How We Met: The Prequel

I've been out reading a lot of "How We Met" stories on mommy bloggers that I follow and I thought that I might record mine and Matt's. It may not be exciting and fantastic... but it is important. Important to me, to my husband, and to my children, because it is the story of how our little family began.

But, to tell our story, I'm going to have to take you back a little farther, to before I met Matt, so that you can see why I met Matt the way that I did. And perhaps, unfortunately, that means that I'm going to tell the story of the guy before Matt, the one that didn't pan out (thankfully). It is kind of an embarrassing story for me, because I was stupid. And when I tell it, you will probably think, "Man, she is stupid, what is wrong with her." But, I like to think that I had to be stupid and have the bad relationship before I could recognize a good relationship.

It was the Winter of 2005, I was in my senior year of college and was living at my sister Marie's condo in Provo. I was attending a singles ward that included a couple of sets of condos and a lot of homes in the area. Some students lived in the ward, but it was mostly made up of adults who had graduated from college and were now full into their careers, but still unwed; and laze about townies that were not in college and just were not inclined to move far from home. 

So, instead of trying for one of the successful, diligent men who had their lives planned out, I fell for a laze about. I met him at church and he was everything that I had already dated before: shy, quiet, tall, had never had a girlfriend, and needy. I don't know why I kept going for this type of guy. I had dated 4 of these already, but I kept going back to this personality because I suppose it was familiar and comfortable. I knew how to be a fantastic first girlfriend. I knew how to get guys ready for the next girl. I don't know why I didn't learn that this was a bad thing... sooner.

I don't remember anything about our early courtship except that we started dating exclusively quite quickly, and after two weeks of being boyfriend and girlfriend, I was thoroughly smitten and confessed my love. And then... things got... complicated.

In my mind, I started planning a life with him. I would graduate from college and we would get married and live in Provo and be joyously happy. He, on the other hand had no idea what he wanted to do with life. He couldn't make plans for the next week let alone for his life. I only had one semester left of college and he had not attended college at all. He was unhappy a not small amount of the time and was very negative about me, about our relationship, about his job, and about life in general and his negativity really pulled me down. 

I became not myself. I was crying all the time, I was sad all the time, and I started to pull away from my family and friends because they consistently would tell me that this guy was no good for me. My sisters would tell me to dump him and move on because he obviously did not make me happy. They also told me that he was weirdly quiet and reserved; like he was withholding things (they secretly nicknamed him Frankenstein). And I would scoff and say, "What? I've never been more in love and he is wonderful." The relationship I had and the one in my head were not the same thing.

So, I prayed because maybe, just maybe, my sisters might be on to something. I prayed one night and asked Heavenly Father if life was supposed to be this hard. Was I really meant to be this miserable and confused all the time? I asked if I was really supposed to end up with gloomy gus and the answer I got was, "You can do it, but it won't be easy." But in my mind, I heard, "You CAN do it." Awesome, I can do it, I'll make it through, I'm capable of making it work with this guy because I love him even though he is mean to me and makes me cry all the time. (See, I told you I would sound stupid.) 

Retrospectively, he was a manipulative and verbally down putting guy who used sly and cunning words to make me think that I was the problem, not him.

So, I stayed with this guy, I put my all into the relationship. I tried to do MORE thoughtful things for him. I tried to get gifts and do service and plan dates and parties for him and give him everything that I could think of. But, it didn't seem to be enough. He still told me that he didn't know if he saw a life with me. He really just wanted to see if there was anything better out there, and would I please wait for him while he did that? 

I was offended. I had been an amazing girlfriend (in my opinion), and he wanted to see if there was something out there better than me? OF COURSE THERE WASN'T. I'M AWESOME! Really, I'm grateful that he said this to me because it is really what kind of snapped me out of what seemed to be a cloud of cunning words and sweet kisses that kept me deluded into staying with this fella. So, I gave an ultimatum. I said either we needed to be moving forward toward something, or we needed to break up. We took a break.

