10 Years!

10 years ago today two tiny little kids got married. Despite my dad saying "absolutely not" the first time Kevin asked to marry his little girl, Kevin said I do and gave me his name. Despite his mother not approving of how I treated her baby boy, and wishing her son would marry anyone else in the world, I said I do and gave Kevin my forever.

On that day I stood at the alter in my white dress, makeup done and hair piled in curls with a little tiara, and felt immensely excited at the fairy tale I was living. I had my own tiny apartment waiting to be decorated, a honeymoon in Florida waiting to be experienced, and happily ever after wrapped with dozens of other gifts in the lobby. I was completely and totally in love!

 A few months later we argued about whose family we would spent 4th of July with, and then we argued over which house to buy, and then we argued over which family to be with at Christmas, and then we argued over which families advice to take or ignore, and then we got pregnant before we planned, and then we realized our already small income got smaller when half of it was used to buy diapers, and that tires didn't last forever. We realized Friday nights would now be spent watching Barney instead of going to the movies.

We watched a few incredibly hard years go by, and at the end of every one we were pleasantly surprised that we had lasted through! Our friends lost bets on when it would end, and the neighbors braced for another year.

Then one day we woke up and realized that forever was here even if it didn't hold tiaras and happily ever after every day. Even if we had more poopy diapers than money and some raised eyebrows at our unconventional life.

 Dear Kevin in a tux standing at the alter 10 years ago: joking about PMS is not funny after 3500 jokes. Yes, different shoes for every outfit is absolutely necessary. Buying tampons is most certainly part of your job description.Christmas music in July is not weird. A 5 hour shopping trip where nothing but socks was purchased, is indeed a successful trip! If she says nothings wrong, you have totally screwed something up! Drinking the apple pie instead of eating it when it wouldn't thicken and then complimenting her, is exactly why she married you! Holding her hand while she cried because even your pants wouldn't fit over her pregnant belly, is one of the most honorable things you will do. Laughing until tears run down your face with her is going to be one of her favorite memories. Listening to the things that get on her nerves even though you don't have the slightest idea why such silly things even matter, makes you prince charming. Sticking through the hardest years of your life by her side is the best form of commitment you could have. Being yours is what she wants to be the more than anything else!

 Dear Shelly in a white dress and tiara: It doesn't matter what anyone thinks about you! If you keep trying to be what everyone wants you to be, you will most definitely go crazy, and he married you for who you are, so be that! Fishing is a serious thing and asking him to go home an hour before planned is like leaving before the kissing part of the chick flick! Jokes about the record setting losses by the Colorado Rockies is not even close to funny. He will never ever shut the closet door! He really will always figure out the percentage of milk left, the percentage of the road trip left, and the percentage of diapers he's changed. If he says nothings wrong, nothings actually wrong. He loves you with his whole heart, and even if he didn't hold your hand in the car today, it doesn't mean he loves you any less. No matter what you will face in life, he will face it with you! If you laugh at the frustrating inconveniences of life, he'll laugh with you and you'll have a memory instead of a fight. He's proud to call you his!

 Life doesn't look anything like I imagined it would ten years ago at the alter. I couldn't have imagined this kind of adventure and love and loyalty! I couldn't have imagined how incredibly hard the hard days would be and how they would shape us into an even better couple than I had originally planned. I couldn't imagine the surprises along the way, or the change in plans being the best things to ever happen, but they are.

I can only imagine where the next 10 years will take us, and I am sure I will look back at this day and laugh about how little I knew of what all we would become. I can't wait!

On the Road Again

People ask us all the time how we make so many road trips with all 4 of our kids. Well we recently decided to move to Florida, America's vacation destination, and live in a house big enough fo company; apparently we aren't as fond of the road trips as we appear to be.

Yesterday we were driving back from visiting my family in NC. It was a great weekend and we are so thankful for the 8 hour trip after driving 24+ hours one way over the last 7 years to see my family.

Everyone must have been suffering from PMS, because there was a lot of grouchy little faces in that van!

