Birthday time

I know I have mentioned it before but one of the things I love is that I now have 2 wonderful children I get to call my own when they are with Rory and I.  Alex and Aurora are at the perfect age to just have fun.  Last year I had a major fail for Aurora's birthday cake. Mostly because the flour that I used for the cake was supposedly very old.  I am not so sure because I haven't attempted to make that cake since then and I didn't save the recipe.  This year, I wasn't about to take my chances on the cake so I took the lazy man's way and used a boxed cake.  While boxed cakes are quick and easy, I still prefer making them from scratch but these are children and they will never know the difference, right?  When I was in culinary school I made my nephew a train cake.  I had a blast making the cake and my nephew LOVED his cake.  It was a cake that my sister and I worked on together.  Later that year my sister told me about her successful attempt at making a princess cake for my niece. I let the inspire me to go ahead and make some fun cakes for the kids this year for their birthday.  I did go to culinary school after all and baking and pastry was my forte.  Aurora wanted a princess cake and Alex wanted a batman cake. 

I borrowed my friends princess bowl kit so I could make the bottom part of the dress.  That's where I got frustrated because I mixed the cake mix and put it in the pan. Problem was, the cake didn't rise as high as I was expecting.  Actually, it barely rose at all.  I wasn't counting on that at all.  (and that's why I choose to  make my cakes from scratch) I went ahead and froze the one I made and decided that I would make another one to see how that worked out.  The bad thing is, my mother in law called me while it was baking and I got side-tracked and forgot about the cake and it burned. Fortunately it didn't matter anyway because it didn't rise any more than the other one.  I decided to make just a standard round cake and let it be a "platform" for the princess to stand on. Of course the dress had to be pink and white.

The next challenge with the cake was the fact that I had less time to make it than I planned on.  The phone call that I received from my mother in law was to ask if we could move the party to that evening instead of the next day.  We were planning on having it at her home and we really didn't have much of a choice at that point.  I said I could make it work and would work on the cake that afternoon and we'd head over after I picked Rory up from work. About 1:00 I started to make the frosting for my cake.  I had the round cake in the oven and the top part of the dress in the freezer.  When the "platform" came out of the oven, I let it cool slightly and then put it on a cooling rack and put it in the freezer to cool it down enough to put a crumb coat on it without the crumbs going all over the place.  I looked at several photos on google of the bodice of the dress and many of them looked like they were made out of fondant.  Since I was making mine completely out of frosting, I had to come up with a way to make it look good.  I couldn't really use a knife or mini off-set spatula because it wouldn't work right.  I decided to use small dots for the entire top half.

Around 2:30 I had to take an hour off and go pick up Alex from school. We got home by 3:30 so I had an hour left before I had to pick up Rory and then head to the party.  The entire time I am decorating the cake.  Aurora is standing on her step stool next to me trying to "help", and eating the frosting off the cake.  I can't count how many times I had to say, "don't touch". Alas, I rushed to the end and managed to complete it before we had to rush out the door.  It certainly was far from perfect but it was with a 4 year old standing next to me and my having to deal with inturruptions, it didn't turn out too bad.

Alex's cake was a whole different story.  I told him I would make him a batman cake.  I looked at google images and decided that I was just going to do the bat logo.  It looked easy enough and I could add a couple other things to make it look cool.  I decided to let Alex look at the pictures on google images and told him he could pick the cake he wanted.  We looked at several.  He liked several tiered cakes and I told him those were too big.  So he looked at the smaller cakes and of course he picks the cake that has the animated batman on the top of the cake.  I didn't want to say no, so that's the cake we stuck with. 

Fortunately, one of the few talents  I have is the ability to look at a picture and sketch it.  It's not always perfect but I can at least get it close and then adjust the lines as needed.  I decided that I would sketch out the cake on paper using the picture as a guide.  The picture had his back hand/arm much smaller than I liked so I drew mine a little larger. It was far from an artist's artwork but it was sufficient for me to look at to make the cake.  The next challenge was to figure out how to get the image onto the cake.  I thought about using wax paper and somehow tracing the image in frosting and then put it on top of the cake but then the image would need to be mirrored to be right on the cake.  That could also have gotten really messy.  Then my friend suggested drawing it with a toothpick on the cake.  I had already been thinking along those lines but her idea was definitely the winner. So, using the picture as a guide, I used the toothpick to draw my lines on the crumb coat.

