A Decade

Kolby and I first started dating on October 31, 2000.  Also known as a decade ago.  10 years.

We were 15.

When my mom made me pick up all my leftover childhood stuff at their house before they moved a few months ago, I came across this collage:

The football ticket is from the game where Kolby and I sat on the handrail by the concession stand at halftime and told each other that we liked each other while sharing a bag of peanut M&Ms.  I can still remember so much about that night.  We went to a haunted house with some friends the next day and did some pretty heavy flirting.  I remember so much about that night as well.  Then I remember that we officially started "going out" (I wonder what the kids call it these days?!?!) on October 31-- Halloween.  Unfortunately neither of us can remember a single thing about how we got together that day, we just remember that was our anniversary for Kolby and Emily Part 1.

Kolby and Emily Part 1 didn't last too long.  I like to blame the fact that neither of us could drive at the time, which made for a pretty lame relationship.  Kolby was my first (and only) kiss.  I wasn't his.  I like to hold that over his head on occasion.  Anyway, that relationship ended shortly after the fateful broken ski pole incident on a youth group ski trip circa Christmas break 2000.  If you don't know that story then you are fresh out of luck because I don't have the energy to tell it again, but suffice it to say that the words "I hate you!" were yelled in sincerity by one of us (cough, Kolby) in a heated moment atop a double blue diamond ski run and the other one of us chose not to stand for such treatment, and may have used said event as a great excuse to end a relationship that was already headed south.

I finally got my braces off soon after we got back from skiing and was looking like a total hottie, causing Kolby to totally regret losing such a great catch.  Of course with my frizzy hair and the fact that the CHI was years away from hitting the market, I'm sure I didn't look nearly as good as I thought I did.  But isn't that what 9th grade is all about?

We spent the next several months as friends.  Here is a picture from youth camp in 2001, age 15:

That fall, Kolby asked me to our school's homecoming dance "as friends."
Homecoming 2001--- age 16:

You'll notice butterfly clips were a preferred hair choice for me at that time in my life.  Classy.

 I have a very clear memory of how uncomfortable Kolby was as we were taking this picture, with his hands on my waist and my dad watching.  :)  And yes, we were rather awkward and gangly.

It was later that night that Kolby kissed me on my front porch after he walked me to the door.  Then a few weeks passed with neither of us having the guts to talk about it.

On October 26, 2001 we were hanging out at Kolby's house watching Rush Hour 2 when the conversation finally went down.  It was Kolby and Emily Part 2, and it was official.

We even survived the youth ski trip that year:

It was Valentine's Day 2002 that I told Kolby that I loved him.  He said the same.  We were 16 so I know that sounds crazy, but what can I say?  Maybe it was a different kind of love than we have now, but I can't really say that I think we were crazy for feeling like we loved each other then, given how everything panned out.  Here we are on that night (again with the butterfly clips, sheesh!):

Even though we were the same age, I was a sophomore and Kolby was a junior at that point.  We finished out high school with some great times together:

Some of my favorite high school memories are from homecoming and prom Kolby's senior year (age 17):

We were having such a great time together--- completely happy--- then Kolby had to go off and graduate and kill all of our fun.

We both turned 18 the following summer and we decided to give the whole long-distance thing a go when Kolby left for Wheaton (a thousand miles away!)in late August.  It was miserable, but I was having a great senior year with my friends and Kolby was loving college.  I think I blocked out of my memory a lot of our relationship from that year.  Kolby flew back and surprised me for Valentine's Day, and that's about all I can recall.  I think I also got in trouble from my parents a lot for staying on the phone too late.  We learned a lot about each other and about how to communicate, which is something I'm still grateful for.

It didn't take long for us to realize that it probably didn't make sense for us to keep the long-distance relationship going for 4 whole years, given how hard it was on both of us that first year alone.  If it was "meant to be," it could happen later on in life when it wasn't so difficult.  Unfortunately, we came to this conclusion in May, and we would both be around all summer.  So we made the super mature decision to postpone the breakup until August-- we were in love and why shouldn't we enjoy those last months together?!?