We made a pee stop because Caleb couldn't hold it a second longer. We got back on the interstate and literally 5 minutes down the road he was crying that he had to go number 2 now! (From the tears squeezing out his eyes and his panicked expression, we knew this was not a drill)

Someone, not going to name names here as that would just be rude, (NOT ME) suggested just putting him in a pull-up in the interest of saving a little time. We were hoping to stop in the next hour or so for supper and  it didn't seem economical to stop before that just use the bathroom AGAIN.

I helped him into a pull-up and settled back in my seat pleading with my oldest to stop asking me questions about how many planets there were, and what quantum physics was, and
how many presidents there were.

Finally we got off at the supper exit. We decided on Taco Bell. We pulled up to the drive thru order microphone and after arguing and changing minds and realizing we needed to also order Liam food, we placed our order. The lady came on and informed us that they were out of cheese, tomatoes and flat bread. Well at Taco Bell that pretty much limits your options to, well, a drink! We sat there for another 20 minutes discussing everything that had tomatoes and cheese in it, explaining that Taco Bell didn't make corn dogs, saying no to requests of 30 orders of cinnamon twists, ordering and reordering before I realized when I looked back at Caleb, that his seat was full of what he had filled his diaper with. I started gagging and reminded Kevin one more time to ask them to keep the re-fried beans OFF my burrito.
After we got our food we pulled into a parking spot to try and clean up the horrendous mess in the backseat with half of a package of wet wipes. We did rock paper scissors to decide who got the seat and who got Caleb, glared at each other as the stress level rose with the smell, and then got out of the van. We were viciously attacked by loud buzzing weird fly things, dive bombing at our heads!
Of course we were parked in a spot smack in front of the wall of windows of the restaurant and in front of a very busy street!
I started screaming and swatting at the flies. I lost my balance and to regain it without pummeling into the hard asphalt, I started taking awkward hops across the parking lot. I am terrified that a fuzzy cell phone video staring me and my little dance could surface on youtube! My older boys stared horrified at their screaming momma, ducking in their seats hoping that no one would see them. I don't think Kevin knew whether to hide too or throw poopy wipes at me, and poor stark naked Caleb started wailing that the flies were going to get him next. We were pretty impossible to miss in that moment.
It took a little while but eventually we were all in our seats again, nasty, cold, fast food handed out and headed down the interstate.
I took a huge bite of my burrito and started gagging. I had beans and orange sauce dripping onto my white T-shirt. I started motioning to Kevin to unlock the windows so I could roll mine down! he was very sympathetic, "No! No! Not on the van!!"
70 miles cruising through Georgia hanging out the window, I might surface on youtube yet again only this time I was trying to rid my body of every single bit of re-fried mush that had the same consistency and color of the mess I had just cleaned up!!
It was deathly quiet in the van for a little while, each of us traumatized by all that we had witnessed. I was eating my third little bag of fruit snacks that was now my supper, when I was suddenly struck with how crazy I must have looked flapping all over that parking lot with flies swarming me and I started laughing so hard we had to make another pee stop!
And that s how we do road trips! Anyone wanna come along???

Inspiration

So many times I will be facing a hard situation or an especially trying day and I will feel discouraged and frustrated. Its not always easy to remember how thankful I am for my life. I have gone through intensely trying times, and coming through them and looking back, I can say in all honesty that I am thankful for those time; that had it not been for those times, I wouldn't be who or where I am today.

I have been privileged to live life by some amazing and inspiring women who have given me a glimpse of how incredible hardship can be turned into one of the best things that ever happened!

My friend Kristen found out that her fourth baby was growing inside of her without legs or one of his arms. She could have done what a lot of people have done and decided to end her pregnancy and try again for a fourth family member, but she courageously chose to welcome her little blessing into her life fully trusting on God to provide and use this situation. Dylan just turned one, and you can't help but smile when you see his precious face. He is an incredible addition to this earth, and his mother and the rest of his family are amazing people for accepting the honor of being called his!

