But now I’m gold.

There are times in my marriage when I feel completely twitter-pated with my husband. Clearly, I’m always in love with him. But every once in a while, I just melt when he does anything cute. Kisses, phone calls, texts, a smile. You name it, I ooh and awe all over it. That’s how it’s been lately. The best part is, although my life isn’t perfect, I feel that our relationship is pretty darn close.

Tonight, I watched all of our wedding video footage. The night before we were married, we had a dinner and after I tried to sing him a song (and cried during the most important parts), T.J. read me a poem that he wrote.

On our mortal journey experience has shown,

When beginning the climb you start off alone.

There are chances to learn and experiences to grow,

But I’ve gone as far as I alone can go.

When my feet became heavy and began to tire,

You reached down your hand and said, “I’ll take you higher.”

Looking towards God with your hand in mine,

With singleness of heart, the three of us climb.

Sometimes a valley and sometimes a peak,

But never losing sight of the heights we seek.

Needing support and sometimes correction,

I’m glad we’re together on our eternal perfection.

Like I said, life isn’t always perfect. But together, T.J. and I can make it there together. I’m sorry for being so sappy, but I just am so grateful for my husband. He’s my best friend. My silver lining.

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It always works out!

Lately we’ve been a little scrapped for cash because of the car accident and stitches incident. It’s not like we’re starving over here or anything, but we have been worried how we are going to pay for everything.

Just when my fridge was almost completely empty, our state tax return came today, T.J. found two old checks he forget to cash, and I found a check from our wedding that I hadn’t cashed yet.

And that, my friends, is why I pay my tithing. My cupboards are full, I’ve got recipes planned, and we now have all of our bills in order!

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[34] and Counting

My sister-in-law Lacey told me they downloaded a Baby Name App. They’re not pregnant. And neither are we. But we just have this obsession with thinking/talking about baby names. So, clearly, I had to download the App too.

Here are some of my favorite names. They’re not in order, they’re just names I think are cute and go well with the last name Derrick. Please hold back the laughter. I love old fashioned names, so I tended to “like” the names under the category Old English.

Boys

  1. Gavin
  2. Jackson
  3. Kevin
  4. Hunter
  5. Austin
  6. Chase
  7. Brody
  8. Liam
  9. Tristan
  10. Jaden
  11. Preston
  12. Miles
  13. Baldwin
  14. Dalton
  15. Damion
  16. Duncan
  17. Harrison
  18. Layton
  19. Calvin
  20. Hudson

Girls

  1. Emma
  2. Madison
  3. Elizabeth
  4. Addison
  5. Audrey
  6. Brooklyn
  7. Evelyn
  8. Eva
  9. Ellie
  10. Adrianna
  11. Annie
  12. Elli
  13. Anielia
  14. Leighton

Wow, 34 names=34 babies. We better get going then, huh? Maybe we can be featured on a TLC documentary. We will tell them that the only reason we had 34 kids was because we couldn’t decide on a name, so we had to use all of them.

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Winter must be cold for those with no warm memories.

Continuing on…

Saturday came around and we just did Saturday-type things such as cleaning, laying around, eating a delicious breakfast at Maglebye’s, doing homework, and watching I Am Legend with T.J.’s siblings and their spouses.

This brings us to Sunday. We had a wonderful afternoon hanging out together with the windows open, sunlight pouring into the condo. We watched a few romantic movies, took a walk, made some sugar cookies (which I am kind of in love with), and home-made Valentines.

I tried to make these cute heart cakes, but I tried to experiment a bit and so I didn’t follow the recipe exactly. Turns out I should have done precisely what it told me to do, considering I had to through the entire cake away.

I also learned why I blog and don’t scrapbook when I was making Valentines. I decided not to give them away because they looked so silly.

In the middle of decorating the cookies and listening to the wonderful, new Adele CD, we had another situation occur. Just when we were having the best Sunday of our lives…

T.J. fell (I won’t tell you how so doesn’t get embarrassed) and we realized one of his stitches broke. It was disgusting. Lots of blood. That type of stuff makes me sick just to think about. It was late and he was in a lot of pain, so he decided we should head on over to the ER again just in case it did any damage or wouldn’t get infected. At least sitting in the ER for a while made me finish my homework.

So, that was our weekend.

It was a bit crazy, but hopelessly romantic at times.

Oh, and P.S. my husband surprised me on campus with a beautiful bouquet of roses, took me to the Bombay House (my favorite Indian restaurant), and had a large box of exquisite chocolate covered nuts waiting for me at home to eat when he had to go back to campus for the night. I ended my Valentine’s Day watching An Affair to Remember with the timeless actor, Cary Grant. They just don’t make actors like him anymore…

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An Affair to Remember

We decided to celebrate Valentine’s on Friday because T.J. it was more convenient. Turns out we should have stuck to celebrating on Monday because of a  several minor catastrophes, but we got a lot of memories from the weekend and next year we will be able to look back and laugh.

