Our Antie-Versary, 2011 Edition

On Jan. 12th, we celebrated our tenth wedding anniversary! Wow, ten whole years! Time flies when you're having fun. I got this card for Ben - I thought it was funny:

Wanna take a walk down memory lane? Here are a few of our wedding pics:

I think I make a really stupid "serious face." It's an issue for me.

I borrowed my friend's dress and veil for my wedding. I loved them. We cleaned them afterwards and got them packed into this nice preservation box - one hundred dollah, total. That's the way to go, seriously.

I got acrylic nails for the very first (and last) time before these bridal pictures. They drove me nuts. I mean, I liked to tap them on my desk at work and stuff, but when it came to practical things, like typing and writing, etc., they were a pain in the butt.

We realized like ten minutes before our photo shoot that I didn't have any flowers for it, so we went to Alby's and got some cheesy red roses. Duh.

That stupid piece of hair. I should have tucked it back. I think I thought it looked cool. If only I could airbrush that errant hair out... It's distracting.

Fast-forward ten years....

Ben gave me flowers on our anniversary proper:

Those suckers lasted for like three weeks! Very impressive.

I'm guessing they're some kind of mums?

They smelled wonderful. Oh, how I love flowers. They really brighten up your day. These actually are the colors I always wanted for my wedding - lilac and yellow. My mom felt like those colors didn't work for a winter wedding, so I acquiesced and did navy blue and burgandy, which turned out just fine. It's funny how things change. If I was getting married now, I'd do something really bright, like orange and lime green or something. Seriously. I love bright colors.

A couple of weekends after our actual anniversary, we were able to celebrate. We went to dinner at Texas Roadhouse (their salad is to die for), and then we went to True Grit, which I talked about a couple of posts ago. Then we went to our new favorite haunt, The Cutthroat Inn!!

We went there last year - so much fun. So cozy and solitary. And a little outdated, but in the cutest possible way. We had a sweet selection of VHS movies to watch on the one-by-one foot-screen TV - we chose the critically acclaimed Joe Dirt. :) What a dumb show. Seriously. And then we went to sleep.

The next morning, we ate breakfast in the main cabin, with those amazing belgian waffles and homemade buttermilk syrup. Yummy. We were chatting with the lady who owns the inn, and she was telling us that, so many times, when she goes to clean up the cabins after the patrons leave, both beds will be unmade, because the husband and wife prefer their own beds. We chuckled nervously - we laid in the bed in front of the TV to watch Joe Dirt, but then we realized that it was warmer and more comfortable in the other bed, which is by the pot-bellied stove. So we moved to that bed to sleep. So both beds were unmade. :)

Me, in front of our cabin (it was really bright outside):

The two of us:

The cabins surround this pond, and there are these ducks stay at the pond all year long, instead of flying south for the winter. The innkeepers turn the pond fountain upside-down into the water during the winter to keep it from freezing over, and the fish in the pond remain active and swimming down there all winter long, too. These ducks are a crackup. They followed Ben and I all around, quacking loudly. They were soooo adorable. They were our entourage while we walked to the breakfast cabin, and they escorted us back to our own cabin after we ate:

There are three girls and a boy. The lady said that a hawk took one of the boys like a week before, eating him underneath her truck. Sad. They really quite literally are "sitting ducks" in that pond. She says the hawk hangs out by the pond all the time, just biding his time. Evil.

The poor boy duck. (Mallard?) If he gets too close to the girl ducks, they chase him away:

No boys allowed. Poor dude.

Anyways, I soooooo wanted to go somewhere warm, for like a week, to celebrate this ten-year milestone, but life gets in the way. This breaks, that breaks, etc. etc. It's like that little montage at the beginning of Up. Someday we'll be able to go on trips. For now, I'm okay watching Joe Dirt in a cabin. :)

Comparison

My dear friend Megs came over a couple of weeks ago with her kiddos for lunch. It's funny to see the difference between her baby, Tinian, and mine:

Dude, Tinian is only two weeks older than Gage! So sad. Oh well. It is what it is.

Gage is on this new stuff - I think I told you about it - called "thicket," and it's a miracle. It's this powder that you mix in with liquids to make them thicker. I guess old people use it a lot, because they struggle swallowing. I don't really understand how making things thicker makes them easier to swallow, but I'm not elderly yet. Dude, getting old sucks.

Anyways, it has helped tenfold with the barfing. I think we've finally found a good solution, after four months of trying different things. I'm so happy about it. Gage still spits up, but it's the normal amount of a normal baby.

Back to the visit. Jonas and Brynnan, her two older boys, are such baby lovers. I'd say they are even in my own league of baby-loving. I'm the president of the Baby Lovers Club. Jonas is vice-president and Brynnan is secretary. For sure. They are so tender and sweet with their own brother and with Gage. Jonas with Gage:

Brynnan with Tinian and Gage, and my Girly Man in the background, wearing one of my garmies as hair, of course:

Sigh. He kills me.

Oh jeez.

Ben insisted on cutting the boys' hair a couple of weeks ago. They both needed cuts really badly. I reminded him to do a 1 on the bottom, a 3 on the top, and to blend in between.

Not how it turned out.

