Category Archives: marriage

Pushing Life to the Limits

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At 6:10 AM yesterday morning as I’m pouring Rylee some cereal and begging a fussy, hungry Reese for just a few extra seconds of patience so I can pour myself a cup of coffee, Andy looks at me from the living room and says, “Is your mom taking the girls tomorrow?”

And I just turned and looked at him. Total deer in the headlights. “uhhh…”

I totally forgot that Andy worked today. So I also totally forgot to see if my mom could/wanted to take the girls for the day. When I asked her, she told me she was already busy. Commence the semi-freak out and frantic call to my father-in-law to see if they can take the girls last minute. Thankfully they didn’t have plans and he told me he’d be happy to do it.

Phew. Bullet dodged.20121019-094750.jpg

This morning, as I was driving out our front gate, I looked down at the gas gauge to see the needle just about on E. I clicked the “distance to empty”. It showed 26 miles. On the way to work, for the first time in 2+ years since we’ve had the Jeep, the gas light turned on. By the time I finally reached the gas station? 14 miles.

I’ve never pushed it that far.

I don’t like doing that. I don’t like dodging bullets and pushing limits when it comes to my girls and our routines.

But really, I feel like that’s how life has been these last couple of weeks. Sure, I had seen the word “work” written in orange on our monthly calendar for today, but I guess it didn’t compute. Yesterday I saw the gas gauge at a quarter of a tank and told myself I needed to stop and get gas before I picked the girls up, but for some reason, I didn’t. Over the last two weeks between work phone calls during dinner putting out fires, cleaning & painting after long days of work and my trip to NC, our typically stellar communication has completely broken down. Everything has been such a blur. I feel like we’ve just been in survival mode. We’ve hardly seen each other.

Looking ahead, it seems like things should be slowing down a bit. I’m ready to turn off survival mode and for our same old boring routines. No more rushing through dinners and solo parenting. No more pushing life to the limits.

Time to regain control.

I’m looking forward a weekend filled with laughter. With love. With Family. My heart needs it.

It hit me recently…we’re old.

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Yes, I realize I’m not even 30 so the fact that I’m calling us old is sort of ridiculous, but it is true.

I’m not exactly sure when it happened. I mean, I’ve always been an “old soul”…opting for working or staying in as opposed to going out through college…things like that. But somewhere along the way, conversations have turned from traveling and nights out to washing machines and water filtration systems.

I had my very first “I feel old” feeling when I went to my first OB appointment for this pregnancy. I sat in the waiting room by myself. Checking work emails on my phone. Looking around the room I saw girls…they just seemed so…young. Girls without wedding rings. Girls with baby-daddy’s sitting next to them. Girls wearing sweatshirts sporting the name of their high school alma maters…assuming they were in fact out of high school. I took mental notes…holy shit, I’m the oldest one in this room right now. How is this even possible!? I’ve always been the youngest.

Then even more recently Andy & I were talking finances… Investments and 401Ks and IRAs and childcare costs and insurance deductibles.

You know, super fun adult type stuff.

He brought up the idea of selling his motorcycle.

I froze.

That just seems so…practical.

And permanent.

And practical.

I mean, it makes total sense…he hasn’t really ridden it in a couple of years. His back isn’t in the best of shape to be riding it anyway. It needs a new front tire. We live in Oregon, so really he only gets a few months of decent riding weather anyway. And, those months he would/should be able to ride it, he won’t be able to because he’ll have the girls. And while it does get great gas milage, the amount of money we’d have to put into it with the tire and what not wouldn’t be worth it for just a few weeks of saved gas from not driving the car.

But he loves it. And it’s not like we make payments on it. We bought it with cash just a couple of months after we got married.

But the extra money would sure be nice, especially considering we’ll have some pretty major medical bills coming up. And with the amazing deal we bought it for, we’ll almost make that up completely…even nearly 7 years later.

But I never got to ride on the back of it. And damn, does he look super hot in his riding get-up.

And I know him. Even if we could afford another one later down the road, he’d never buy one. So this would be it.

