Thanks for Matt

I usually write my thankful post about Matt on his birthday, since his birthday is in November, but I’m going to write it today, because I feel like it. Just try to stop me!

Also I’m going to try a photo and see if it works. (Most likely scenario is that it works for a few hours and then disappears but we’ll see)

I was reminiscing to a friend today about how Matt and I met. That was almost exactly 23 years ago. Crazy right? Since I’m only 41. That’s a chunk of my life.

If you didn’t already know… we met at the BYU library, where I worked in college. I specifically worked in the special collections department, and he, as a history major in his final semester as a graduating senior, was working on his capstone paper, which was about the history of Black athletes at BYU. 

And there’s some super interesting history along those lines, which is kept in a vault in the Wilkinson papers in the special collections. And you couldn’t make copies or anything, you had to just take the papers into a reading room and take notes with a pencil, like a caveman. Because there were no smartphones in 2002 or even cameras on cell phones.

Anyway, so I love that about how we met. My friend Alex said once something about the root of our relationship being in social justice research, which is funny and true. 

We had also randomly run into each other several times that semester on and off campus (or was it random… 🤔) before we actually even knew each other’s names. I think we both had at least one class that semester in the old Talmage building, plus we both spent a lot of time in the library, and I also saw him at Macaroni Grill once when I was on a date with someone else. Lol. Good times.

I love him so much. Sure, I smother him a little sometimes when he would prefer to have a little space, and maybe I also ignore him sometimes when he would prefer to have my attention… but I think we mostly have a pretty good balance.

We have a fairly traditional setup where he makes most of the money and I run most of the household. But I also make little bit of money and he does plenty at home. And I’m mostly the go-to for kids stuff and was fortunate to be home with them when they were little, but he is very involved in their lives and does a lot of the thankless stuff there too. 

He can always make me laugh and he can always calm me down.

He can fix pretty much anything.

He knows random facts. Like I’m surprised sometimes, he’ll say something about the most random things and I’m like how in the world did you know that?

He loves sports, especially BYU sports, and I love that about him even though I just don’t get it. 🤷🏼‍♀️ 

He wants our kids to learn to work hard, and he is willing to work with them to show them how it’s done.

He cares about people, remembers details about their lives and their jobs.

He loves me.

I think we have a good thing going.

Geez, I am so thankful for Matt. 

Thanks but no thanks

Well I still have a few Thanksblogging posts to catch up on 😅 I’m just here to complain for a minute. I have Covid. Bah humbug!

I realized that the first time I had Covid, it was the week after Easter (2022), and I was pretty sure I caught it from church. This time, the week after Christmas, I’m also pretty sure I got it from church. Well, that or the airport. Or the airplane. Or any other crowded, coughy sneezy place I’ve been in the last 5 days…

I was so exhausted after we got back from our trip late Saturday night that I pretty much spent Sunday, Monday and Tuesday in bed. Well not ALL day every day but like… all afternoon and evening. I told myself I was catching up after six months of never resting, but it turns out I was percolating Covid.

Anyway, I actually am thankful for kids who are old enough to take care of themselves—and the dog!—and for Matt who has cooked all the meals this week and brought me up delicious leftovers tonight after working all day at his office.

I am especially thankful for Matt because it’s our 20th wedding anniversary today. Whew! Good job us!

I am also thankful for our bedroom, which is nowhere near as cozy as our townhouse bedroom BUT it has the same comfy bed and someday I’ll put away all the boxes and fix it up Cozy 2.0.

And, now back to lying on my comfy bed, staring at the TV in between dozing. I am simultaneously exhausted and bored out of my mind.

Thanks for Matt

Two days late and multiple dollars short: I am so thankful for Matt. Twenty years later, he continues to show me that marrying him was the best decision I ever could have made.

Thanks for my guy

I have a dearth of recent photos of Matt.

This is a three-days-late tribute to the love of my life, whom I am thankful for every day.

He is the rock of our family. He is thoughtful and funny and smart and strong. I loved him 20 years ago, I love him now, I will love him forever.