Check out their blog:
http://courageouslyenabled.blogspot.com

 A woman recently wrote to me about her story and asked if I would be willing to share about an incredible experience and probably the hardest thing any mother could face. Heather was diagnosed with cancer when her little girl was only 3 months old and she was given only 15 months to live. 

Her incredible perseverance and positivity saved her life, and gave her little girl her mommy back!

Her story is a testament to the power mom's have within themselves, and she is definitely an inspiration!

Check out her website!

http://www.mesothelioma.com/heather

My friend Carrie has been a friend of mine since high school. She got married around the same time I did and had kids around the same time I did. Her daughter proudly announces that she will be marrying Caleb some day! Carrie and her family are very very dear to us! At the beginning of the year her sweet baby Jackson, who she had been carrying for only 15 short weeks, went to be with Jesus. She was able to hold her baby weighing only ounces and see the incredible miraculous formation of a tiny human and has used that experience to share with the world no matter how tiny a human, a life is still a life. She has shared her story with men's groups, teenagers and singles and is excited about being used to share how incredibly precious life is.

Her family is participating this week in the Walk for Life, and if you want to sponsor them you can here!

http://www.ministrysync.com/event/website/?m=1336869

I love being inspired to be all I can be by watching other people be all they can be! I hope you were inspired as well!!

We Are Still Alive!

We are now residents of Florida! I gotta admit, we are loving it! We are learning lots of new things! Things like, we should probably make sure each kid has a bathing suit that fits if we plan on spending any time at the beach!

Things like, we gotta stop screaming swear words when we see these suckers, because exposing little ears that are learning how to talk to these words 10-15 times a day is going to end up embarrassing!

Things like, always look up when walking in the door!

And of course we are learning the best spots for relaxing after dinner are only a few minutes away!!

May 10th found us loading up our stuff until late at night. We ended up having to rent a trailer to haul a wall of boxes full of Kevin's entire kindergarten art work collection, his 4th grade baseball collection, and some questionably purchased CD's from decades ago so that we could drag this stuff over endless miles and then throw them away in a Florida dumpster. Kevin tends to keep everything, not excluding his pocket lint from his first day of 7th grade, and I tend to chuck anything not nailed down. As we were packing, Kevin was asking me where certain items were. "Hey Shell, where's the remote to the TV?" "Um I thought it was broken, and I threw it away." "Hey Shell, have you seen a bag of cords?" "Yeah, I didn't know what they went to so I threw them out!" "Hey Shell, I can't find my car keys!" "Oh I thought those were to the car you had five cars ago. I threw them in the trash."

Kevin discovered on the trip that took three very long and grueling and many pee stop filled days, that a woman doesn't need to be sitting in your passenger seat to help you drive!

I drove behind him in my mini-van, with a teething baby, a dog in heat, and lots of teeny tiny little bladders, and he led the way with the monster truck and no backseat fist fights. I would notice that his tire had crossed the little white line on the side of the road and freak out. Grabbing my cell phone I hit re-dial from when I had called him 1.3 minutes earlier.

"What's wrong??" "Nothing! Why?" "Your all over the road!!" "No I'm not! You try driving this big of a truck while looking at Facebook and see if you don't go over the line a few times!"

It was a rather.....bonding experience!

The second night, Kevin decided we needed to get through Atlanta before stopping. I was exhausted and it was dark and I had listened to the same Backyardigans movie 34 times through! 8 lanes of traffic full of cars going at least 20 miles per hour over the speed limit, my limited knowledge of the fine city of Atlanta from what I had seen on "Cops", and being flipped off 3 times, and a steady rain of bugs obstructing my view through my windshield, finally broke me. I called Kevin sobbing and begging for a hotel room. NOW!

But we finally reached the Florida line!! 

We are getting settled in and discovering scenic routes to get home from the store, and wiping a few tears at night when we miss our friends in Colorado. Overall I have nothing but gratitude for how well things are going. Adjustment has been smooth, though I am sure we are not even near done adjusting. As mom's we are always adjusting though right? I am definitely excited to see what this new chapter has in store for us, and I hope you all know that I am more than serious when I ask you to come visit!! We would love to share our little piece of paradise with you!!