The next part was the challenge.  I unfortunately only had liquid food coloring.  It works fine when you want a lighter shade of whatever color you are trying to acheive.  The picture of the cake used black, blue, and gray for the colors of his suit.  I was only going to use black which made a challenge for some of my lines.  The other problem with the liquid food coloring is the fact that it's liquid and I am using it in a frosting where you want as little liquid as possible for the frosting consistancy.  The lighter colors were just fine but as soon as you start adding more color to your frosting, you start to look the frosting consistancy.  Rory helped make the frosting while I was decorating with some of the lighter colors.  Eventally he used all the food coloring and I decided it would have to work. I used my small cake spatula to spread the frosting into the smaller corners and the toothpick for the finer details of the logo and his eyes.  For my first attempt at a cake of this sort, it turned out okay, but I am a perfectionist and can see what could have been better.  There is always next time. Alex was happy with it and that's all that matters. 

All About the Dress

About 3 or 4 years ago, I was dating a guy that I thought I may actually want to marry.  I had always thought about what my wedding dress would look like but I had never looked for it.  Around that time, I did some web browsing for pictures and saved them.  When I went home to visit family, I went over to my grandma’s house and we sketched out my wedding dress.  I was planning on having a seamstress make it for me.  I wanted a dress with a dropped waistline and a layered skirt.  I also wanted a square neck with a Queen Anne-like collar.  The biggest challenge about my dress was I wanted to be able to wear it in the temple for the wedding.  I knew that the wedding dresses had to be long sleeved so my plan was to have a slightly longer short sleeve and have a sleeve that attached to it using hook and eyes and have a satin ribbon/bow to cover where the eyes were on the sleeve.  I was happy with my sketch when we were finished.  Unfortunately, I ended up breaking up with the guy I was dating so my sketch went into a box. 

When I got engaged to Rory, I got to start the process all over.  Fortunately, my taste had not changed much and I still had my drawing.  I originally was going to have someone make the dress for me but I decided that was going to be more work that I wanted so I went dress shopping.  I looked at all the dress warehouses and tried on multiple styles of dresses.  I liked the ruffled dresses but there was still something about the simplicity of the layered skirts that I loved.  After I was done dress shopping I knew what I wanted and it was no surprise that it was exactly what I had sketched years earlier.  Problem was, I was on a budget and wasn’t willing to spend $700-$1000 on a dress only to have it altered and spend another several hundred.  During my quest to find a dress I found a alterations shop.  I stopped in to ask them how much they would charge to build up a strapless dress.  They gave me a price quote of $200.

So, I went hunting online.  I found several websites that sold dresses at great deals.  The only problem with online sites is there is no way to tell the quality of the dress you are viewing.  I searched tons of sites and finally decided to bite the bullet and order a dress online.  I found a layered skirt that I loved and a bodice that looked pretty and easy enough to build up.  I could have paid to have it “tailored” to me by giving them my measurements but I opted not to.  Part of me thinks I should have but it all worked out.  I ordered my standard size and put a rush on the order.  I was home when the dress arrived a few weeks later.  It came in an vacuum sealed package so it seemed much smaller than I was expecting.  At first I was slightly disappointed because I didn’t particularly care for the fabric the dress was made out of.  I am sure that if I had paid more attention that I would have expected it.  The dress was made out of white taffeta.  It wasn’t a horrible fabric, I just preferred the silk or a polyester. 

That day I printed out my photo and set out to the tailor to get my dress fixed.  I wasn't really how they were going to accomplish what I wanted but thought a photo of hwat I liked would help.  This is what they had to go off of.  I went to Elegant Reflections in Mesa, AZ.  I found a couple of reviews online about them from a few other LDS brides who said they did an amazing job altering dresses so you couldn’t even tell.  It was the end of December and I need my dress by mid-February.   Surprisingly, the dress fit reasonably well as is.  There were a couple of places where they needed to take it in around the hips and waistline but that could be expected from a dress that was made in China using standard measurements.  I also paid a fraction of the price I would have paid if I bought the dress here locally, even if it was one of the bridal warehouses so I was expecting to have to make some adjustments.  The lady in the shop pinned my dress where they needed to take it in and pinned where I wanted my neckline to start. I was really going on faith at this point in hoping that the woman who was adding to my dress would be able to envision a way to make it look like the dress had always been that way.