Then came what we affectionately refer to as Snot Fest 2k4.  We were 19, and were breaking up for reasons that had nothing to do with the way we felt about each other. At that point in my life I would not say that I was an emotional person, but I cried so hard the snot just poured out (TMI?).  So did Kolby.  It was a rough evening.

We spent the next 6+ months barely communicating, save one or two phone calls to say hey and a hangout with friends at Christmas break.  I don't really remember how it came about, but I decided to visit Kolby at Wheaton the next spring.  We had each had been on a few dates (Kolby more so than me, also something I like to hold over his head) but nothing stuck.  That weekend visit was the first time we'd spent time together since Snot Fest 2k4, and it was amazing.  We loved each other, but we were still 2 years away from living in the same state again, so we entered this no-man's land where we were in love but not dating.

Flash forward to July 4, 2005.  Kolby had just recovered from the most horrible jaw reconstruction surgery of all time.  We were in my bedroom (at my parents' house) sitting on the floor playing Duck Hunt on my old school Nintendo.  We kissed.  It was our third first kiss.  And so began Kolby and Emily Part 3.

The third time's a charm!

If you had told me when we first got together 10 years ago that we'd be unbelievably happily married and falling asleep every night hand-in-hand in our first house together, I would have called you crazy.  But our story is one of my favorite things about us, and I feel so blessed to be on such a great journey!

[End of sappy, nostalgic, LONG story. Is anyone even still reading?]

World Series Here We Come

As you probably heard, the Rangers made the World Series for the first time ever.  Kolby and I were there.  It was awesome.  Here are some pictures, courtesy of Kolby's iPhone.

Rangers attire, check.  Kolby's playoff beard underway, check.

 The stadium was nuts:

After Vladi hit the double and the Rangers went up 3-1:

Top of the 9th; one out standing between the Rangers and the World Series:

Nefti struck A-Rod out and the Rangers win!:

 Lots of confetti flying through the stadium: 

It was seriously one of the best nights we've ever had together.  I'm so glad we decided to pull the trigger and go, because it was an experience we'll never forget.  And Kolby for sure will never forget it.  He's already watched the game twice on our DVR.

World Series here we come!  We'll be in Wimberly with Kolby's parents for the first home game, but we have tickets to the other two.  I am not even joking when I say that they are currently locked away in our fireproof safe.  Apparently Kolby was worried that our house would eat them (a distinct possibility) or that I would accidentally throw them away as I was cleaning.

Go Rangers!!!

As a total side note, Maya continues to kill opossums in the backyard.  We find them lying dead in the grass, not a hair misplaced, damp from Maya's licking.  I have a suspicion that it is more of a Lennie from Of Mice and Men-type siltation and that their death is accidental, resulting from her playing with them in a less than gentle way. It's sad and grotesque on many levels, particularly the level that requires us throwing opossums over the fence with a pooper scooper.

Catching Up

Here's what's new with us.

If you've been following baseball lately, you can imagine that our October has been largely dominated by watching the Texas Rangers make history in the playoffs.  Kolby asked me in July if we could please start saving for playoff tickets, so we've been attending several games in each series.  Our hope is to see the Rangers make it to the World Series in tomorrow night's game!  Kolby is beside himself with excitement for the Rangers-- finally doing so well after a decade of slipshod management and mediocrity (his words, not mine).  I've been passively watching dozens of games with him this season, trying not to care much, but I finally succumbed to baseball fever.  Asking about pitch counts and having the lineup memorized-- I don't even know who I am anymore.  Go Rangers!

(Confused by Kolby's shirt?  Google "Rangers claw and antlers.")

Our church celebrated its one year anniversary on Sunday, and Kolby and I shared our testimony as part of the celebration service.  We are so thankful to have found such a wonderful church home.  Even though I can't seem to convince our Bible study group that our house usually starts shutting down at 9:30pm and they are infringing upon my precious beauty sleep when they hang out so late :).  I kid... we are happy to have such a great group of new friends.

