Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Our 3 & 8...

A bit off the topic, but I had to announce that today is the big 3 and 8 for hubby and I. What, you may ask, is the 3&8? Well... it's our 3 year wedding anniversary and 8 year together anniversary. We got married 5 years (to the day) from the day we started dating. Yep, super cool, I know! ;-) I can hardly believe our time together is creeping dangerously close to a decade already! For those of you that don't know us very well, let me fill in the story a little bit.

On a beautiful, autumn day an innocent (and rather geeky) blond girl began the first day of life in a new middle school. She had just moved to a new, VERY small, and quite "hickish" town and was determined to make a great impression. She'd cut her long flowing hair to try a new look (and learned that somewhere along the way her wispy blond waves had become a THICK head of hair... picture an unintentionally goofy looking chin length cut that was not too flattering). As she walked boldly into this new school she was greeted with glares and looks of disapproval. The innocent little girl was about to learn that in 8th grade you were only "cool" if you'd been born and raised in that little town or were miraculously blessed with the cool gene from birth. In THIS school, this girl was an unwelcome nobody. Ugh.

This girl, however, was undeterred. She was a TALKER and when nervous this blessing/curse was at it's best. Therefore, when assigned to sit by a dufus-cute boy in her science class that ACTUALLY said "Heyrmph" (an 8th grade boy grunt of a greeting as it turned out), she immediately began chatting his ear off. Over the first few weeks of school she learned VERY little about the quite guy that sat slouched waaaaayyyy down into his chair and grunted responses to her, while HE got to learn way more about her than he'd care to. Ahhh.... the beginning of a friendship. ;-)

This boy quickly learned that this girl was quite studious and received fabulous grades. He therefore began occasionally peering over her shoulder to "check" his answers on tests. This boy was not too subtle in his peeks (apparently) because during one fateful test this boy was caught CHEATING and the boy AND the innocent girl were given big, fat, and incredibly UGLY "F's" on their tests. This was beyond devastating to the girl (duh!) and she ran from the classroom crying. Totally cool, obviously. Soon after the school's requests to move her to 9th grade were accepted by girl and her parents and she left the terrible 8th grade memories behind to begin enjoying HIGH SCHOOL! At this point, the boy and girl no longer saw each other until the boy made it to high school the following year... and gave her goofy looks of surprise when she would say "Hello" and acknowledge him in the hallways. Thus, was the "end" of their friendship.

Many years later (ok, actually it was only 3 but back then that was a long time!), that boy began hanging out in the library during the final period of each day. This period happened to be that girl's peer counseling hour, and when there was no "counseling" to be done to peers, she spent HER time in the library completing scholarship applications on the TYPE WRITER (!!!). The boy began sitting in the lounge chairs beside the type writer and talking with the girl. It was one of those adorable and totally pathetic boy/girl flirting relationships in which loads of teasing and giggling occurred.

One day, the boy (after a day ditching classes and 4-wheeling with friends) decided he wanted to see the girl so badly that he LOOKED HER UP IN THE PHONE BOOK and called. Yep. He did. At that moment that girl was already "fighting" with her current boyfriend about something lame and was totally caught off guard by the call. She told her boyfriend to leave as JOE had requested to come over. Yikes... that girl was totally not a player, she just KNEW her boyfriend wouldn't have been friendly to any male friend she had. From that point on, the boy and the girl began spending exorbitant amounts of time together, quickly growing increasingly fond of each other. He escorted her to her senior prom (after double checking with her that he actually did have to wear a Tux), and broke his neck the day of her baccalaureate just to see how much her nerves could handle (did I mention he rode moto-cross and was actually SPONSORED to do so?! Yes, he was awesome but this terrified the girl). The friendship blossomed into more and on June 18th it became official (sealed by their FIRST KISS!).

So, you guessed it. That story was about us. Joe & Jesi... the beginnings of one heck of a pair. We've endured deployments to Iraq, enjoyed laughing until we cry about things so stupid I couldn't remember to tell you what they were, and even the ups and downs up the adoption roller-coaster, a layoff, a move to a new state, and life with THREE incredible and very spoiled dogs.

This is to you baby... I love you!

For the rest of you, thanks for suffering through the mush! I'll do my best to refrain on most occasions in the future!

(First photo is 1/1/2003... blissfully unaware of a war that was about to begin with Iraq and that hubby would be activated on Valentine's day the next month... :'-( and the second photo was on vacation in January 2007)

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Raspberries for breakfast, anyone?

Yep, our little angel LOVES raspberries! Check it out. This has become her FAVORITE treat (and she loves to share her treats with us!) in the last week or so...



