7 Years!

We’re all a little weird. And life is a little weird. And when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall into mutually satisfying weirdness–and call it love–true love.

Happy Anniversary to us! Yesterday Gil & I celebrated 7 years of marriage. In the morning we went to the zoo with Mason and then ate outside at MBrew. It was sooooo hot at the zoo, so it was a good thing we got there in the morning.

Water Break!

In 7 years, Gil and I have learned a lot about marriage. It's funny thinking back to our wedding day. We were so young and naive and really had very few expectations. I think it's hard to understand what marriage is until you're in it. 

The image of marriage that I usually see is the glossed over, perfect couples on tv or in movies. That's definitely not real life. Gil and I are not perfect and our marriage is not perfect. Sometimes it's really easy and sometimes it's really hard. But I love that we keep choosing to work on it together. 

I think the most important thing I have learned so far is that communication can make or break a couple. For a long time, I thought I was perfect at this. Surprise, surprise, I am not and often I have to humble myself to my imperfections, which isn't easy.

I've also learned that it's so important to make room for each other to grow and change in the relationship. The person you start out with is not the person you will find yourself with 7 years down the road. Keep falling in love with that person, whoever it may be. 

Through all our ups and downs, I'm really proud of our marriage and where we are today. Can't wait to see where the future will bring us...

Sleep? What's that!?

Just taking a second to check in so I can remember this period of my life. Otherwise, it'll all be a sleep deprived blur!

Mason will be 5 months old on Monday and he's so so fun and adorable. He's learning new things and seems more like a real little person each day. That being said, he is terrible at sleeping! Ha! Just being honest.

From the get go, he hasn't been a great sleeper but it's getting harder everyday. Maybe it's the four month sleep regression everyone talks about...I'm wondering how long it'll last!

It's super hard to get him down for naps lately and once he actually falls asleep, it's 30 minutes tops. I'm hoping this truly is a phase he will get through. I never imagined that sleep would be so hard for a baby but he sure knows how to fight it. He definitely has not learned how to get past the first sleep cycle and how to fall back asleep without help yet. I tease Gil that Mason inherited his stubbornness. Gil claims he got it from me. Maybe he got a double dose. :)

Yesterday Gil and I celebrated our 6th wedding anniversary. We had such a fun day. We did some projects around the house in the morning. Gil changed all the light fixtures in the upstairs bedrooms and hallway (I helped minimally). I'm so happy all the ugly ceiling fans are outta there!

Then in late afternoon, the three of us headed to a new brewery, Griffin Claw, we hadn't tried before. It had an awesome outdoor eating area for summer and reminded me of Brewery Vivant in GR. If you go, try the fried pickles. They were delish. After dinner, we headed to RO to get dessert at Astoria Bakery, per our anniversary tradition. We walked around for a while and then we took a drive by our old house. It was a fun, low-key evening.

Looking at Daddy at dinner

The night before we enjoyed our last bottle of wedding wine!

Can't wait to see what the future brings for us!

An Anniversary & The First Day in My Classroom!

 Before I get to school stuff, I wanted to post a couple of pictures from our anniversary (which was July 26). It was a pretty low-key date because the end of the quarter had been super busy for Gil at work, so it was nice just having time to go out to dinner together.

We wanted to go to a new local restaurant that has gotten really good reviews and looks cool, but we called and the wait was about 2 hours (whoops, should've made reservations)! We ended up going to Bagger Dave's. We're so fancy, haha, not! We tried to get a few pictures before going to dinner, which took a few tries. We also had our "Year 4" bottle of wine from our wedding! I'm so glad we did that instead of a guest book...it's such a fun tradition each year!

There were several like this, while we tried to get the timer right. Ha!

A little blurry, but captured the moment at least!

Happy four years of marriage to us!

Now on to school...Today was my first day going in to work on my classroom. I didn't bring tons of stuff because I had to fit my ginormous easel in the car and that took most of the space. 

Here are some shots from the doorway to give you an idea of the space. This room is definitely smaller than my last classroom, but so much brighter, cleaner, and has AMPLE storage!!

Sink in the corner (Score! I never had water in the room before) and student computers, with some random furniture thrown in.

Shelves across the back and HUGE windows. Love them! Gleaming hardwood floors!

In the corner of the room, you can see the entrance to the Glorious Walk-in Closet. To the left of that is another closet.

Promethean board at the front of the room where I will put my carpet. 

Looking out the door at my stuff waiting to be unloaded!

Out the windows, I have a view of the adorable houses (hard to see through the trees). The school is on a really pretty, quaint street.

A little bit of playground is visible from the windows. 

A shot from inside the Glorious Walk-in closet...it has a little window in it!

Started setting up my classroom library. 

So there you have it, all the before pictures of my classroom. I have tons of work to do and still need furniture! I will update pictures as I start to get things done in the room! Have a great night everyone!

Tapas & Paella

That's what we had for dinner last night...we had some delicious tapas, paella, and sangria for our anniversary dinner. Yum!

Gil kept taking pictures of me while I was getting ready to leave...

Anniversary picture!

We finished out with our typical trip to the pastry shop for dessert. Yes please!

Gil got a peanut butter mud pie and I got carrot cake, of course. I don't know when it happened, but carrot cake has moved into my top two desserts, I think.

Since we got sangria at dinner, we didn't have our Year 3 bottle of wine...savin' it for another day.

Happy Anniversary to Us!

3 years of wedded bliss!

Set to Ingrid Michaelson's "The Way I Am"- Our wedding song!

Two Years!

Happy Anniversary, Husband! Thanks for 2 great years of marriage and 9 years together (wow)!!

One Year!

Senior Prom
As 16 year olds, we had no idea where our high school romance would lead us...


Yesterday, Gil and I celebrated one year of marriage!

I can't believe how fast the past year flew by! With all the house stuff going on, we decided to have a low key day together. We have plenty of years ahead of us to go somewhere fun for an anniversary! We went to dinner in RO and then stopped by Astoria Pastry Shop to grab dessert. Gil got the Black Forest Cake and I got a slice of Carrot Cake. I don't even want to think about the calories! We would've eaten the top layer of our wedding cake, but we devoured that while sitting in a traffic jam on the highway on our way back from Grand Rapids after the wedding!

For those of you who were at our wedding, you'll remember that instead of signing a guest book at the reception, we had 5 bottles of wine for you to write messages on.

Last night, we enjoyed our "1st Anniversary Wine" with the cake! Delish!!! Thanks for all of the Happy Anniversary thoughts we received!

And now the best part:

You can't wait to untie that red string, can you??
Here it comes...

Behold the frosting, chocolate, and carrot cake-y goodness.

I wish it was always our anniversary.