Friends

*I wrote this post last week, but blogger won't let me publish. How annoying! So I'm composing at home and publishing from another computer.*

I just had an awesome weekend! And I don't always get to say that :) But it was AWESOME.

My close friend Rachel broke my heart a few months back and moved to Kansas, where she had her twin boys a few weeks later. They're only 3 weeks younger than Caroline, and we haven't gotten to see each others' babies until this weekend! The babies enjoyed a stimulating rotation of exersaucers, bouncers, and this tri-pod, in this case hitting the tripod all at one time (L-R: Ben, Caroline, Sam). She and her family came out for a wedding and stayed the long weekend at our house. With 7 kids under one roof and in only 3 bedrooms I was VERY impressed that we got ANY sleep, but the kids actually slept remarkably well! It gives me high hopes for travelling to Grand Junction this week with my own crazy brood - Patrick travels well, but Caroline is iffy and Eli is a downright terror... we'll see how we fare. Patrick had a hard time sleeping, he wanted to stay up and play sooooo bad! One morning he got up and told me this story: "I got out of bed last night and I went to Anna's bed and I told her I didn't care if she woke up. But she didn't wake up." He was totally trying to start partying while the adults were sleeping! What a trickster. Thank goodness Anna was zonked! ANYWAY. The weekend was fantastic, we had a fun barbeque with friends and sat around our fire pit for a few hours in the evening (the kids ate an entire bag of marshmallows!), and Anna took tons of pictures of the fire... I think pyromania is simply human nature. Now I just need to start planning a trip of my own out to Wichita! Thanks for coming, Rachel, Jeff, Anna, Isaac, Ben, and Sam! We LOVED it. And we love the canolies you accidentally left in the fridge.

5 Years

*Again, old post that wouldn't publish.*

We celebrated our 5th wedding anniversary this weekend. It seems like a decently big milestone, but at the same time we've done LOTS of things in 5 years so it's also like, "that's IT?!"

We were explaining to Patrick that we got married a "long time ago" and he totally understood. "When you were married, and the dinosaurs lived on the earth..." Ummmm, not THAT long ago, buddy!

We were lucky enough to have two wonderful babysitters, my in-laws, so we could go out to dinner and shopping (Home Depot, we finally replaced our broken kitchen light! Only took us 2 years). While eating dinner I was celebrating that it's officially a pretty serious relationship :) He dated another girl for 3 or so years and they bought a house together, so until we'd been together at least 3 years and had bought a house together I kind of felt like our relationship was inferior, we hadn't ever gone as far as they had gone. Of course, we have kids together, so I knew it was silly to feel that way, but I'm a girl and girls do silly things. So as I was poking fun at myself Joe very sweetly and very seriously said, "I was more serious about you the day we got engaged. I was more serious about you the day I knew I WANTED to marry you." That melted my heart! And he was totally right, it didn't really matter if they were together 3 months or 3 years or *gasp!* even more than 5 years, he never wanted to marry her, and he never did. Which all begs the question of why they bought a house together, but let's not go there tonight...

So I'm a silly girl, enjoying my husband and my kids and my house and my 5 years, and it looks like it's pretty serious :)

Conversation

Patrick: Can we read this book? ("The Giraffe, The Pelly, and Me" by Roal Dahl)

Me: We can read it, but Caroline and Eli might interrupt us.

Patrick: I want to go with them!

Me: Go where?

Patrick: In the contest.

Me: Oh, no, not contest, interrupted.

Patrick: Oh. Can I go in the dentist, too?

Me: No, interrupted means we might have to stop reading and attend to their needs.

Patrick: I want to tend on my knees, too.

Well, we TRIED to have a conversation!