It was Easter weekend, so I went up to stay with my parents in Eagle Mountain and lament about our fight and our break. My Mom told me that she was concerned about this guy and the way he was treating me and that she noticed red flags in our relationship and that it was the right choice to move on. ... And then he showed up at my parent’s doors with flowers and an apology and I fell for his sweet words all over again. My family indulged me and let him spend the holiday with us though I think that they were secretly cursing  his name and wishing that he had stayed away forever. But, we got back together... for two weeks.

Two weeks after Easter, my Mom called to tell me that my Dad was in the hospital. I went to my boyfriend’s house to find comfort and it turned into a conversation about him…and then into an argument. He told me that he had signed up for school at UVSC and that he was going to be a music major. I was in shock and hurt. Hurt because he had made a huge life plan without consulting me at all and I was here thinking that his apology meant that we were moving forward and that we were going to spend a life together and make plans together and he was making plans without me. I told him that there was no way that I was going to be one of those girls who put her man through school because he was too stupid to not go to college a long time ago (this is funny now... cuz look at where I am). I also told him that music was a stupid "non-major" that would be a colossal waste of money and time and would never further a career for him. 

And then he dumped me...possibly I was a little too blunt and possibly, I was upset that he was fighting with me on the same day that I found out my Dad was in the hospital. But to me, it felt like I was myself again. I was finally saying what I meant and not just taking the criticism and mean things that he would say to me all the time and going home to cry about it. I was me! Tactless, blunt, confident, ME!

And then, because he dumped me, I lamented. I went into what I refer to as my "dark post- breakup" period where I write a lot of poetry and listen to sad music and watch a whole lot of Buffy and Angel. My roommates were very familiar with this Becky. And, because he was in my ward, I still had to see him every week at church and ward prayer and at ward activities and explain to everyone in the ward that we were no longer together. And all of the extra time together possibly made my lament go on longer than it really needed to.

And after a whole month of lament, I decided it was time to move on. I decided to erase him from my blog which would be a symbol of erasing him from my life. So yes, you can go back to 2006 and look for the posts on this fella, but you will not find them. You might find some really bad poetry in April of 2006, but you won't find posts of our time together and you won't find pictures, because I deleted them all. I cropped and cut and edited him right out of my blog and therefore out of my life and it was refreshing.

At about this time, Gloomy Gus, as I am now calling him, came asked if I would talk to him after a ward function. We sat on the swing sets outside my condo and he talked. He told me a lot of things that I wish I never knew about him, and other things that made a lot of sense as to why our relationship didn't work. He also told me things that made me realize my Mom was right, there were red flags and I just didn't see them. He had serious problems with abuse. And, he was still trying to overcome many of the faults of his past. He told me that he lied to me again and again because he was trying to tell me what he believed that I wanted to hear. (Girls never like to be lied to, just as a note to all you fellas out there.)

He told me all about what I had done wrong in the relationship and why I had broken things for us. He asked if we could be friends. I said that there was no way that I could go from loving someone to being their pal. He got really mad and told me that my attitude was the reason that our relationship failed. He blamed it all on me and said that if I had just waited for him to date other people and worked on our friendship for a few months, that we could have succeeded. I told him he was crazy pants and obviously didn’t know anything about relationships… or girls.

He also told me that that day back on Easter, when he came to my parent's house to apologize, he actually came with an engagement ring and intended to propose to me, but stopped himself from doing it (thank goodness because I probably would have said, "yes" like a dummy).

After this conversation post break-up where he revealed his true self to me bluntly, without sugar coated words, I felt free. I felt so free to be out of what was a continually negative and hurtful relationship. I am so glad that he dumped me and set me free.

In the month of May, at the end of my lament, I started dating again. Of course, I started falling back into my pattern from days of old and got back in contact with my "guy friends" who I had neglected during the 6 months of my relationship with Gloomy. I started going out with my good friend from high school (the happy Mexican) who I had always had a kinda crush on though we had never officially dated. He was fun, constantly happy, and was complimenting me all the time. He really helped pull me out of my break-up funk. He made me feel good about me again. He had liked me since high school, and I always thought he was a lot of fun, but I knew that he wasn’t right for me. It was entertaining to go on dates and talk about old times, but it was also... something that I had already done before. I was doing the same thing again, returning to my same old habits and I finally realized that this would yield the same results as before. 

