Guess a little intro is in order.
Hubby and I met in (gasp) 1991. He had just returned from his mission to Tennessee, and I was starting my sophomore year. We met the first week that school was in session at church, and I thought he was one of the most irritating people I'd ever met! He said and did the most ridiculous things, and one day, I called him out on it. He said he said and did what he did to annoy people. Well, it worked. He was annoying.
But after I said something, he settled down around me. And he slowly became less annoying and just more interesting. And then one day, we started dating, then we broke up, and then we got back together, and then he asked me to marry him.
A few months later, he suggested we just get married when his brother, his wife and her daughter were all sealed in the Manti temple instead of waiting until our planned date. Ok. So we did. We joke that we eloped to the temple! And that was in July 1993. That first year was really tough, but things improved as we learned to live with each other.
Three years later, we moved to the Washington DC area, after we had both finished college and attended graduate school. We bought a house, and I prepared to attend veterinary school. For four years, one of us commuted on weekends to see the other one as we lived 300 miles apart. After graduation, I returned home for good and worked in private practice for a while, but then I landed a job in the government.
I bought a horse after veterinary school, had her professionally trained and finally got a life-long dream fulfilled of having a gorgeous purebred Arabian mare. I showed her and did very well with her in the ring before breeding her. We started looking for our own farm, which we didn't find at the time. Life was good. We were making plenty of money, had a lot of free time, and enjoyed life a great deal.
To our shock and surprise, in December 2003, we discovered I was unexpectedly pregnant. Our first baby was born in September 2004. We added three more boys in November 2006, December 2008 and January 2011. And along the way, we found ourselves, which I'll describe in more posts later.
I ended up quitting work entirely when the first was born -- that's a whole story in itself -- and went back to work when he was 18 months old. Ever since, I work part time. I'd rather be a full time mom, despite my education (or maybe because of my education) but I find I am a better FT mom if I have a little adult time away from the kids once in a while, and the part time work lets me have a little spending money and gives me some guaranteed adult conversation time once a week.
With the birth of each child, I take up a new hobby or expand an old one. I learned to bake when I had my first baby. With the second, I decided to start sewing again. With the third, I learned to quilt. With the fourth, I've been reading about canning and food storage and emergency preparation. It keeps me busy and gives me something to think about besides diapers and when the last nap was. I also kept the horses, and we added a dog, several cats and a fish along the way.
We homeschool, and that keeps us pretty busy too. There's always something to do! I found school very boring and confining, and it's wonderful to watch my kids learn something new every day that interests them and keeps their unique and wonderful way of thinking intact.
We are really active in our church. We are LDS (Mormon). It's a religion we live every day, not just on Sunday. We try to have family prayer and scripture study every day, Family Home Evening once a week, and then we try to find ways to serve others in our every day lives. We aren't maybe as active in our ward as we could be, but that's mostly because we live kind of far from everyone else in our ward, I'm pretty busy with the kids, and it's just not the right time. In the future we'll be able to do more temple trips and that sort of thing.
I am also very active with La Leche League and helping moms with breastfeeding and parenting concerns, and I am active with an online cleft lip and palate group, since our fourth baby was born with both conditions. Those are big things, and I'll probably write about them too.
As you can imagine, having four boys is quite the ride. Lots of fun stuff to write about with them too.
More later!
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