The next time I went in for a fitting, I took Jayna, my dad's wife.  It was fun to have her go along and be part of the wedding fun.  It was a very basic fitting to make sure they were putting everything in the right place before they started stitching.  It was a good thing because I told them I wanted butterfly sleeves when I was actually thinking about a tulip sleeve. BIG DIFFERENCE!  I tried the dress on with my shoes and we found that the dress was a perfect length. You cand see where they started to place the the lining. 

I had several fittings after that to make adjustments and make sure everything was progressing like I wanted.  I was so impressed with their work.  The seamstress who was building up my dress was matching the fold pattern on the front on the bodice area to make it look like it flowed all the way up to my neckline.  They left the back plain but matched the pattern on the lace and bead work.  The original zipper on my dress broke and needed to be replaced but it was a simple fix.  The day finally came when it was time to take the dress home.  The only reason why I you could tell that it had been altered was because the dress would sometimes creep up from my moving around.  Otherwise, everything looked like the dress always had sleeves.  I ended spending about $400 on my dress with the alterations.  It was definitely worth it in my opinion. When I think back to my sketch, it's not the same but it follows the same exact idea.

Blogs and newlywed Life

Apparently keeping up with a blog and being a newly wed don't work well together.  It's probably a good thing that I pay more attention to my hubby than my blog but it would be nice to be able to maintain something.  I am going to work on trying to post my wedding life and other events that have happened lately.  I have started several posts but never finished so here we go....

Life Choices

I find it interesting how our choices and the choices of other impact us and others around us.  When I made the decision to marry Rory, I knew that I was getting myself into a challenging situation with his ex-wife and children.  I loved Rory and had the feeling that I was making the right decision by marrying him.  While it was definitely not what I had always planned on for the person whom I was going to marry, I knew that he was what I was looking for in a spouse and that he made me happy.  I have genuinely come to love his children completely and treat them as if they were my own children.  I want nothing more than their happiness.  In observing how Rory’s ex continually challenges him in every aspect is very frustrating for me to watch.  I have seen emails exchanged between them where it seems she doesn’t care what Rory’s opinion is.  She wants to do things her way and only her way, whether or not we (Rory and I) feel it’s best for the kids.  Not too long ago, Rory asked her to remove me from the exasperating email chains in which I was always included in.  When I was included in the email chains, I literally had to restrain myself from sending her an email when she would throw up the brick walls because Rory would disagree with decisions she wanted to make regarding the children. 

It seems there is always something that is being discussing or brought up to cause some sort of disagreement.  The most recent challenge came up last Sunday when she emailed Rory and informed him that she had begun attending a different church she feels better aligns with her personal beliefs.  Because of this, the children will be attending with her when they are with her every other weekend.   She feels that it will give the children a more well-rounded view of religion.  I have difficulty handling this because I don’t see how it will be healthy for the children, especially at their young ages of 3 and 5.  Her church doesn’t believe that heaven and hell are actual places but a state of mind in the here and now.  They don’t believe that Jesus Christ is our Savior and Redeemer.  He is in our “way shower” and Jesus was the perfect example of the Christ in us all.  They do, however, apply his principles and teachings of Truth in their daily living.  They do not believe he is the Son of God; he was filled with the Spirit of God as we all are.  They don’t believe salvation comes after we die. It’s in the here and now we receive salvation as it is a state of being. 

I completely respect other religions and have no problem with a religion that helps someone become a better person, or strive to become a better person using Christ as an example.  However, I don’t like when my children are going to be caught in the middle of two religions.   The things taught between these two religions completely oppose each other.  When children as young as they are have two sets of parents telling them information that are opposite, it will confuse them.  When they get older, if they want to learn about other religions and make the choice on their own, I will fully support them.  I have had religious conversations with friends who do not share the same religious beliefs as I do.  They don't get heated but it's clear where we differ in our beliefs.  It usually comes down to "believe in Christ as our Savior and strive to be more like him".  I know what I know about Jesus Christ and know that there is a purpose in life, which is to return to him after this life. 