Then, my Mom told me that her friend Linda was in town for the weekend to introduce her new fiancé. Linda, is my Mom's age and had already been through two marriages (one divorce and one death) and had met her third hubby to be online. "Online?" I thought, "That's pretty weird." I thought that that was where people met crazies and fell in love with that crazy and then got killed in their sleep. But then I met Linda's fiancé and I thought, "Holy cow, this guy is super nice and Linda is really happy... If she can find someone awesome on a dating website and she is like 50, then why don't I try it and see what I find... it could be fun."

And so, I made a profile on LDSsingles.com because I was ready for something different. I was ready to meet someone new. I was ready to not date the same shy guy who had never kissed a girl and never had a girlfriend and didn't know how to act or how to treat me and I just let them treat me badly. I thought that maybe, just maybe, I deserved something more, someone better than the guy who had just treated me like crap. It wasn't him who needed to see if there was something better out there, it was me. And this dating website was my way to do that. But, I must admit that I was a little embarrassed that I had resorted to using a dating website. I thought, “How lame am I that I can’t meet quality guys on my very own.” But, I really wasn’t having luck meeting a different kind of guy I just kept circling the same groups, so I had to try something.

After a week of playing on the website; writing up a funny profile, uploading cute pictures of myself, taking a compatibility quiz, and perusing other guy’s profiles, I started to get some hits on my profile. I would get "flirts" which are basically little pictures that say, "Hi," "You're cute," "I like your smile" or some such other silly things. And then I started getting messages, but I couldn't read the messages until I signed up for an account. So, I signed up for one month of service. Little did I know that my future husband had also signed up for one month of service because he got a free one month voucher in the mail.

Knowing what I do now about Matt, I am very surprised that he signed up for a dating website. It is so very not in his personality to do something like that, nor to meet people online. It just isn't him. So, I like to think of it as fate, that we were always meant to meet. That whether it was on the website or somewhere else, we were always meant to find each other, but the website is just the way that it happened.

I had been on the website a couple of weeks when Matt sent me a flirt. I checked out his brief profile and it had all the things that I always told myself that I wanted in a guy, but never dared to go and try and get that kind of guy. It just said that he was a return missionary who led an active lifestyle and held a job. So, I sent him a flirt back. We ended up sending messages back and forth on the website until our memberships ran out, then he sent me emails. I liked him even before I met him because his emails were funny. I definitely like me a funny guy because... well, I think that I am funny, so I need someone funny to match me. Also, his emails were honest. Not just frivolous "what's your favorite sport" kind of emails, but he would describe his day to me and tell me what he thought about his day. It was refreshing. 

I found myself checking my email a lot to see if he had sent me a new email. When I would get it, I would quickly send my reply and then I would have to wait days again for his reply. It is possible that I was a little more into the emailing than he was. Something about the written word, I love it. Perhaps because I'm a writer, I find it more precious to be able to look back at the emails that we exchanged and actually read what our first conversations were. I didn't have to replay memories in my mind again and again because... I could just read about it; which really saves on memory space. If anyone knows me, you know that my memory is really really bad.

After two weeks of emails, I sent him my phone number and told him to call me. When I first heard his voice, I loved it. It was deep and manly and he just called me after he got off work and talked to me about his pet tarantula and for some reason I was so attracted to that voice. After a week of phone calls, he asked me out on our first date and that was the beginning of the beginning. Which, I will save for next time.

I Have a Hat Making Problem

As I sit at home alone on the weekends after my kids go to bed I get that anxious feeling where I want to do something. At first, I would go and get a snack in hopes that I would feel less anxious, but it did not seem to help. So, instead, I pulled out my old crochet stuff and just started making hats.... lots and lots of hats. I may have a hat making problem.

I find that crocheting soothes me. It makes me feel less anxious and gives me purpose. But why hats you ask? Because hats are faster than an afghan and I've discovered that no one wants an afghan... myself included. So hats it was! And then I had more baby hats than I knew what to do with. I don't know enough babies to give these hats to.