Thanks for Matt

I’m thankful for my husband on his birthday and every day. He is so good to me and to our kids. He handles our crazy like he was born to do it.

Thanks for Matt

I could not love anyone more than I love this man. He provokes me and he supports me and he teases me and he respects me. He gets me and he sees me. But regardless of all the things he is for me, he’s just a good person. He’s just a fundamentally good person, and he just makes life better every day.

Thanks for Matthew

Missed a day once again. As always I am extra thankful for Matt on his birthday, but I am thankful for him every day. I just think it’s funny that a guy I met when I was 18 years old turned out to be the perfect guy for me. We met 18 years ago, and so now I’ve known him for as long as I haven’t known him. But, not surprisingly, it feels like I’ve known him my whole life. 

I’m thankful for the intimacy and vulnerability and laughs and tears and fights and ideas and prayers and plans and four growing kids that represent our 18 years together. 

I’m thankful that he makes dinner for us every Sunday and is in charge of the house and kids at least once a week when I work. 

I’m thankful that he works constantly, at the office or at home or while we take extended trips to see family, but also does way more as a dad and part-time homemaker than most men I know. 

I’m thankful that he lets me sleep in. 

I’m thankful that he does our taxes. 

I’m thankful for his calm and curious temperament. I’m thankful for his face and his laugh and his super weird jokes. I’m thankful for my whole life which revolves unapologetically around him.

Thanks for Matt.

Well, if you are a regular reader of this blog then you know exactly how I feel about my husband, Matthew.

He is everything to me, and I love him more and more the longer I know him, even when he’s making me crazy, and when we were married 15 years ago, I already thought I loved him more than anyone ever loved anyone, but I had no idea how much my heart could expand and how much my heart could depend on one person. I could never have predicted it, despite all the older wiser married people who told me it would happen. I couldn’t be more pleased about that lovely surprise that snuck up on me over 15 years. Cheers to love and partnership.

Thanks for Matt.

What a guy. Am I right or am I right????

I just really like this picture a lot.

I just really like him a lot.

I’m thankful for this strong and good man every day of my life, and I always will be.

Thanks for Matthew.

In case you had forgotten. I have filled up a good portion of this blog with posts about my husband, Matt. I just don't run out of stuff to say about him. He is the love of my life. He is the most important person in my life and my favorite person that I've ever met. He challenges me every day to be a better person. Not like deliberately, as some sort of project... just by virtue of being him. And he shows incredible love to me and to our kids by his dedication and work ethic and just--solidness.

I remember an email he wrote me back in 2002... Or perhaps 2003... When he said "Maybe you can't be everything to everyone, but you are everything to me." Had I been quoting the band Everclear to him? It's possible. Maybe even probable. Maybe I was thinking that I knew all the right people, I played all the right games, I always tried to be everything to everyone. But my intimate knowledge of '90s grunge-pop is neither here nor there. The point is that I hope I still live up to that for him. He definitely does for me. He is everything to me. I'm so thankful for him every day and especially on his birthday. And I'm sorry for quoting Everclear on a blog post about him but maybe he's not offended because he probably doesn't even know who Everclear was. He missed all the worst of late '90s pop (and by "worst" I also mean "best") while he was out preaching the gospel in Brazil and I was getting my braces tightened and carrying my Discman in my Roxy shoulder bag. Whoops, there I go making it about me again. Can we all just agree that Matt is the man? I lucked out big time.

Like an unwatered garden

I feel that this vegetable patch is an excellent metaphor for how well I took care of myself this summer. I tried--sort of. I planted my garden in a sunny spot. I got cages for the tomatoes. However, vegetable plants need water. Also they need attention. 

That evergreen rosemary bush is somehow holding strong for its third year now, no thanks to me. Basil, cilantro and tomatoes, not so much. I did harvest maybe 15-20 cherry tomatoes here and there over the course of the summer. They were delicious.