He asked me what I thought about the idea of him selling it. I told him it was his decision, because it’s his.

But what I was really thinking was… no! don’t sell it! we’re still so young! you need to have fun too!

But, it turns out we’re old. And practical.

Now, we’ve always been practical, but when did we get to be so old?

Circa 2007 - Pre Oldness

So…anyone wanna buy a motorcycle?

Spring {And Change} is in the Air

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It’s that time of year…

The time of year where the sun starts peeking through the rain clouds and we start spending a little bit more time each weekend outside.

There’s no doubt, Spring is in the air.

But with Spring comes…work.

Gone will be the days of lazy family weekend morning filled with cartoons and home improvement shows.

Gone will be the family trips to the grocery store.

They will be replaced with one of us (me) staying inside the good majority of the day to get housework done and one of us (Andy) heading outside for hours on end working on the property.

Of course there will still be family lunches and family dinners at the table daily.

And there will be plenty of time where all of us are outside, but instead of us doing something all together, I will likely be hanging out with Rylee while she plays in her sandbox or digs in the rocks and Andy will be off in the distance brush-hogging a field, cleaning up the brush around the pond, pruning a fruit tree, taking care of the burn pile or any one of the other seemingly million things on the to-do list when you have 12 acres and two houses to take care of.

We’ll take a family walk to the back of the property now and again, watching Dante zoom past us when he realizes where we’re going. But shortly after our walk is over, it will be back to work.

Obviously, this isn’t meant to be some sort of woe-is-us thing because, really, we chose this path as our life we’re building. But I’d be lying if I didn’t say that it will be an adjustment.

Spring is in the air. And while we can’t be more excited for some sunshine and time spent outside, Spring means change. And it’s the change that we have the trouble with.

Love & Laughter is where it’s at.

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These days, weeks seem to fly by. And the weekends seem to go even faster.

There’s our jobs. There’s laundry and dinner and dishes and meal planning and grocery shopping. There’s a never ending list of things that have to be done outside. Let’s not forget about actually giving the kid some attention somewhere in all of that. Oh, and that guy called my husband…he’s kind of important too.

I’m afraid to think about how fast everything will go when Rylee is in school and playing sports. And what about when we throw another kid into the mix!? I don’t even want to think about it.

Sometimes it’s tough trying to find balance in it all.

Take this last weekend for example…by the end of the day yesterday I was in a haze, wondering where the weekend went and how come we never get any quality family time. But, when I started to look at it more closely, I found there was plenty of time together…

Friday night we went on a family date to a college basketball game to watch one of Andy’s former students play. There was popcorn! And dancing to watch at halftime!

Saturday there was a big, hearty dinner of pork roast, mashed potatoes and fresh applesauce! Followed up by a little hubby-wife time spent watching Captain America.

Sunday there was leaf kicking! Pond looking! Mud stomping! Apple Picking! Fall decorating! Banana muffin baking!

There was a lot of time spent apart through the weekend. Like me going to a baby shower on Saturday and Andy working on fencing all day on Sunday. How do we balance it all? I have no idea, but we make it work.

At the end of every day, our lives are so full of love and laughter.

That’s all the balance we need.

This NEVER Happens…

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Seriously…this has never happened.

Quick back story: on the way to take Ry to school yesterday, she asked if we could go play at a park after I picked her up that night. I told her we’d see how the weather was and then decide.

Now, moving on…

Andy was at a Suicide Training Seminar yesterday which meant two things…he’d be done with “work” at 5 PM and he wouldn’t have a 45 minute commute home.

He called me at 4:45 PM saying he was leaving and he’d pick Rylee up. He never gets the chance to pick her up {especially daycare} because he works so late. I told him about my park date promise to Ry and he said he’d take her to play before they came home. Then he asked if that meant I’d stay late at work.

I thought for a minute…I definitely had work I could be doing if I stayed late…but…crap, this has never happened before! So I said, screw it, I’ll leave at 5 too and meet them at the park!

The weather was perfect.

We laughed. We chased. We climbed. We zip-lined. We played.

This is exactly what my soul needed.