So, I brought my hats to work, set them on my desk and tried to sell them. And it worked! Okay, so I've only sold $65 worth of hats, but that is better than no hats at all! Finally, something to do with my excess of hats.

Here are some of the hats I have been making. I took these photos with my phone, so excuse the poor quality.

I've made more hats than this, but I neglected to take pictures of all of them before I sold them. And if you are interested, that little penguin still hasn't sold yet ($15). But, even if I don't sell all my hats, I will just hold on to them and give them out at every baby shower that I go to. Yep, I have a hat making problem.

Breaking Dawn Part 2

On Friday, I was able to go and see Breaking Dawn Part 2. Momma Kimball was kind enough to watch the kids for me so that I could have a night out for me.

I usually go and see this movie with Marie and her friends, but since Marie had just had her baby, I just went with her friends without her. My mom came with me since Marie was unable to use her own ticket.

Karen orchestrated the whole night and got tickets for everyone at the Thanksgiving Point theaters. I haven't been to the Thanksgiving Point theaters in a few years and things have changed... a lot. I did not know that the theater was pretty much rebuilt to be this massive thing. It used to be a cute little thing, and now it is huge.

Karen and I at the theater

I love the first three Twilight books, but the Breaking Dawn book was very very disappointing. But, like a loyal fan I still went to see all the movies in the theater. I wasn't expecting anything great for this film because I know how much I do not like the end of the Breaking Dawn book. But, honestly, this movie is much better than the book, by a wide margin. (How many "book" movies can you say that about?)

The movie had all the elements of the book that I loved, edited out the boring and overly lengthy parts of the book and added parts to the story that were sorely needed and lacking in the book. The screenplay writer really did a good job adapting the book for film.

One of my favorite moments from the book put in the movie

Things I loved:

• I loved how they portrayed Bella as a vampire. In the book, it seemed as if Bella went through a personality change when she became a vampire, but she seemed more... Bella in the movie. 
• I liked how they portrayed Jacob's devotion to Renesme. He was more of a protective older brother rather than a person in love with a baby. The book seemed to have a hard time scaling Jacob's "love" back.
• Less wolves. There were less scenes with wolves in them and it was just so nice. I don't have anything against the wolves (Team Jacob!) but they are really boring to watch on film because you can't hear the internal dialog going on between all the wolves.

 

•  Still my favorite character in the movie is Charlie. Billy Burke makes Charlie so endearing, that you can't help but love him. He makes me laugh, he makes me cry, oh Charlie, you are my favorite.

• And my second favorite performance is this guy, Michael Sheen. He plays a magnificent Aro. He is funny and evil and likable even though he is evil because he gets such a kick out of being evil. He was especially fun to watch in this film.
• The ending! So, remember how in the book there is this big build up to the end battle and then they stand around and talk a lot and nothing happens and no one dies and it is a huge disappointment? Well the movie fixes that! The battle scene is awesome. And there is a surprise at the end of the movie that I did not see coming. The whole time the battle scene was happening, I just kept thinking, this is how the book SHOULD have ended. Awesome. It really made the movie for me.

Things I didn't so much like:

• How little we saw Charlie. I get it, Charlie isn't a big part of the book, so he isn't a part of the movie very much, I just missed him. Couldn't they have added him in more just because?
• Because of the massive amount of new characters that were being introduced, the amount of screen time spent on each character is very limited. I wish there could have been more time to get to know more of the characters that were new to this film.

 

• Baby Renesmee. They created this sort of CG version of Renesmee and it looked very odd. CG face on baby body is really weird looking. As does baby with full set of teeth. But, I get it, they did it so that the baby would look unnatural and look like the little girl that they cast as Renesmee, but even so, it was just really odd. 

In conclusion, I loved the movie. I would dare to say that it is my favorite of the Twilight movies thus far. My second favorite being New Moon (Team Jacob!). Now I feel like I need to go back and watch all the movies again. I only own the first one though so I will have to go and have Twilight marathons at Marie's or something.

Congrats Marie!

Last night, my sister Marie finally had her baby. Yay! Only 9 days late. So, she is two days better then when she had Damon. Good job Ree!