There is a positive side to this situation at the current time.  When Rory got divorced, his ex was afraid he would leave the church.   He had been inactive for many years of his marriage and he began going back to church during the divorce.  She wanted to make sure that the children would attend church.  If he chose not to go to church and take the children she wanted to opportunity to take them herself.  It was written into the decree that the children would be raised in the LDS church.  The divorce was his trigger for him finding his testimony and he became a better person because of it.  Rory has continued to take the kids to church even when I am unable to be there because of work.  Hopefully we will be able to work something out so we can take the children to church weekly.

Thinking about this situation, I am reminded about how life choices affect not only yourself but those around us.  If Rory’s ex had not made the choice to get divorced, I would have never met Rory.  If they had not gotten divorced, Rory may not have gone back to church and become who he is now.  If my old roommate Courtney and I had never lived together, I would have never met her mother and she would have never suggested that Rory go on a date with me.  If I hadn’t gone through the struggles that I did many years ago, I may not have had the compassion and love that I have for people now, which is the same compassion I need to care for the children.  We often wonder what life would be like “If I had made a different choice” or “If this had not happened”.  I can’t say that I know where I would be in my life if I hadn’t lost my mom.  I can’t say that I know what would have happened if I said, “I love you” to the boyfriends that I remember being my first experience of love and heartbreak.  I can’t say that if I hadn’t struggled with my testimony that I would still be attending church.  I can say that I am grateful for every heartbreak, feeling of loneliness, and my struggle with what I believed in because I know every single experience has made me who I am today.  If I had not experienced those, I very may well not have met the man who I believe is literally the love of my life.  For that, I couldn’t be more grateful for my life choices and how the choices of other have blessed my life.

My Husband Is So Amazing, Handsome, Sexy, And Other Very Positive Adjectives

I am totally writing this post myself, and Rory did NOT find my iPad still logged in to Blogger.

-Rachel

Who, What, When, Where, Why?

When I got married, I told myself that I was going to get a new job so I could have Sundays off to go to church with Rory.  After the wedding, I had a difficult time actually making that decision because I loved my job.  Even now, I think about the people I work with and the residents that I would not see anymore and I don't want to lose that.  Why do I love my job so much?  I love the relationship that I get to have with the 200 residents that live in my community.  No, I couldn't say that I talk to them all the time and that I have a close relationship with every one of them.  I can say that I remember nearly every ones' name.  There are the handful of residents that have become like family to me.  I love seeing them every day and love saying hello and being able to talk to them.

Over the last couple months, I have been job searching and have realized how much I don't like it.  I don't really know where I want to go next.  I don't particularly want to go back to a job like I had at Insight where I have to make phone calls all day long.  I definitely don't want to go back to the retail industry.  As much as I love cooking, baking, and pastry, I can't go back into a culinary field because it would not be a good move financially.

I had a job interview today for a Urology medical office as a front office personal.  While I am looking for an administrative position, I don't think this would be the field I want to get into.  One of the managers in the interview pointed out that my past 3 jobs have all been completely different and I am again jumping into something completely different.  She is right in a way.  The last 3 jobs I have had have all been in 3 different industries.  The one thing they have in common is the sales and customer service aspect.  For the most part, they have been much slower paced--outside of the holiday time at Helzberg.  I have days where I am busy all day where I am now, and I love it when that happens because my day flies by.  When I think about what I am looking for, I don't know what I want to do.  I  have had plenty of those wonderful life insurance companies calling me telling me how much they think that I would be a good fit for them because of my sales background but I definitely don't want to go there.  I looked at Insight and even applied and interviewed for a position.  I was relieved when I didn't get the job.  Ultimately, I know I want to be able to stay home and take care of my children, but right now that really isn't possible.  We only have the kids half the time and since Rory and I don't have our own children, staying home isn't necessary.  I don't want to take any job that I am offered just so I don't have to work on Sunday.  I want a job I will be happy at.

