Matching Tattoos

This is the tattoo I share with my best friend. We came up with the design when I visited in her California in 2010. 

 
The meaning is kind of hard to explain. Basically, the anchor symbolizes our friendship. One of the definitions is "a central cohesive source of support and stability..." and that's what we've been for each other throughout the years. We've helped each other through the lowest points in our life and shared some of the most joyous events. As things have changed, our friendship has remained the same. So that's the anchor and it starts turning into birds. The birds symbolize the fact that we're so far apart, distance wise, but still part of the anchor. Make sense? So we created it, both fell in love with the design and decided to get it. We couldn't make it work before I left California, but decided we'd still get it individually when we could.We both have them now and eventually (hopefully one day soon!) we'll get a picture of them side by side.

You Capture - FRESH

Fresh flowers are something I actually don't like to receive. It took me about five years to tell my husband that. I know, I'm not your typical girl. For some reason it just seemed wrong to take something so beautiful, cut it, put it in a vase and watch it die. Fresh flowers in bloom are another story. I don't know what kind of flower this is, but it's growing on a bush near the parking lot in my condo complex. When the whole bush is in bloom it's beautiful and was one of the first things that came to mind to photograph for this week's theme.

You Capture: Comfort (FIRST POST)

This is my first attempt at "You Capture" and I'm screwing it up royally. This is an old picture and my husband took it, but it is the very first picture that came to mind when I read that the theme was comfort. This was the most comfortable time in my life. I spent most of the first weeks of my son's life in this recliner chair or in bed just nursing and cuddling. Thinking of those times brings me great comfort when I am dealing my now very loud, energetic, no-time-for-cuddles toddler.

Oh, and coffee. Drinking coffee with a friend while looking at the Blue Ridge mountains is also brings me great comfort!

Grammar and this exact Blog

I suck at sentence structure, spelling, grammar, and anything related to the these things. Please, please, please, if you notice something wrong, correct me. For instance, did I use the commas in the preceding sentence correctly? I'll bet I didn't. I used to know this stuff, but I don't anymore. I need someone to teach me. I'm too lazy to google "proper grammar" and teach myself. I swear, I will not be offended. Correct away!

Also, this blog is still a work in progress. I'm really enjoying writing in it, but I'm not happy with the way it looks. Hopefully, I'll figure it out soon!

More on Brennen

This is Brennen when he was barely a week old. Still a bit jaundiced. I've been reminiscing about his "tiny baby" days so much lately. He's grown so fast and he's only going to get even bigger. He can now climb out of this stroller.. while it's moving!
They didn't have you where I come from
Never knew the best was yet to come
Life began when I saw your face and I hear your laugh like a seranade
This quote is from a Dixie Chicks song and the first time I heard it, it made me think of how I feel about him.

Love and Marriage

This blog is inspired by an on ongoing conversation between my friend, Jessica, and I that will probably span the decades if it has not already.

The subject is marriage and people that have known me for a long or even short amount of time know how I once felt about marriage. I never dreamed of it and I never saw the point. I'm not religious, so I felt no pull to have my relationship recognized in a church and if you aren't religious, well what's the point of getting married? Tax purposes?

I'm sure this sounds very cynical and skeptical and not very romantic at all, but it's just how I felt. I knew you basically signed an official document, had a ceremony, maybe a reception and a honeymoon and then spent your life honoring and adoring each other. It didn't sound so bad and I definitely understood why people wanted to do it, but it still wasn't for me.

I believed then and still believe now that people change. I think we can all agree on that. So (and this is the conclusion I came to during one of my "conversations" with Jessica) I never wanted my relationship with Josh to come to a point where we'd both changed so much that we didn't want to be together, but we had no choice because we'd signed that paper. I truly, wholeheartedly, want Josh to pack up his things and leave me if a day comes that he does not love me anymore. The thought of either of us sticking around together simply because we committed forever to each other at one point is just heartbreaking. The dissolution of an unhappy marriage is so much less a vulgar idea to me than two people staying in a loveless marriage. Don't get me wrong. We've been together for a long time and have experienced the lowest of lows and the highest of highs, but even in the darkest times love still remained.

All this being said...

I now wear an engagement ring AND a wedding ring on my left hand. Well, not right now at this exact moment, because I was just doing the dishes, but you get the point. I have a marriage license in my filing cabinet drawer in a folder labeled "important documents". My last name is the same as my husband's last name. I'm married.

I had an epiphany one day, shortly before I announced to Josh that I would indeed marry him. Yes, we may change. We WILL change. That is inevitable. We will encounter highs and lows. Happiness and maybe some devastation. At some point, one or both of us may fall out of the love that we've enjoyed and nurtured over the past seven years. But we're in love now at this exact moment and at the moment that we committed our lives to each other, forever didn't feel like long enough. That's what it's all about to me. I don't know what the future holds for any of us, but I know what the past held and what the present feels like, and that's enough for me.

Marriage, like Motherhood, is something I just never knew I wanted. It's something I have embraced. Embracing these changes in my opinions and views is turning me into a more accepting and less judgmental version of my former self. It excites me to think of how much more I'm going to grow in the future.

Sweat Pea

This is my baby boy, Brennen, asleep on the couch. He is almost 18 months old and the absolute center of my entire universe. Just watching him sleep peacefully can always put a smile on my face and put the things life throws at me into perspective. It almost looks like he has his hand down his pants. Ah, like Father like Son. I just had to snap this picture because he NEVER just falls asleep, unless he's being rocked or nursed. This was such a precious moment.