Marie and Baby are doing fine. I went and see them last night and forgot to get a picture of the baby because I'm the worst. But he has tons of hair and was very sleepy. Oh, and he was 10 pounds. He looked like a one month old. Marie likes to grow them big.

Thank goodness he is out!

Why Sick Why!?!

The kids are sick again. It is inevitable. Kids get sick, it is a thing. But I still hate it.

What started as a runny nose and a cough has become a monster! Cough cough, vomit. That is what my kids do because they haven't yet figured out how to clear their throats after coughing, so they start to gag and then vomit. Awesome.

Also, Nicole has a runny/stuffy nose and still hasn't figured out how to blow her nose. It has resulted in lots of tears because we try to explain it to her, try to show her how to blow her nose, but she just keeps sucking in instead of blowing out and then she cries.

And then the fevers came. Not just little fevers, but the scary fevers 103.5 fevers. Why does Nicole fever so high when she is sick? I've started getting used to the high fevers so when she clocks in at 101, I'm like, "psht, that's nothing, she's fine."

I took a half day at work yesterday so that I could stay home with the kids while Matt finished up a school project and went to class and I got a small glimpse at my soon to be stay-at-home life. And, even with the sickness, it was awesome. Being a stay-at-home mom is going to be awesome.

Here's hoping that my kids are better by Friday so that I can leave them with a sitter and go to the Twilight movie. I don't know how to speed up their recovery though. I suppose we just have to wait it out. I take extra vitamin C and extra airborne when I'm sick, but kids aren't suppose to do that. If only there was baby vitamin c and baby airborne.

Positivity

It is challenging being positive when my life is not what I would like it to be right now. It is easy to think about all the things that I want to change in my life. But, being negative is not a pleasant way to live... for me, my kids, or my husband.

So, I've decided to focus on the things in my life that I love, that I am grateful for.

I love that I get so much time with my children on the weekends. It is two and a half days of just me and them and I love my time with my children. I love that my children and happy and healthy and growing and learning every day.

I love my husband who puts our family first, work second and school third. Any spare time that he has, he gives to me and the kids and doesn't take any extra time for himself. He never uses his free time to do things for himself. I love my time with my husband.

I love that Matt only has 5 more weeks of school this semester. This semester can not end soon enough for me! But, it is almost over and Matt will most likely be more relieved than I am when it is over.

I love that I am quitting my job. Come January, I am leaving work to once again be a stay at home mom. Next semester is Matt's last semester and he needs to be able to focus on school and graduate, so I'm going home to take care of the kids so he can focus on his schoolwork. Matt's job at Adobe should be able to support us.

So, I will try and focus on these things and not all the things that I want but don't have. And hopefully, with a more positive attitude, life will get better too.

It's Over

The election is finally over and I am relieved because I am so tired of listening to people talk incessantly about politics. I don't like talking politics. I especially don't like listening to people talk about the same issues again and again. And I am tired of people bashing other candidates instead of touting the candidate they are rooting for. So, I am glad that it is finally over.

Voting yesterday was madness. There were more people at the polls in Utah this year than I have ever seen before. I have never waited more than 20 minutes to vote. I went in yesterday when the polls first opened and I waited in line an hour to vote. Matt went in with the kids later in the morning and he was in line for 2 hours. He said it was horrible. But, despite the lines, I'm glad people are exercising their right to vote.

Not all the people that I voted for won, which is a little disappointing, but I don't have control over that. I can only do my part and vote.

Four more years of Obama... I guess we will never know if Romney could have turned this country around. Here's hoping that Obama gets his act together and actually starts to do some good. So far, I have not benefited from his reign.

Cousins

Dan and Nicole often get to spend time with their cousins. I was watching my sister's boy, Damon, the other night and all the kids wanted to sit on this little bean bag. It is not a big bean bag, but they all insisted on sitting on it while watching Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.

They were like little zombies fixed to the screen.

 The kids spend every Monday with their cousin Lindy because my sister-in-law watches them for us. Lindy is so cute and the kids love her.

Dan is so happy about something.

Look at Nicoley putting her arm around her brother. What a good sister!

They are good cousins.