Quite some time ago, I had a conversation with a friend about life and school.  He asked me what I wanted to do with my life.  I had just finished culinary school or was close to finishing l (I can't remember which) and we were discussing what I was going to do when I was done with the degree.  My plans were to go to ASU or BYU and get my nutrition degree and a business degree.  We talked about what I wanted to do with the degree and then he asked me, "If you could do anything your wanted and money wasn't a factor, what would you want to do?"  I knew the answer right away.  I wanted to help people.  Any and every degree I have thought about or looked at involved helping people in some way.  I was a Music Therapy major at ASU.  I think fondly back to the semesters when I had my clinical coursework and got to work with people using my music therapy.  I remember thinking about going into counseling because I wanted to help people with their problems.  I wanted to get my nutrition degree to help people get healthy and gain a better opinion of themselves.  If money wasn't an issue, I would help people.  So, why is it so hard for me to find a new job?

I guess in my mind, if  I leave where I am at now, I should be going to a place where I feel that I can help people.  I already feel that I am able to help people where I work now and make a difference the their lives. I know that the very definition of what my community does as a whole is help better the lives of our seniors to make their final years just as important as their younger years.  I guess I feel that if I resort to my old sales job at Insight or working in a doctor's office as a front office personal, I am not really doing what I really want to with my life.  I want to be that person someone else talks about when they say, "This person changed my life."

Why? I don't know. I think it's because there have been people out there that literally changed my life.   It wasn't just one person, but an army of people that made me feel that I was important when I was feeling down about myself.  So, I want to make sure I pass that onto someone else.  I think I mentioned before that I have always been the person that my friends felt that they could confide in.  They knew I wouldn't judge them our think less of them for any decision they made. I love people and truly believe that everyone is important and has a purpose in life.  Every one deserves a chance to be loved and understood.  So, who could I possibly work for that I can reach out to people and help them?

Things to say

I was thinking today, I haven't logged into my blog for quite some time.  Partly because, when I am home I'd rather pay attention and spend time with Rory than write a blog post that could take an hour-although, I could do it while he is working in the evening.  I couldn't do anything from my work computer until now because it had an older outdated version of IE that the blog site didn't really support.  They just updated IE to be compatible with a new CRM tool that we are supposed to be using, so I can can post from work with no compatibility issues.  Granted, with as busy as I am during the week, it doesn't happen very often that I am able to easily take time out of my work day to write a post.  (except for Sunday when there is nothing going on and I am just passing the time along because I already got everything done I needed to do)

That being said, it made me wonder what the real reason was behind my ability to be consistant in maintaining anything that required writing or some sort.  The thought occured to me-it doesn't matter whether it's my journal or a blog, I don't want to just write about nothing.  I have the typical life everyone else has - work and home.  Outside of going to work each day and going home each day, not much exciting happens in my life.  I guess that's why each entry I have in my journal seems to be about boys.  I dated plenty of boys over the last 9-10 years but apparently, those in particular caused me to do some serious thinking and I needed to get my thoughts out somehow.  Which is the reason why the last entry was just after Rory and I got engaged, with a few entries being done before and after that. As for the other major events over that time frame, I have no idea.  Today I thought, "what in the world do I have to say that would be even remotely interesting?"  This obviously isn't a "journal" for me and I don't ever intend it to be.  I do like talking about things that do happen and how interesting I find them or how different it is from the life that I am used to.

Last week Rory heard back from the courts regarding the children.  It's been a very interesting long haul.  They found it appropriate for us to adopt his partenting plan of 5-2-2-5, meaning we have the children every Monday, and Tuesday, and every other Friday-Sunday.  Last weekend was our first weekend following this new said schedule which means we had the kids for 5 days.  We had already talked about how we would care for the children since he and I both work.  It worked out that since I am currently off on Friday, I took care of them that day.  This wasn't my first time taking care of children in an all day situation.  I have done this several times for a friend I worked for.  She and her husband would need to go out of town for an entire weekend and I would take care of her 4 children while they were gone.  Friday was fairly uneventful.  I took Alex to summer camp in Phoenix and went grocery shopping with Aurora.  All the while she is saying, "I want to go places" and "I want to go home".  How did my mother ever go shopping with all of us kids??? The weekend passed quickly, although it was strange that they were with us for so long.  Because of the holiday this past week, I was able to take Monday off to take care of them again. Then Tuesday morning they went back to their mom.  I had a great time with the kids and I love it when they are with us.  I also LOVE getting the opportunity to sleep in a little later than normal when we don't have the kids with us.