I spent the first part of this week in New York City on a business trip.  I attended a conference and gave a presentation, which went well despite the fact that I was a solid 25 years younger than the next youngest person there.  My hotel room was on the 45th floor and the elevator ride felt like a wind tunnel.  On my first night there, I walked into my super clean and crisp hotel room with a huge king bed and all I could think about was how I'd rather be in my insanely messy bedroom back home, sharing a queen bed with my 6'3" covers-hogging husband with our sweet dog passed out on the wood floor next to us.  I don't think I'm cut out for business travel.  My hotel room window directly overlooked ground zero next door, which was rather surreal.  I could clearly see the new granite footprints of the twin towers, which will mark the center of the memorial site.  I have a picture on my phone, but not one I can share thanks to Russell never giving back my point & shoot camera after his summer abroad.  Who knows if it even survived.

Maya had a rather wild night while I was gone--- killing three opossums in the backyard.  Don't let this innocent face fool you.  She's from the streets, remember?

Kolby has started back to grad school, with his first packet of poetry due this past Monday.  The work/school combo is keeping him a bit overwhelmed, but with the 15+ hours a week he's been spending watching the Rangers, it's hard to pity him too much.  When he misses a game to catch up on work, that's when I'll start to worry about him!

That's about all that's going on around here.  Aren't you glad you stopped by?  Riveting stuff, right?!?

Miscellaneous, Part 2

Kassidy and Derek’s wedding last weekend was absolutely beautiful.  It was intimate, unique, and perfectly suited for them.  I took some pictures at various pre-wedding festivities, but not at the actual event.  Here's a family picture from the bridal luncheon:

In other news, Kolby starts his fall quarter for grad school next week.  He worked really hard over the summer to get ahead quite a bit, so hopefully the transition won’t be too rough.  Teaching at a new school, especially after taking a year off, has required a lot of time and energy, but hopefully he can find a routine that allows him to get done what he needs to get done and still be able to enjoy this final year of his grad program. 

Speaking of transitions, our friend Chris recently moved into our garage "guest house".  He started a new teaching job this fall and needed a transitional living arrangement to bridge the gap between living with his mom and renting a place of his own.  We’re glad to have him, and Maya is particularly glad to have his chocolate lab, Sadie.  Talk about fast friends.

The Life Group that we lead has kicked off for the fall season and is going really well.  We’re reading the book In the Name of Jesus by Henri Nouwan.  It has made for some great discussions, and we enjoy the fellowship the group brings to our house on Tuesdays.  Also, we hosted a dinner on Thursday night for some people/couples our age that have been coming to church on Sundays but haven’t gotten plugged into a Life Group or Alpha Course yet.  Our pastor’s wife emailed me at the beginning of the week to say that 14 people were coming.  I literally laughed out loud.  Have you seen the size of our house?!?  We don’t have a dining room, and our kitchen table only seats 6.  Luckily the weather was beautiful so we set up tables on our back deck and it worked out great.  Our 1957 oven even handled the mass quantities of enchiladas (delicious recipe here).  It was a wonderful evening with new friends and we loved having such a full house.

As we were cleaning up for the party, I realized I never posted any pictures of our backyard like I meant to awhile back.  I'm sure you have probably been on the edge of your seats wanting to know what it looks like.  Well today is your lucky day.

This is our back deck.

We bought this patio set for really cheap off Crag's List.  It was white when we got it and I painted it black.  It was the worst idea ever.  But the chairs are really comfortable so it was almost worth it.

This is our backyard.

Another angle.  The nice cedar carport will come in handy once we get around to installing our new gate and electronic gate opener.  It's been over a year.  Our garage is the white building on the far left.

This is our back fence.

This is part of our garden patio area that is situated in the back corner of the yard.  It is a work in progress.

This is Maya yesterday.  Have I mentioned that she loves our yard?

Miscellaneous

One really long and scattered blog post coming right up!

