sleep a night too.)

Thanks to my cajoling and effusion of hysteria, Mark and I managed to almost finish unpacking yesterday! Here's a shot of our tree that we put up and the relative bareness of our front room (more house pics to come eventually).

Santa was here!

I feel a lot less stressed having managed to accomplish as much as we have in one week. Madelyn has been very sick and so none of us have been sleeping well. It's going on 3 weeks since she's been battling this cold/pinkeye/nasty cough, so we're hoping she starts to feel better soon (although now I'm sick...).

Anyway, we got a lot of new movies for Christmas, so I'm looking forward to having some free time to veg out and watch them. And I've just got to try out my new industrial grade bolt cutters Mark got me! (They'll come in handy next time I arrange silk flowers.)

I put two slideshows up--one is of nice heartwarming Christmas activities, and the other is our blooper reel. My family always dresses up in silly costumes on Christmas Eve to loosely reenact the Nativity play. The pics of us goofing off actually is a better representation of what it's like over here all the time.

I hope you all had a great Christmas!

Happy Birthday Madelyn!!

12/23/08

4 years old!

%$^&*#@ unpacking!!!! Madelyn's birthday was two days ago and I am only now getting to post about it. I am perfectly horrified.

Well, things are gradually improving over here, but suffice it to say that as a whole (in the words of my old high school English teacher Mr. Cullimore):

"It's about as much fun as getting a poke in the eye
with a sharp stick."

Now on to Madelyn's birthday!! For at least the past 6 months, she had been telling everyone that she's 4, and now she really is. Some info about her:

Favorite color: blue
Favorite letter: M
Favorite number: 7
Favorite food: noodles
Favorite pastimes: watching movies (she watched Kung Fu Panda about 8 or 9 times in a row on our drive down here. On purpose.), playing outside, reading books, painting, bossing her parents around, and flinging everything out of her dress-up chest onto the floor.

What she did on her last day of being 3:

Ate Ovaltine powder directly from the canister

Elected to go to bed in the hallway rather than in her bed.
In her defense, her room was still booby trapped with so much stuff that you risked breaking a shin just walking in there.

Memorable quote on the morning of her birthday:

(We were looking at each other in the mirror, and she showed
me how well she can point her toes.)

Me: Do you want to be a ballerina like your mama?
Madelyn: No, I want to be a zombie!

Here she is playing World of Warcraft. She loves to sit on Mark's lap to watch him play the zombie mod on Call of Duty 5. She tells him which guns he should use, and encourages him to "Crush the zombies!" Sigh. She has a fascination with macabre looking things. Don't ask me where that came from. Oh--do notice our nice new computer monitor, which is supposed to be for Christmas, but Mark didn't want to wait to put it up. Sweeeet.

We had her party at my parent's house next door. We made some Christmas ornaments, which if we can ever clear a spot for the tree that my brother Kevin cut down for us, we will decorate it with.

This is my niece Hattie, who lives upstairs, is almost 9 months old and is the cutest, chunkiest little Scandinavian-looking baby you've ever seen. Mark and Madelyn especially can't get enough of her. She had a good time at the party eating the wrapping paper.


More party pics:

A Barbie car from Uncle Ty, Auntie Monica,
and cousins Nathan and Ava

Madelyn gasped,"It's a BOX!" and then moved on to the next present. Later on she discovered that there were books inside the box.

"Blue fairy" Silvermist costume from the Tinkerbell movie.

Putting on the candles...


I felt like a slacker because I bought her birthday cake this year instead of made it--but all that Madelyn cared about is that it had blue frosting.

A look back at how much she's grown:

Christmas day, 2004. She was 4 days old and weighed something like 4 lbs., 14 oz. at the time.

HAPPY 4th BIRTHDAY MADELYN! I love you so much!! I'm so happy that you're my girl.

PS. I forgot to mention a bit of earth-shattering news: the night after we arrived here, Madelyn willingly, voluntarily went #1 on her potty for the very first time, and the next day went #2!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Of course I've neglected to keep on top of things, so she hasn't done it again since. But once we get settled in, we're going full boar with the potty training. Finally.

PPS. This is my 100th post!!

We made it! (sort of)

12/19/08

Oy.