This weekend Rory is home with no kids and I am working all weekend.  I am not sure he knows what he is going to do with no one around the house.  It will be interesting to see how he feels by the end of Sunday. 

Maybe I will make dinner in the crock pot for Sunday, that way when I get home from work, we can both have dinner.  I have a culinary degree and I don't cook dinner nearly as much as I would like.  Partially because I feel so confined in my kitchen.  It's frustrating.  I had a smaller kitchen before I moved here so I should be glad for the "extra" room.  I still feel like I have no counter space.  Part of the space is taken up by our microwave.  I didn't pay attention to that fact that they didn't give us a microwave.  (Oops!) While it's not something I use often, we do need it.  We purchased a small one but it takes up a lot of room.  I doubt I can find a way to find more counter space threre.

Because I am a cook, I have tons of kitchen stuff.  When we combined my stuff and Rory's stuff, it got to be overbearing.  I managed to get rid of a few items. But, I didn't want to get rid of things I would actually use.  Problem is, again small kitchen means not much cabinet space.  I made it all fit, but you had to move 4 pans to get to the one you wanted.  It drove Rory CRAZY.  To help Rory, I cleaned out tons of things that I had stored in the kitchen (Items that I don't use very often).  They will go in storage for now.  He keeps trying to get me to put some more plate sets in storage.  He doesn't understand why I need three different plate styles.  I tried to explain that I didn't like using the same plate all the time.  It's kind of like shoes.  Women have 30 pairs of shoes (yes I do have that many) to match 30 different outfits (no I don't have that many).  Yes, you could use some of those shoes with multiple outfits but the one pair looks better. (I think that went over his head)

I do feel bad and want him to feel comfortable walking into the kitchen.  I know I can do some more organizing but it will take some work.  Whoohoo another project for me to work on. We will see how that works out.

Kids....they just make you smile

The kids went back to their mom's house a couple hours ago.  They can be a handful at times.  Other times you can't help but laugh.  Earlier today we had peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch when we got home from church.  I also made chocolate pudding.  It's amazing how big of a mess a 3 year old can make with pudding and a spoon.  We left Aurora at the table eating her pudding.  About 5 minutes later I looked over and she had the pudding all over her face.  I was so cute, I couldn't help but snap a picture....

The dress did not make it through the ordeal, clean.... Not that I was expecting her to.  I changed her clothes.  Later she went back to the pudding and got the shirt that I changed her into and her face dirty again.  Fortunately, it was not bad enough that I was able to clean it up with a washcloth.  

Later, she found my shoes and was walking around in my high heels.  I guess we really do train our girls from a young age to like shoes.  A while back, Rory went put Aurora down for a nap in our room and closed the bedroom door.  On the back of our door I have a rack of about 30 pairs of shoes.  She was completely captivated by it.  She literally stared at it and said "SHOES!!!!"... LOL!

I know that both of the kids are really smart.  I am always more amazed when she asked me if she can play on my phone, managed to turn it on, swipe to unlock it, and switch to get to the screen where I have all of her games.  She easily opens her games, presses the home button to get out of the game (she hasn't figured out that the back button works better), and switches to a new game.  Every once in a while she will bring my phone to me saying, "it's not working".  In that case, she pressed a couple of wrong things.  Today she some how managed to go into the edit screen of my home screens.  Last time she did that, she actually somehow changed which screen was the main home screen.  This time, she managed to completely remove one of the screens and add a new one. I didn't notice until after she left and I went to go find my the camera icon and realized the screen was missing.   I guess kids will be kids.....

I wish I was Supergirl

I don't really wish I was supergirl....that would probably get pretty annoying having crazy super powers. I do wish I could fly-or at least hover in the air.  A couple weeks ago, I started one of the projects that has been on my list for 3 months now....hang pictures on our walls.  About a month ago I managed to hang a few empty frames and some pictures above our living room couch. The blank frames are still there.  The difficult part of hanging the frames to me is putting them on the wall so it looks aesthetically good.  I am kind of an asymmetrical person but I still like things to match and like seeing a pattern. (even if the pattern only makes sense in my head) To get an idea of what I had to use, I pulled almost all of the frames out of the closet....Rory had tons. Some of which were far to big for me to actually use so I left them in the closet.