Fall Pictures

Momma Kimball has a lot of trees in her backyard and all the leaves fell recently. So, Momma Kimball wanted pictures of all the grand kids together in the leaves. We tried and tried, but were unable to get a shot of all the kids looking at the camera at the same time. And we had three camera's taking pictures at the same time.

Matt was at school when we took these pictures, so that is why he is not in them.

But, I was able to capture some good pics of just my kids. Though the quality is not awesome because my camera isn't awesome. But here they are anyway.

It was really hard to get Dan to sit with the other kids, he kept getting up and runny away. So I tried having Nicole hold him... but then we couldn't see Nicole. Oh well.

Adobe Halloween Party

Adobe had a Halloween Party and we were able to attend because Matt works there and he skipped class so that we could all go together. This party was amazing. Bigger than any corporate party that I have ever been to.

The employees had turned the office into a Halloween walk. Each department decorated their sections in a theme and everyone who came to the party was able to walk through the office like it was a Halloween Haunted house kinda thing... only less scary.

The line to get in was like a 45 minute wait and we forgot to bring our stroller, so it was a long wait. But, they had a lot of entertainment while we were waiting in line. There was food (churros, ice cream, popcorn) and then there were entertainers like a live band, acrobats, jugglers, magicians, the jazz cheerleaders, snakes, tarantulas, unicyclists, a yo yo trick guy and a lot more. So, we were not bored in line, it was just hot and my arms were getting tired from holding a kid the whole time.

Acrobats and Cheerleaders

Nicole loved the snake. She even held it for a little while. She cried when she couldn't hold it longer.

"Hey snake, where are you going?"

Once we finally got inside the first building (there were two) I was amazed. It didn't even look like an office. It looked like a haunted house. Each section was decorated differently. There was a western section, a haunted section, Avengers section, Disneyland, Hunger Games, Lord of the Rings, Neverland, and others that I cannot remember because it was a lot to take in.

Conference room decorated with skeletons.

Adobeland (aka Disneyland)

Nicole and Cinderella

Nicole and Daisy

Nicole with Minnie and Mickey

Damon, Nicole, and Dan with Nana

Captain Hook's ship

Nicole and Captain Hook

Dan and a Pirate

Bilbo Baggins Birthday Party

A waterfall that they built inside the building. It was awesome.

District 12 as we enter the Hunger Games

It was a lot of fun, thought it was exhausting. My arms were dead by the end of it from holding children a not small amount of the 2.5 hours that we were there. But, the kids were actually really good and they got a lot of candy while we were there. As soon as we got the kids into the car, they fell asleep. They were very tuckered out.

Here's hoping that Matt is able to stay with Adobe and we can do more fun events in the future. Matt didn't do any of the decorating because he works the graveyard and because his department did not decorate. In fact, the people who work in the NOC were the only ones working while the party was going on. Even though there is a party, someone still has to watch the servers.

Pumpkin Painting

So, with our pumpkins that we acquired from the pumpkin patch, we painted them. Why paint and not carve? Because I have toddlers and knives and toddlers don't mix. Paint and toddlers? Those mix just fine.

Both kids took painting very seriously. No smiles, all serious painting.

I stripped Dan down to his diaper because I suspected that he wouldn't be able to stay clean while painting... and I was right.

The first time that Dan got paint on his hand he freaked out and wanted me to clean his hands. But then it started getting everywhere and he didn't care any more.

This is a typical Nicole face that I seem to capture on camera a lot.

Dan decided to taste the paint. But he didn't like it so much. Don't worry, it is just poster paint.

 Here is Dan's finished pumpkin.

 And Nicole's finished pumpkin.

And my finished pumpkin.

The kids had a lot of fun, but it only took like 30 minutes for them to paint all the sides of their pumpkins. I was kinda hoping that the activity would take longer. I love doing these kinds of crafts with them, though I find it hard to have the time to do crafts with the kids.

Most nights I get home, make dinner, feed the kids dinner, clean up after dinner, clean up toys around the house, bathe the kids, pajama the kids, bottle the baby, and put them to bed. My time is here and gone before I get to do any thing fun with the kids.