I think I'm going to need mental help after this move. (Something in the way of retail therapy would go a long way right now...or just being able to find my shampoo.) I don't know why we seem to be so darn lucky, but when we moved to Albuquerque from St. George two years ago, we were met with the biggest snow storm they'd had in 30 years :

The day after we moved to ABQ

...and as soon as we unloaded the moving truck (into our cold, dirty house that wasn't ready for us but was supposed to be), 22 inches fell and the whole city was closed down for 4 days, leaving us with no real food, no microwave, no internet, no phones, and all our suitcases with our clothes and toiletries we had packed for the first few days were stranded at my grandma's house 30 miles away...you get the idea. It was horrible. (Did I mention that it was our anniversary, too? That was just the icing on the cake.)

So this time we had high hopes that even if it was snowing in Albuquerque when we left (which it had been the day before but had melted) that we at least wouldn't get snow where we were headed, since southern Utah and the surrounding areas never get more than a dusting. Ha, ha! You laugh. OF COURSE IT SNOWED. It snowed so much that schools and airports were all closed and we spent the last 200 miles of our drive driving on black ice in whiteout conditions.

Before Flagstaff, AZ the roads had been fine, but we got such a late start that the sun went down and we then got to deal with rain and fog that turned into sleet and snow, and then a full-out blizzard. We had all been up most of the night before because Madelyn, who has been sick for a couple weeks, developed pink eye and was very uncomfortable and kept crying and thrashing around. We got up late and still had a few things left to pack and the whole house to clean. So it was noon by the time we finally left. It was 11:39pm when we got to Hurricane, and the next morning it was still snowing. Siiiiiiiiigggggghhhhhhh....

Anyway, I know a lot of you were worried and praying for us, and I am very grateful that we at least got here in one piece and now only have to unpack 20,000 more boxes before I will be able to post some pictures of our new home in its non-garbage-dump state. So it's back to work for me-- hope you're all doing something fun. And if you know of anything that we could do to appease the moving gods so we have a better experience next time, do tell!

Madelyn thought that this moving truck was the greatest plaything in the world. Here she is rolling a ball down the ramp while she waited for us to finish cleaning up in the house.

Good-bye, "white house" (as Madelyn called it). We had some good times there!

My family had written "WELCOME" in giant letters in the snow to greet us in Hurricane.

My mom Carolyn and my sister Megan--we live right across the fence from them now.

This is my brother Kevin's house, and that ramp leads down to our basement apartment.

Mark's car the morning after. It was being pulled behind the moving truck on a car dolley while I drove my car with Madelyn.

Starting to unload...

Our current state of affairs... Actually, my dad still has some of his stuff down here, and we're getting a storage unit to get a lot of our junk out of the way. I'll let you know if I ever resurface.

Lament

12/16/08

To be sung, with gusto, to the tune of "Oh, What a Beautiful Morning" (except there ain't no "bright golden haze on the meadow"--there's two inches of snow) :

Oh, how I loathe and hate mooooovinggg!
It's unbelievably laaaaaammmme
To pack up my house every yeeeeeaar
Seems like an awfully big shaaaaaammme!

I Can Sleep When I'm Dead

12/12/08

That's the name of a country song by Jason Michael Carroll. (View the music video here, if you're into long-haired country boys from North Carolina, and who isn't? OK, maybe not everyone...) Too bad I'm not sleeping because I'm insane and have given myself too much to do in my last few days in ABQ, and not because I've been partying every night. Wait--does crafting count? What about laundry?

Anyway, 'tis the season for another jewelry post. I have had "Make new batch of jewelry and post it on etsy" on my to-do list for oh, four or five months. My final proverbial kick in the pants of motivation came when I decided to mail out my business cards with all my Christmas letters, and I didn't want people to go to view my jewelry shop only to find nothing on there. So I've been working my little heiny off for the past month, and now I have over 25 new items listed, in addition to the 7 that I re-posted. I'm just going to go ahead and show you everything new, and you can feel free to visit my shop (Desert Rain Designs) and spend lots of money! I'm saving out my jewelry and mailing supplies so that I can send things out to you even in the midst of my move. So now on to my shameless advertising:

Oh, yeah. I also made another 25+ pieces as gifts that I'm giving out for Christmas or for birthdays & Mother's Day in the coming year. (On top of hand-making the almost 200 Christmas cards, 30 sugar scrubs, 3 batches of Christmas toffee for the neighbors, and blogging every 3 days.) Huh. I guess Mark was onto something when he claimed I haven't been spending any quality time with him or Madelyn...

So I am only allowing myself one more short post before I move. Let's see if I can last that long! See you in a few days, and let me know what you think about my wares. (And by the way, I made all those bracelets on a whim LAST NIGHT--because I was trying to avoid packing--so thus the lack of creativity in the pictures. But the bracelets are still cute. Buy some.)