I started out on the stairs. But, being my typical self, I wasn't about to start putting pictures up without somewhat of an idea of where I wanted to place things so I decided it would be a good idea to lay some out on the floor of our living room and then transfer them to the wall. Here is where I ran into my problem.  I realize that I am not the tallest girl out there. And NO that is not a complaint because I love that Rory is taller that me, especially when I wear my 4-5 inch high heels.  Hanging the pictures toward the top of the stairs was no problem for me. Now, as for the pictures along the wall as the stairs go down....Problem.  I can only reach so high at my towering 5'4".  Now, I have to wait for Rory to hang those pictures.  And I thought, I could do it all alone.....Side note: it's been 2 weeks since I hung the frames and Rory still hasn't hung the 2 small frames I wanted on the stairs.

 When we first moved into the apartment I talked to Rory about my desire to hang pictures.    The problem with that is, every time I want to start a "project" it's 8 or 9 at night and by that time Rory is ready to start "winding" down.  It drives him crazy that later in the evening, I am wanting to start a long project that requires thinking, particularly hanging pictures on the wall.  Hence, the reason why this project has never actually gotten done. If I was supergirl I could have flown or at least hovered in the air to hang those higher pictures alone. Ah well.... I managed to get the frames on the wall.  


A week later, I went through pictures of the kids, Rory, and myself and printed them at Costco.  I would have never guess that it would have taken so long to put pictures in frames and collages.  But all in an afternoon's work and I managed to get a picture in every frame. (minus the two frames Rory hasn't hung yet. ;) - maybe next year.

Lessons Learned

When I think back to the lessons I have learned in life that have made me who I am, I wonder if there was one specific moment that gave me a specific quality or was it a series of events over time that made me learn my lesson.  For example, honesty. As a child I remember two specific events where I made a dishonest decision and my parents used that decision to teach me a lesson.  The first one I remember was when I shopping at the grocery store one day with my mom. I took a small pack of gum and put it under my shirt when we were at the checkout stand.  When we got in the car, I climbed into the very back seat to open my gum.  My mother immediately turned around and asked me what I had.  I sheepishly held up the pack of gum.  She didn't yell at me but told me that it was stealing and it was wrong.  She also marched me right back into the store and made me give the gum back to the manager and apologize for stealing.

The next time I remember learning a lesson was when I took my dad's calculator over to my grandma's without his permission.  I believe they asked me if I knew where it was and I told them no. (because I didn't take it back home) Apparently, my grandma had made a back of my stuff and sent it home and they had that bag.  When they asked about it and showed me the bag, I had to admit that I had lied about it.  I think I had to come up with my own punishment, which was probably worse than they would have done.  Lesson learned.

Over the years, I have learned different lessons about life.  One in particular that has helped me in my marriage thus far.  Growing up, I can't remember any time that I remember my parents fighting. I know they had their disagreements because my mom had told me when I was older that there were times early on that she had wanted to give up.  At a cousin's reception a few weeks ago, my Uncle Ron told me about a time when my parents had gotten into a fight and my dad told my mom "We have two options: 1) we work it out, or 2) we get a divorce, and divorce isn't an option, so we have to work it out."  That kind of decision between my parents early on made it so my parents always found a way to work it out.  In order to do that, it takes communication.  I am grateful that I have learned how to communicate well so I can use that same skill in my marriage.  I know that things will not be perfect, but if I can talk to my husband about how I feel, we can both be happy.

I can't say that there was one particular incident that I remember that helped me express myself.  It could have been later on in life after I got out on my own and I had to experience life the hard way  or something else.  As I think about it, I think most of the lack of communication in general comes from fear of betrayal, rejection or being judged.  Some hold back how they feel because they don't want to hurt someone, but it ends up only hurting themselves in the end.  I do know that I have always had an invisible wall up to protect my own inner feelings.  Part of that wall came from the teasing I got growing up in elementary school when I got teased by my classmates because I was "different".  At that age, kids were/are just plain mean and I learned to wall up those hurt feelings.  The other part of the wall is just because I am human.  It takes a lot for me to let that guard down and very few people have been able to see the side of me that makes me tick.  Rory is one of the few people that I can honestly say, knows every little detail and I can't be more grateful for it.