Anyway I had four kids and a house to take care of and the house didn't fare so well either BUT the kids did OK. The garden is a lost cause, which is fine. Homegrown herbs don't pair that well with Easy Mac anyway. The cilantro met its own natural demise sometime in August. Yesterday I sent the emaciated tomato and basil stalks off to their eternal reward with a benevolent snip of the shears.

That's where the metaphor ends, thank goodness. No worries there. But I am struggling. I have talked to my family doctor about it... it's probably a combination of hormones (birth control plus breastfeeding/weaning), the chaos of summer, the chaos of my beloved oldest child, and my reactions towards all of these, which have been the equivalent of ignoring my tomatoes, AKA self-medicating Mormon style which in my case includes treating ice cream like its own food group, going on cookie benders, and staying up way past midnight. 

"There was this one time... we stayed up way past midnight..." Lenny, That Thing You Do? Steve Zahn? Anyone?

I have been super forgetful--way more so than usual. Please don't assign me any tasks, because I will forget about them immediately. I have been super snappy with my husband and kids, WAY more than usual, the zenith of which was an event wherein I threw my husband's favorite hat out the car window at 65 mph. I have not showered about as often as I have showered. At what point is this TMI? Is it the cookie benders? Is it the lack of showering? I don't even know anymore.

So to ward off this mild depression my plan is: getting more sleep, eating less sugar, finding a new therapist because mine moved away (ahem... a year and a half ago), adjusting to the new school year routine, and continuing to ignore my house and yard while I try to focus on the people in them. Including myself.

Thanks for this guy.

Oldie but a goodie! (2005)

Birthday boy and my favorite guy. I am endlessly thankful for Matt. It's a little scary sometimes if I think too hard about how much my life is wrapped up in one person. But it's been that way for almost 14 years now (12 officially) and I've never once looked back. I've never needed to and never wanted to. In times like these, when I'm at a loss for words, the best I can do is let Bey take over.

"In the darkest night hour, I search through the crowd. Your face is all that I see."

If I could wish something for everyone else in the world, it would probably be this: to have someone like Matt to wake up with every morning of their life.

P.S. Dear Matt: sorry I resorted to quoting a Beyonce song. But it had to be done. It was the only way. Happy birthday.

Thanks for my family

Tonight I'm thankful to have all of my kids + my husband under the same roof with me. I appreciate it more than usual when one of us has been away, but I never ever take it for granted. I'm always thankful for this.

It's the end of a decade

I'm VERY glad to be going through life next to this guy. Isn't it weird how we're just...doing that? Just being married with three kids, in a house paying bills and scraping wads of gum out of couch cushions? Like "poof, here's your life"? That's what it feels like sometimes. In a good way. Thanks, Matt, for the best ten years of my life. Also known as a third of my life. Being that I was a child bride. Also I'm sorry that you didn't know you were in for a ten-year-plus pirate ride. Also I'm glad we memorialized the cake-picture photobomber forever. No idea who that is.

Thanks for Matt.

I love this snapshot from 2005. 2005 was a fun year for us.

Click on the labels "Matt" or "marriage" and you'll see the many times I have gushed about my favorite guy. Today is his birthday, which is why I have waited 21 long days to make him the topic of a thanks post.

Next month Matt and I are celebrating 10 years of marriage. Isn't that wild? (probably not to you old-timers ;) I met him 12 years ago, when I was 18, and that seems like a lifetime ago. Sometimes when I think of random pre-Matt memories I actually automatically imagine him as being there, part of it. Does that make any sense? It seems weird that I had a whole life without him before 2002.