My parents finally sold the house we grew up in.  I use that designation loosely since we moved around quite a bit growing up, but this was the house we lived in from the time I was in the 6^th grade.  Before then, we hadn’t lived in a house (or state, for that matter) for more than a few years at a time, so this was the house that felt the most like home.  Selling it was bittersweet, except minus the sweet part unless you were my parents and you were tired of paying to upkeep a big house that you were no longer living in.  :)

At the risk of getting more sappy than the occasion really warrants, the house held a lot meaning for our family.  My mom always referred to it as “party central.” It hosted more than a few family gatherings, youth group fellowships, casual hangouts, holiday meals and special cookouts.  It also hosted the everyday happenings of our family for 12+ years.  For instance…

At one point in early high school, I taught Brad how to could climb out of his (upstairs) bedroom window and scale down the front of the house.  I learned that this was possible from my own bedroom window one day when I was tired of studying and wanted to see if I could do it (I did, and then I just came in the front door and went back to studying… I was a rebel, what can I say).  Brad abused this tactic that I had taught him and would sneak out of the house at night and get picked up by his friends to go hang out when he was grounded.  I was always the only one who knew he was gone and this was way before our parents let us get cell phones, so I would just sit on the floor in his room crying and waiting for him to come home safely.  Looking back, I’m not sure what I was so worried would happen to him, but I do like to hold that story over his head.  That was really traumatizing for me, Brad.  So can you please bring your truck and help us pick up and move in our new refrigerator?    

At some point when he was in middle school, Russell bought a pet snake but neglected to tell anyone about it.  He also neglected to tell anyone that the snake had crawled into the TV upstairs and couldn’t be retrieved, but instead he just gave up and left for a church trip the next day.  I had just gotten out of the shower a few days later and I see a big fake green snake lying perfectly S-shaped in the hallway.  I say, “Very funny, Brad.” and go to pick it up only to see its tongue stick out and quickly go back in.  My favorite part of that story?  Brad acted like a little girl when I made him scoop it into a shoe box.

Then there’s more than a few mom stories from that house.  Before my mom had her knee replacement surgery, she didn’t really go upstairs much.  Like the respectful and well-behaved kids we were, my brothers and I never did the chores she asked us to do because we knew we could just say that we did and she wouldn’t know the difference.  I even distinctly remember plugging in the vacuum, turning it on, and then just sitting on my bed for a few minutes while it ran so she would think I was vacuuming.  It was probably more trouble than just going ahead and vacuuming, but what can I say-- I was 14.  Putting away laundry was the bane of our existence, so we just dumped our clean clothes in our closet and grabbed them as needed.  One summer Brad and I were headed out on a youth mission trip and my mom explicitly asked us to put away our clothes before we left, even adding a speech about how she buys us all the clothes we need, then she washes all of them and folds all of them and all she ever asks is that we take them to our room and hang them up or put them in our drawers.  I had a lot of better things to do before leaving, like saying goodbye to friends and making sure my white eyeliner was packed, so I dumped my clothes in my closet as usual, and so did Brad.  We had a great trip, but upon getting home and going upstairs, we found that our drawers had been pulled out of our dressers and overturned on the floor and that every single article of clothing that we owned was gone.  Brad and I came out of our rooms and gave each other a “this cannot be good” look and went downstairs.  My mom was waiting patiently in the kitchen.  She calmly informed us that because we were not good stewards of the clothes that were provided to us, she had taken them.  All of them.  They were in trash bags in her bedroom and we could pay 25 cents per item to get them back.  Every shirt, every pair of pants/shorts, every sock, every pair of underwear, and every shoe--- 25 cents apiece.  Whatever we had not purchased back from her by the end of the month would be dropped off at Goodwill.  (I would say lesson learned, but you saw the pictures in the last post!)

Then there was the time my dad put my life at risk by asking me to crawl into the huge built-in TV cabinet/bookcase to mess with some cords to the cable box.  It was my senior year of high school and I was in the office doing homework even though it was homecoming weekend, because my date lived 1,000 miles away at Wheaton.  The logistics of the situation are hard to explain without a picture, but he had removed a tall skinny speaker that was wedged between the wall and the box-style big screen TV we had, and he was wanting me to crawl through the corridor it had left and then stand in the nook behind the TV and plug something in.  The conversation went something like this, “Hey Ems, come in here for a minute.  I need you to crawl behind the TV.  I would do it myself, but my head won’t even fit through the hole.  I think you can fit.  If you get stuck, I can just pull the TV out.”  I went in to assess things, only to see that he was expecting me to crawl through a space that was 3’ tall but only 7” wide.  I can’t tell you how many times I told him that it wasn’t going to work, even as I was trying to wedge myself in there, but somehow he talked me into it.  I made it through, although it came at a price to certain parts of my body, and I was able to plug in the cord.  I started to fit back through the corridor but quickly realized there wasn’t enough space behind the TV for me to get my legs at the right angle to slide back through.  I told my dad that due to the simple properties of geometry, there was no way I could get out, so he needed to move the TV.  He said that he can't move the TV by himself and that he had lied about being able to just so I wouldn’t be afraid to crawl back there.  We talked about what our options were and concluded that I would just have to come out in the reverse way I went in, meaning I needed to come out legs first.  I was hot and sweaty and scared, not to mention depressed that all my friends were having fun at the homecoming dance, and I was about to have my dad pull me out of a TV cabinet by my feet.  My mom walked in the door just in time to hear the snap of the underwire of my bra, which just couldn’t handle the 7” squeeze.  All because my dad wanted to be able to DVR two shows at once.