Now, that I have gotten slightly sidetracked, communication by itself can't be successful if you can't learn to listen.  I can say how I feel over and over and it's not going to change anything if I don't listen to the other person and what they have to say.  I feel like I have always been that friend that my friends always felt that they could go to when they needed a friend to listen to them.  I don't know if it was because they knew I wouldn't judge them or if it was because they knew I could just listen.  I would occasionally try to offer my thoughts but for the most part, I was there as a friend.  Maybe, I was good at listening because deep down, I was being the kind of person I felt I needed most and if I could be that person for someone else, that was good enough for me.  I have always had the desire to reach out to people to help them or change their lives. That the reason why I chose Music Therapy as my degree when I originally when to college.  I loved the program and my clinical classes.  I still remember doing therapy sessions where I left knowing, I helped someone that day.  That's why I love my job now.  I may not be doing therapy but I love seeing the residents at my community every day and saying hello to them.  I know that my smile and friendly hello may makes their day.

There I go, on another tangent.  Listening and communication: two qualities that I have found so important to me.  I am thankful that I have the ability to use both of them because I know it will make my marriage better as Rory and I find our differences.  I am thankful that he listens to me and does what he can to communicate how he feels and that we both want to make each other happy.

Single no more...

I never really understood the point of blogging.  However, even as I say that, I know that's not really true.  I have just never really been one to blog.  Why? I don't know. I could come up with a hundred different reasons.  Why have I refused to to many things that "followed the crowd"? I guess it really comes down to laziness.  I am terrible and keeping things up to date.  Take my journal for example, the last time I wrote in it was early December of last year, when I was just engaged and I had to get out my frustrations of planning a wedding.  (definitely one of the more stressful times) Prior to that entry I had several entries close together starting from when I decided that I knew that I was going to marry my husband up to the 2 weeks after he and I got engaged. Then it stopped.  The best part about the journal is: The first entry date starts in November of 2002. No, that's not a typo. 2002 as in 9 1/2 years ago.  I find it humorous to read back to those entries and see what my brain thought was important back then.  Strangely, I think every entry talked about whatever boy I was frustrated with or trying to date or whatever the case may be.  There were some more memorable events in there such as the time I went through the temple. (again I mentioned the guy I was dating and intested in at the time) Thinking about all those times, I realize how important dating was to a girl.  Apparently it was always something we wanted to talk about. I guess it was my way of getting my thoughts, hopes, or frustrations out of my head.  I found it as my way to clear my head. 

Now that I am married, I smile because I am SO glad that none of those relationships worked out.  There are some that I think back to that were so important to me at the time, and I was so upset when they didn't actually work out.  Had they worked out, I wouldn't have met my husband today.  Granted, I don't know that I wouldn't have been happy with one of those guys that I dated back then, but I do know that those relationships helped make me who I am today.  Not the relationships themselves, but the heartbreak to help make me stronger and learn how to stand on my own two feet. 

I was talking to a friend the other day.  He was telling me about some dates he went on and the all the feelings accompanied with dating a new person after another long relationsheip ends.  I couldn't help but be grateful that I don't have to play those silly dating games any more.  Now, I am playing a "married game".  It's much better.  Obviously the marriage isn't going to be perfect and I can't say that I have not gotten frustrated.  I can say however, that I know that I love my husband and we both want to be happy.  I have never been with anyone who has worked so hard to make me happy.  (not that it's hard work-just being with him makes me happy) But he really does do things that make me laugh and smile.  I love his two children.  When they come over we have a great time playing games and coming up with something to do.  I have gotten used to giving up my phone or ipad when his daughter, Aurora, asks, "Can I play on your computer?" or "Can I play on your phone?" This morning, She was playing on my iPad when I was leaving for work, and Rory asked me if I needed to take my iPad to work. I took one look at her playing and said that I could get by without it. I am such a sucker for those kids.  I can't imagine what I am going to be like when we have our own....