I wrote a post once about Matt called "Declaration of Dependence." (As I found just now when clicking through "Matt" labels.) I am a feminist and think a woman should be able to survive and even thrive without a man. But then again, there is something so freeing about being with someone like Matt. Ultimately, I put him before all other people in my life, which is what I agreed to do when we got married and what I'm happy to do. With someone who was controlling or anxious or lazy or jealous or jerky, that could be a problem. But he is and always has been completely supportive, motivating, engaged, interested, completely laid-back about letting me be me and at the same time encouraging me to improve myself and helping lift me to a higher level. (So I guess maybe he's a feminist too. Maybe you should put that on your resume, Matt.) Marjorie Hinckley once famously said to her husband, "You have always given me wings to fly, and I have loved you for it." That's Matt. We are different from each other in so many ways, but he has never made me feel like less of a person for those differences; always the opposite. And I have to say I feel the same way about him. I couldn't love anyone more.

Nine Years

This song has been in my head all week. Happy anniversary (2 days ago) to my favorite guy.

Camping is for the birds.

I haven't written about this because...well, mostly because it's kind of embarrassing, at least the first story is. But my mom advised me to write my two recent camping experiences down so that I don't forget them. She's right. So here they are. Kind of long but what else would you expect from me?

So, the weekend. Had you ever heard of a derecho? I hadn't. Apparently weather forecasters didn't see it coming. I didn't.

Within about 12 hours we went from this

to this

to this

--playing with glow sticks in the tub at home during the 2-day power outage. Pinterest to the rescue. Glow sticks are also helpful to place on the basement coffee table at night when children are afraid to sleep in the "pinch-black" basement which is the only cool place in the house.

We were lucky, by the way, only to lose it for 2 days. Some friends I talked to yesterday still didn't have power. Some still don't have it today. IT IS SO HOT not to have A/C today.


So, the story has a backstory. Remember how we went camping in a tornado last month without Matt? ...okay, there were tornadoes around us but we weren't actually in one. But anyway. Basically we--meaning Hannah and I--completely ignored the weather report which called for "scattered T-storms" during the night, and we drove 3ish hours to Assateague Island. The afternoon was beautiful. As evening came on, we set up our tent in a drizzle, then I lay awake while our tent blew this way and that way, weighed down only by me and my sleeping children. It started raining just before dark and pretty much didn't stop pouring until about 4 a.m. I wanted to leave but by the time I decided that, it was too late. It was raining too hard and our car was too far away.

I had put a tarp under the tent, which I now know is a bad idea, because a half inch of water seeped into our tent. So the older kids, who were on the floor, got soaked. Lucky Lars was in the Pack'n'Play and slept through the whole thing. I think he was lulled to sleep, after a good half hour of heartily indignant crying, by the sound of the wind and rain. Anyway so the kids woke up wet sometime after midnight and got on the air mattress with me. Of course I was then soaked as well and we were all freezing. Dear Robbie went in the rain to the car, which was parked a 2-minute walk away, and brought us towels, and we slept until 5:30 a.m., at which point we ate a breakfast of "cold s'mores" and got the heck outta there. Lars slept almost the entire 5-hour drive home and the kids and I listened to Ramona the Pest...twice. Ten days later I had finally finished unpacking and doing all the laundry--camping unpacking is no joke.

Also, if you forgot, Matt was in Brazil during this time, texting me pictures of Cristo Redentor and the romantic beaches of Rio.

The funny thing is I kind of felt like a child afraid of the dark that long night. Like someone needed to put glow sticks on the table next to me, perhaps. I couldn't sleep, I was lonely, it was dark and cold, the wind was loud, the lightning was frequent, the tent was shaking a lot, and I felt like it would never end. Eventually it did. Robbie and Hannah helped a lot via text. How awesome is it that I could text them all night while I was shivering in my tent? It made it so much less lonely. Hannah even offered to come in my tent with me, although she wouldn't have fit on the mattress with Ida and Theo and me. But it was so good to have others there when I didn't have Matt.

Anyway, so we had a chance to make up for the Assateague debacle by going camping with friends (and Matt this time) in the mountains near Roanoke. We left at 8 p.m. on Thursday, rolled into the site at 11ish, slept OK in our new big tent, then spent the entirety of the hot, sweaty Friday at the lake. It was awesome. 100 degrees of awesome.