Situation 1: I bought T.J. new Levi’s (for free because I had a Kohl’s gift card) and wanted to wait until Valentine’s day to give them to him. I was too excited, so on Thursday night, I laid them on the bed with a cute note for him to find when he came home and I was already asleep. He was just excited as I was so he ripped off the tags before even trying them on. Fortunately, I am a good wife and know my husband’s jean size.

Situation 2: I told T.J. that Friday night he needed to be ready by 8:00 PM, dressed in a suit and tie. He went through about 100 ideas of what we were going to do. I should have written them all down because we are always out of date ideas. He decided the surprise must be a dinner and a show. He literally couldn’t handle the anticipation so I calmed him down with another part of my V-day gift: a bottle of Martinelli’s and an hour of Arrested Development.

Situation 3: On the way to our final destination, I told him we could play 20 Questions because he was really going crazy not knowing what we were going to do. I then started to get very self conscious because the evening was going to be fun but not epic and I didn’t want his hopes to get way up. He found out we were going dancing, but thought we were going to have dance lessons somewhere. (Pretty sure if he knew anything about me, he’d know I would never do that to him or to me.) So, to his surprise, we met up with his best friend Ryan and his fiancé Kasey Anne, his brother Dustin and sister-in-law Lindsey. The evening was to be spent at the UVU Church Institute Dinner and Dance (because who turns down a free dinner with great friends?). There was a big brass jazz band (which we had at our wedding so that brought back fun memories) and although we aren’t a part of the institute, it was still a blast.

Situation 4: We all got a little tired, I decided to head home because I had been up late from the JB Premiere (ohhh gosh, what a great movie), but T.J. went and played Kinect with the rest of the group. My husband takes this game very seriously and gets very competitive. Maybe too seriously and too competitive because while playing, he hit his hand on the lightbulb hanging on the ceiling and needed to go to the E.R. All of this occurring while I was at home sleeping, T.J. found out if the cut would have gone any further he would have needed surgery. Luckily, he just needed four stitches. But still not fun. I woke to my husband climbing into bed around 2 or 3 AM telling me he just came from the hospital.

TBC in the next post…

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The Loose Ends

Boy. Oh. Boy. This year, I took the responsibility of planning our Valentine’s date and can I just say it is going to rock? Oh, and did I mention it’s only costing me approximately $5.00? Everything is falling into place nicely thanks to leftover wedding gift cards, remixing my closet, and help from a little friend of ours.

 I can’t give the details now, just in case T.J. reads this (yeah, right) but it’s going to be fun, classy, and romantic.

And this brings me to the conclusion of my post. Not much accomplished in this one.

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-itis

I’ve got a bad case of I-don’t-feel-like-doing-anything-itis. I guess I’m in a winter slump right now because I cannot seem to find the motivation to do anything, anywhere.

I told that to T.J. last night and he said:

You have to make the motivation.

You can’t expect to just find it.

Good advice. Great husband.

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I’m Missing You Like Candy

Yes, I did just quote a Mandy Moore song. It kind of ties in. Maybe.

The other night in bed, I was sucking on a cough drop. When it got to the end, I crunched on it a little bit.

T.J. then said,

Are you really eating something right now?

I couldn’t stop laughing because his tone just seemed so disgusted and annoyed. It was almost like he was thinking, “Can she not stop eating even when she’s going to bed?”

He thought I was eating some candy and trying to hide it since I had turned away. No, although I am a pig most of the time, I try to hold off at least for a few hours each night, thank you very much.

To end this post, and because we all need a little Mandy Moore in our lives, enjoy this music video:

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Just for fun. Just for fun.

During Church on Sundays, T.J. and I list our favorite names.

Baby names.

I’m not pregnant nor are there plans for that soon, but I love love love thinking about baby names. It tends to spark contention between T.J. and me, but I usually can stop a fight with,

When you carry the baby for 9 months, you can have the final say.

Here are our favs. Fortunately, T.J. and I agree on the majority of them.

  1. Evelyn. We’d call her Eva.
  2. Leighton. We’d call her Leighton.
  3. Brooklyn. We’d call her Brooklyn
  1. Lincoln. I secretly will call him Link because of Hairspray.
  2. Bentley (I guess we like car names?). We’d call him Bent. Just kidding.
  3. Liam. T.J. dislikes this name, but it’s my favorite. Partially because Liam Neeson is the man.

Three girls. Three boys. Perfect.

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Reason #57,201

While I was walking on campus today, I overheard part of a girl’s conversation she was having on the phone.

Maybe I was eave’s dropping. No way of knowing.

She was complaining to someone about how her roommate wasn’t cleaning her dishes and how their kitchen was always such a mess.

I smiled and thought,

Being married is the best.

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