In addition to the meaning it held for my family, that house also held a lot of meaning for Kolby and I.  It was on that front porch that Kolby and I had our first kiss.  We had just spent the evening at our school’s homecoming dance “as friends” and he was walking me up to the front door to say goodnight.  Fast forward five and a half years, when he knelt down and proposed to me on that same porch.  The day before the closing was finalized, we moved the last of the furniture out of the house and Kolby and I got a few last pictures on our porch.

In other, non-sentimental news, the Texas Rangers will soon secure their spot in the playoffs!  Kolby is beside himself.  On a whim we went to the last game in the series against the Yankees last weekend and had the privilege of watching the Rangers sweep, though it was 105 degrees in the ballpark that day and I had the privilege of experiencing my first case of upper lip sweat.  It was hot.

Kolby spent the hours between 8:30am and 11am this past Saturday placing over 75 calls to the box office to secure playoff tickets for us.  That, my friends, is dedication.  Go Rangers!

Last weekend I had quite possibly the best Sunday of all time—I drove up to Oklahoma to visit Jess and Steven and their 7-day old baby, Emersyn.  I had the privilege of having a teeny tiny 8 lb newborn sleep on my chest all day while we watched HGTV and talked about how precious she is.  Pure bliss.

  Now we're packing and getting ready to hit the road for Wimberley tomorrow to celebrate Kassidy's wedding!

*Also, I added a couple new posts to our Real Food page, in case anyone is interested.*

Not Your Average Messy House

I mentioned that Kolby and I both working full-time now has meant that our house is a huge mess a lot of the time these days.  I’d like to think that we’re still in what I like to call an “adjustment phase”—and that we’ll figure all this out soon. 

We had this great plan for how we’ll clean the house and do laundry on Saturdays, grocery shop on Sundays, and keep the house picked up the rest of the week.  But, we ran into a snag in our perfect plan--- we’ve been out of town most weekends lately.  Not being around to play catch-up on Saturday or Sunday, and several weeks of having something going every night of the week, our house took quite a beating.

If we’re being totally honest, I’d say that last week, our office may have looked like this:

Our bedroom may or may not have looked like this: Those piles started from us not unpacking from Labor Day weekend, and then all of the clothes we’d worn since then strangely gravitated there too.

Where were our clean clothes?  Certainly not hung in the closets.  Why bother when you can just grab them as needed from the dryer or laundry basket?

I post these embarrassing pictures for two reasons.  One, when I talk to anyone about how our house is a mess and they say, “Yeah, ours too.”, I always wish I had a way of conveying that I don’t mean a little bit messy or normal messy like they probably mean, but that our house is a REAL mess--- messy like a tornado just came through, and messy like a certain husky that shall remain nameless has shed a faint blanket of fur over every inch of our beautiful hardwood floors.  So, if we’ve had that conversation in the past few weeks, do you see the difference? :)

Second, I want to be able to look back at this post 5 years from now and laugh about how we thought our lives were so “busy” right now and that keeping our house clean was so out of reach.  We are very aware that with no kids and relatively stress-free lives, we have yet to even scratch the surface of the business and chaos that I’m sure will someday consume us and give us a real reason for fishing for clean underwear straight out of the dryer every morning!

*Note: Our house doesn’t look like this anymore.  We cleaned on Friday.  There is a good chance our house will look like this again by next Friday, though.  There’s no way to know for sure.