After dinner, Lars treated us to another half an hour of indignant crying in the Pack'n'Play--not that I blame him because it was seriously so hot. But it was about 8 p.m., he normally goes to bed at 6:30 and had missed both of his naps. I had tried holding him, rocking him, walking him, but he cried no matter what, so I stripped him to his diaper and put him in the Pack'n'Play, knowing that at least in there he could fall asleep eventually. Matt took the kids for a walk and our friends Jason and Mackie and their older kids stayed at the site with me eating s'mores.

Lars was finally quiet and we took a little walk ourselves in the other direction, to look at fireflies in the dusk. The lakeside campground had 13 sites, almost all occupied, close together and wooded. We hadn't gotten far when we passed a man at another site who looked up at the sky above the woods west of us and said, "That is looking pretty dark." I looked up and saw dark gray clouds moving toward us but wasn't worried--just a little annoyed and wondering where the rain fly to my tent was. Then the trees started rustling in a seriously spooky way and the wind picked up fast and loud. It sounded like thunder but worse, and trees started falling nearby. People ran to their cars and I turned around and booked it toward my tent and my baby. I pulled a sleepy diapered Lars from his crib and jumped in my car...looked around...no car keys. Matt was nowhere to be seen and it was way too scary outside for me to be walking around with a baby. Lars climbed all over me as I sat in the driver's seat, tried not to hyperventilate, and prayed about 50 times in a row for Matt and the kids' safe return.

Jason and Mackie had booked it to their own tent, grabbed their own sleeping baby, and piled into their own car. When I saw them drive up, I joined them and asked if they had seen Matt. Jason to the rescue hopped on his bike and went to look for them in the storm. It seemed like forever but was probably only about 5 minutes before he came back and told me he'd found them.

Matt got the kids into the car and shoved as much stuff from our site into our car as he could. We caravaned toward the exit, but the road out was blocked by fallen trees. We drove back to a semi-clear spot and waited out the rain, watching the long line of stopped cars on the road across the lake and waiting for about an hour until crews arrived and slowly cleared the trees. The storm had hit at about 8:30 and we left at 11 p.m. We had planned to spend another night but I was way too spooked and everything in our tent was soaked anyway--I had left the rain fly off because of the heat, planning to put it on if it started raining, not thinking that a storm would come up severe enough that our first thought would be to our safety and not our stuff.

And that was that. The first time we camped, I was so mad at myself for going despite the weather report. I didn't really think anything could happen to us, but I was afraid anyway. It was such a long night and it was completely my fault for being there. The second time, I think we probably couldn't have predicted the storm since the weather forecasters couldn't either, but my neighbor pointed out later that such prolonged hot and humid weather had to break at some point and that could have been a warning sign.

I was truly afraid that something could happen to Matt and the kids, who were out in the open and surrounded by trees, and he had been afraid for Lars and me as well. But it all worked out fine and we were all safe. In the confusion I lost my wedding ring and it was missing until the next afternoon, but I didn't even really care because we were all together. Now that we're all unpacked, I'm missing my bathing suit and Lars and Theo's suits which is sort of annoying, but they're not wedding rings and they're certainly not people so they don't matter either. Every time I have been annoyed thinking about the lost suits I remember the ring and then remember how afraid I had been, alone with Lars in the car. It's all just stuff. Even a wedding ring is just stuff. I have loved Matt for a very long time but I don't know if I ever loved him as much as I did when I saw him coming back from his walk with the kids in the storm.

So there's my very long story, or two stories. We made it out of the mountains eventually, driving around dozens of fallen trees and barely keeping awake with lots of junk food and soda on the long drive home. We didn't know the same storm had hit our town and surrounding towns and that we had such interesting and hot days ahead of us. We pulled in at 3 a.m. Saturday to a quiet and very dark neighborhood. A large branch which had broken and flown over from a tree fifty feet away covered our front lawn. We have a brand-new tent but I don't think we will be using it for a while. Would the third time be the charm, or do bad things happen in threes? I'm really not curious enough to find out.