Monday, June 16, 2008

Blue horizon

OK, so I thought THIS topic deserved a brief and separate post from Father's Day. My mom left us for Colorado on Friday and I have definitely been in a funk. My mom is my best friend and a huge support. We had the most quiet goodbye possible as her and my dad left on Friday. Mom and I couldn't speak as we were completely choked up and fighting back tears. My dad told me "I love you" and I couldn't fully reciprocate the words before the tears poured forth. I cannot believe this is real. Heck, I can't even TYPE about this without crying. Ugh.

I HATE this. Even if they visit EVERY month it won't be enough. That's what I love/hate about being so close to my family... hate that it's too hard to be so far apart but love that we're all this close. As if it's not hard enough to be missing my brother like crazy (he arrived in Afghanistan the DAY our babies were born!), now I've got to be missing my parents too! Poo.

Oh, and I REALLY hate that now Ezi & Livi don't get to have their grandma around regularly. They are seriously missing out on tons of lovin', smoochin, and fun with her now. It was bad enough that my dad couldn't see them regularly, now it's BOTH of them. Double boo-hoo.

Sorry... I'll try to be more optimistic about all this now, but I had to get my sob fest off my chest!

A Happy Father's Day... mostly

Seriously, there's nothing cooler than getting to tell the new daddy in our lives how amazing we think he is. So, Livi, Ezi, and myself spent the day trying to tell their daddy what an INCREDIBLE daddy he is. It was a relatively "uneventful" day, other than having two showings of the house, we didn't have a lot going on. Joe decided to take the wee-bots out for their first run and they did about 5 miles. No small feat in the afternoon on a hot day! The twins seemed to love it and came back smiley and content. Their daddy was also super pleased to get in the exercise and manage to get his sweat on. Oh yeah, that guy LIKES to sweat... that way he knows he's really working. I, on the other hand, think it's NASTY and sent him for an immediate shower! Yuck!

Sadly, the wee-bots became possessed as we did bathtime and we got to laugh at ourselves as we sung round after round of "Wheels on the Bus" to two screeching, howling babes. I really don't know WHAT we would do if we didn't laugh... I mean their moods were TERRIBLE! I told Joe they just wanted to SHOW him how awesome he was on Father's Day by allowing him to be his best when they were at their worst! It was probably our fault that they were so upset, I can TOTALLY admit to that. Their naps have been a bit funky lately so we thought based on their sleep/wake patterns that they may need 3 shorter naps rather than 2 longer ones. So, their when they woke up early for their morning nap, we got them up and went for a walk. The timing went well as it allowed us to be out of the house for one of the showings yesterday. However, it was the beginning of a ticking bomb I think. They were literally a timebomb waiting to blow. And blow they did... about 5:30 pm. Ugh! Let's just say we WON'T be doing that again!

Luckily they still went to sleep like the perfect angels they are, as the bedtime bottle and cuddles seemed to banish the demons. They slept through the night (as usual) and awoke to their normal sweetness. In fact, they napped REALLY well today and I was one SUPER happy mama! We have the two most amazing little bits in the whole world. I know I'm biased, but there's no denying it. They are such AMAZING people already. I mean, Ezra will MELT your heart with his flirty smile and easy giggle. He is SOOOOO ticklish and I cannot help by take advantage of it and tickle him often to hear his grunting and laughing. Olivia... well let's just say our little button (as in "cute as a button") is a tiny little bundle of sweetness. She ALWAYS has a smile on her face when we go in to get her up in the morning or after naps and I cannot wait to be greeted by that smiling face and her little legs kicking from excitement to see us. That girl will wrap ANYONE around her finger I think!

So, all in all we had a phenomenal Father's Day. And despite the evening craziness, we STILL laughed at it and had a great dinner together after the kiddos went to sleep (yummy burgers on the grill, mac'n'cheese, delicious watermelon, and salad... oh yeah I made a REAL dinner for once... and total comfort food to boot!). I love that despite being new parents to twins our lives seem pretty relaxed, Joe and I are NOT at each other's throats about the stresses of parenting, and we can both laugh during the moments that ARE stressful. Will the "ball" drop and things get as crazy and hard as people told us it would?! Who knows... but for now I'm counting my blessings and enjoying our incredible new lives. And, in 2 days I'll be celebrating the 3&8 with my amazing hubby... hard to believe it's been "that" long... times flies when you're having fun!

P.S. We finally decided that since Livi and Ezi have become FREQUENTLY used nicknames for the wee-bots, we wanted to decide on a spelling we liked. So... it's now Livi & Ezi (vs. Livvy & Ezzy). Livi is PART of the spelling of Olivia, plus it fits the pattern of her mom and grandma (Jesi & Juli)... unique 4 letter spellings, and Ezi follows suit. Like the new spellings... or hate them?!