Micah was fighting Ben so badly that, when Ben had the trimmers on a 1 and was trying to do the bottom, Micah jerked in a way that the trimmers veered into what should have been 3 territory. So Ben shaved Micah's whole dang head:

He seriously looks like a chemo patient. Whenever we go the store, I see people glancing in an astonished/sympathetic manner at Micah. I can tell they're thinking, "Oh, that poor kid with cancer..." Nope, folks. My husband just shaved his head, and his hair is clear, so.....

This new cut has made Micah all the more insistent on wearing my garments on his head as fake hair. My garments stick to his head so much better now that he's all stubbly up there. Don't worry - when we leave the house, the garments stay in the house. And he cries the whole time we're gone. When we have visitors, and they try to lift up the garmies to see Micah's new haircut, he says, "Top it!" and replaces the garmies/hair again. Sigh.

Then it was Dylan's turn. Dylan has been begging me to let him get a mohawk for years now. I've never acquiesced, but he talked his dad into it:

When Ben was all done, Dylan came dancing out in his underwear. He was soooo excited that he was literally dancing all around the house.

A gal in my ward who does hair says that it's very hard to cut a straight mohawk, and that Ben did a really good job.

I, obviously, hate it. But whatever. If he wants ugly hair, that's his deal. I did tell him, however, that I want him to grow it in for his baptism. To me, mohawks and baptismal fonts don't really go together.

This is what happens...

...when Ben is in charge:

Gage is such a mover and a shaker that he totally rolled over in his bouncy chair. I was downstairs doing some laundry and came upstairs to see this. Ben was right there, just watching TV, completely oblivious.

You're supposed to strap the child into the seat, Benj.

Ben says I only call him "Benj" when I'm mad at him. :) Maybe that's true...

Loaded Questions

We played games the night before Beadsey left. Actually, just one game - Loaded Questions. It's one of our family's favorite games.

Nat:

Pops:

Marmie:

Beads:

I kept thinking that shirt was saying, "I love Gosh Dang." I just kept thinking that every time I saw it. I know it stands for Green Day; I just couldn't get Gosh Dang out of my mind.

Mom washed Brianna's wool hat and shrunk it soooo small. Here's Ben, trying it on:

Well, Beads, if you ever read this, and you won't, we had fun while you were here. Move closer!

A Guarantee for Injury

That's what sledding is. Seriously. Every time I have ever, ever gone sledding, someone (usually me) gets hurt.

It's really my own fault. If I hadn't come up with the idea of building a jump...

Let me start at the beginning. Beads was here, still, and we wanted to go sledding. Even though the snow outside was kind of crusty and icy.

So we went out to a local golf course - the driving range. Aw yeah. A nice slope there. That driving range brings back a lot of really, really funny memories. Like when me and Missy G. were hitting balls during golf class, and I sliced one, of course, and it went over the trees to the ninth hole and hit a man right on his bald head. Not even kidding. She and I hit the deck so that he couldn't look up and see us. I felt really bad, but I also laughed for like two hours about it.

Anyways. I was a big jerk and didn't bring Micah. It was too cold out for Gage, so Mom offered to baby-sit him and Micah. I totally took her up on it. Micah just makes everything... so challenging. All he does is scream and push people, I swear. So it was just me and my oldest two. Nat was brave and brought all four of her younguns.

I was bored just going down the slope, so I had the bright idea of making a jump. Dylan loved that idea, so we worked on it together. All of the other kids cautiously avoided the jump, but not me and Dyl. And on our last run down, we decided to go together. We went over the jump, and when we landed, Dyl's head rammed into my jaw. It hurt for like two weeks. It still feels a little... off.

You know what was so cute, though? After we landed the jump and slid down the rest of the hill, I could tell that Dylan's head was raelly hurting, but the first thing he said was, "Mom, are you okay?" How stinking cute is he????

Pictures of the fun -

Nat and Sadie:

Jake? Maybe? It's hard to see -

Troy:

Beads and Ivy:

Nat, pushing Sadie and Brock:

Beads, Ivy, and Troy:

He would have fit in.

Ben and I went to dinner and a movie for our anniversary (post soon to come) - we saw True Grit, with Jeff Bridges and Matt Damon. It was thoroughly entertaining. Jeff Bridges is amazing. I've put the book, True Grit, on my mental must-read list. That list is getting pretty long...

Something I noticed while watching the movie was that the characters didn't use contractions. It was, "I do not understand such-and-such," "I will not pretend that I agree with you," etc. I wondered if that was how people really spoke back then - no contractions. It's interesting to think about.

Seeing the non-usage of contractions reminded me of Dylie. The kid hardly ever uses contractions. It cracks me up. Perhaps he was born in the wrong era. :)

Gloria and Greg were here a couple of weeks after Gagey was born, and we were all eating at the dinner table one night. Greg was talking to Dylan about something - I forget what. Like a very, very gentle reprimand. If it can be called that. I think Dylan did something, and I told him not to, and Dylan argued with me (as usual), and Greg was trying to explain to Dylan the reason he shouldn't do it. Like trying to help Dyl understand where I was coming from. Greg is really great with my kids. So kind and so gentle. Anyways, Dylan just stared straight ahead while Greg was talking, and when he was done, Dylan put his hand toward Greg and said, still staring straight ahead, "I do NOT know what he is talking about." It made us all laugh so hard. Of course he knew what Greg was talking about. He just didn't want to hear it. :)