"The Gift"

A few months ago I took a self-defense class which I loved and which got me interested in learning more. The teacher recommended The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals that Protect Us from Violence by Gavin de Becker, and so a few weeks ago I finally checked it out from the library. I loved it! Then last week I read Protecting the Gift: Keeping Children and Teenagers Safe (and Parents Sane) by the same author, which is basically the same stuff (several repeated stories, actually) but geared toward parents.

They cover some very tough topics, namely violence in general, domestic abuse, and sexual assault. But I still really recommend that all women read The Gift of Fear and all parents read Protecting the Gift. I feel like I learned a lot, and I actually do feel less afraid or at least less worried/anxious than I have in the past. The main points I took away from the books were these:

1-If an instinct comes to me, I should explore it. Where did it come from? It's there for a reason. (De Becker posits with some amusement that women are generally more likely to accept their intuition as valid than men are. In the cases that men do favor intuition over logic, they call it a "gut feeling.")

2-I never have to do anything that makes me or Matt feel uneasy, and Matt and I will trust each other if only one of us feels uneasy. That especially includes choices we make for or about our kids. I will do anything to keep them safe and that may sometimes include choices that seem illogical or embarrassing but are in line with intuition. It's more than OK to face a few awkward moments in exchange for the possibility of wishing in the future that I had made a different choice. My kids are entitled to those same rights, and if they seem uneasy about something I will find out why. Societal and peer pressure are not real forces that we are physically compelled to obey.

3- "I am capable of what every other human is capable of. This is one of the great lessons of war and life." - Maya Angelou (The Gift of Fear, 42) In the context of this topic, it's helpful to think this way about violence because I'm less likely to be a victim of a crime I can imagine happening, than something I don't expect or think I need to prepare for. Every "bad deed," even the worst ones, starts with a "bad thought," and everyone has those. I'm not as different from criminals as I wish I were. We're all humans, and many criminals don't really look like criminals.

I'm impressed by de Becker's writing skills. He is a very good storyteller and makes excellent use of figurative language and imagery. (My favorite use of imagery, while my least favorite story, was a very effective metaphor about the principal of an elementary school hypothetically presiding over an imaginary school assembly in the chapter about school violence in The Gift of Fear.)

I don't mind that he repeated some of his stories in the second book--I expected that and skimmed as needed.

Some quotes from the books with my intro in italics:

I love this: Each person has his own perspective, his own reality, no matter how much it may differ from ours. As historian James Burke explains: 'All that can accurately be said about a man who thinks he is a poached egg is that he is in the minority.' (The Gift of Fear, 96-97)

A metaphor for the lasting effects of child abuse on children: When young, [circus elephants] are attached by heavy chains to large stakes driven deep into the ground. They pull and yank and strain and struggle, but the chain is too strong, the stake too rooted. One day they give up, having learned that they cannot pull free, and from that day forward they can be "chained" with a slender rope. When this enormous animal feels any resistance, though it has the strength to pull the whole circus tent over, it stops trying. Because it believes it cannot, it cannot. (TGoF, 228)

Here the author is talking about social programs for needy children, but I have to remind myself of this even in my own family--that my kids aren't just an extension of me: We [need to] take an entirely different view of children, not as temporary visitors who will someday grow into citizens, but as full-fledged, fully contributing, fully entitled members of our society just as they are right now. (TGoF, 229)

Why we worry: Daniel Goleman concludes that worrying is a sort of "magical amulet" that some people feel wards off danger. They believe that worrying about something will stop it from happening. He also correctly notes that most of what people worry about has a low probability of occurring, because we tend to take action about those things we feel are likely to occur. This means that very often the mere fact that you are worrying about something is a predictor that it isn't likely to happen!
The relationship between real fear and worry is analogous to the relationship between pain and suffering. Pain and fear are necessary and valuable components of life. Suffering and worry are destructive and unnecessary components of life. ...
When worrying, ask yourself, "How does this serve me?" and you may well find that the cost of worrying is greater than the cost of changing. To be freer of fear and yet still get its gift, there are three goals to strive for. They aren't easy to reach, but it's worth trying:
1) When you feel fear, listen.
2) When you don't feel fear, don't manufacture it.
3) If you find yourself creating worry, explore and discover why. (TGoF, 287)

Examining and exploring worries as they come: Is worry an intuitive signal? In a roundabout way, it can be. That's because what we choose to worry about, however bad, is usually easier to look at than some other less palatable issue. For this reason, a good exercise when worrying is to ask yourself, What am I choosing not to see right now? Worry may well be distracting you from something important. (Protecting the Gift, 55)

Explore every intuitive signal, but briefly and not repetitively. When faced with some worry or uncertain fear, ask yourself: Am I responding to something in my environment or to something in my imagination? Is this feeling based on something I perceive in my circumstance, or merely something in my memory? (PtG, 56)

A silly but effective exercise: Each time you have a worry, define when you expect the dreaded outcome to occur, and mark it down on a calendar. Imagine you are worried that your daughter will be harmed while attending college in the big city. When? In a year, a month, a week, later today? Imagine you choose a week. Write it down, and when that milestone passes without incident, make note of that too. Record these failed predictions for a year, or until you are too embarrassed to keep doing it, whichever comes first. (PtG, 56)

Have you read these? I'd love to chat about them if you have. Lots of food for thought.

Back to school

Theo went back to school this week. This was simultaneously the fastest and longest summer of my life. When I look back, it was definitely the fastest. Then again as we were in it, the days seemed very long...probably because they were so mixed up with nights.

Theo's first day of school was Tuesday, so on Monday night for Family Home Evening Matt gave the older kids father's blessings to start off the school year. (Ida is going to do joy school with three of her little friends, similar to the play school they did last year.) When we explained the concept to them, Theo and Ida thought it was hilarious, since their most recent encounter with a blessing was Lars's baby blessing. I think they maybe thought Matt was going to hold them like a baby or something...anyway, we asked Theo to bring over a chair. I thought he would get one from the dining room table but he brought over a kid-sized one from their little play table. For some reason that tugged at my heart. Surprisingly, they were able to hold in their giggles during the blessings. He and Ida both looked so small and so sweet as they took turns sitting in the tiny blue chair, folding their arms and closing their eyes and sitting quietly as their strong and loving dad promised them comfort and new experiences and happiness and growth during the coming year.

Years rushed backwards past me as I remembered so many nights before each first day of school when I was a kid, when my own dear dad gave me and my brothers and sisters each a father's blessing. Then the night before I went to college and back again for 4 years; the night before I went to Europe for a semester; the night before I married Matt. I know I am only 28 but my life has been so good. I can only hope that my kids can know the wide range of emotions, but mostly joy and love, that I have known in my short life so far. I think they are on their way.

August

I love August. I even love its name, so much that Matt and I considered it as a name for our baby boy until we realized how many newborn Augusts there are out there lately at least on blogs. When I read for the 5th time "HIS NAME IS AUGUST AND WE CALL HIM GUS!" we ditched it. Still a cute name even if he'd have to be August S. forever. But he's Lars anyway so it doesn't matter. Larsy parsy pudding and pie.

Anyway back to August the month: I love summer but I also love the transition into fall. I love that this fall I have NO MORNING SICKNESS. (last fall I thought I could never enjoy fall again. I still haven't eaten anything pumpkin flavored since last October.) I love looking forward to school starting. I love back-to-school shopping. I love picking peaches and blackberries. I even love finally putting BYU's football schedule in my calendar, because Matt loves BYU football so much. I love that 8 years ago this month, Matt and I got engaged. After a BYU football game actually, I think! Well, technically the day after. I love being married to Matt and could never imagine or want any other life. Being married is great even if it does mean sharing a bathroom with a boy.

Happy August.

I was looking for this below image of Matt and me, but can't find the file, so here is a video I made a few years ago. Or just look at the thumbnail. This is Bear Lake 2003, around the time we got engaged. Good times.