the best days of my life

These are the best days of my life.

Lately I find myself being overcome by waves of nostalgia.  They wash over me suddenly, brought on by a song on the radio, the scent of something passing by, or a long forgotten flavor brought back to the forefront of my mind.

I used to think nostalgia was a happy word but when it hits me it's often accompanied by subtle tones of sadness and longing for good times now passed.  When I'm feeling nostalgic I only remember the good times.  The lens of time warps my view and my memories of anything negative are hazy at best.

The good times stand out.  The best times are crystal clear.

I've tried many times to explain this melancholy feeling I get to Dave.  I keep telling him that I hope when we go to heaven there is a movie theater playing non-stop films of the best days of our life.  I'm hopeful that heaven will have that.

These were the best days of my life.

Dave and I were young and in love and beautiful.  We had everything in front of us.  Everything was so exciting.  I still remember the soreness I felt in my cheeks from smiling so wide during our first awkward conservation in the laundry room of our apartment building.  I remember the sweetly sickening butterflies fluttering around the top of my stomach the next day hoping that every buzz of my phone was a text from him.  And I remember the giddy excitement I couldn't hide when one finally was.  I remember the electricity of holding his hand for the first time in the dark of my apartment living room watching a stand up comedian on TV.  Everything was fresh and everything was exciting and everything was special and new.  They were the best days of my life.

These were the best days of my life.

I was a teenager, sheltered by the work of my parents and love of my family.  These were the days of my hardest chore being loading the dishwasher after dinner.  They were the days when my biggest concern was whether or not my letter jacket would arrive in time for my family vacation to Utah.  (A vacation, by the way, I neither planned nor paid for.)  It was a time when I came home from a not-so-grueling day at school to a mother who asked how my day was and prepared a family dinner, a father who came home from work to help with my not-so-strenuous homework, and siblings who thought I was cool enough to hang out with.  I wish I could go back for one more car ride from early morning seminary to school where Jack and I would inevitably stop somewhere for breakfast along the way.  I wish I could go back to the family nights where Lauren would inevitably ask someone to play a game with her.  Life was simple and beautiful and I didn't even know it.  I just wanted to grow up.

These were the best days of my life.

These were the days that my beautiful babies were born.  I have goosebumps dotting my arms and tearing welling in my eyes just remembering these perfect, wonderful days.  I wish those moments could be frozen in time for just a bit, those moments where those brand new babies were placed in my arms, their souls having just been with Heavenly Father.  It was a moment that no one could have prepared me for, a moment where I was so overwhelmed with pure love it startled me.  They smelled like vanilla frosting and I couldn't put them down.  Those were the best days of my life and they just went by too fast.

These were the best days of my life.

Dave and I moved our tiny little family into a tiny little apartment a few miles away from my parents.  The three of us shared a bedroom and seven hundred square feet of cramped living space and it was wonderful.  I could clean the entire apartment, floor to ceiling, in one afternoon.  We had a little balcony we could sit on and watch the fountain in the courtyard below.  It was the first time we had our own place as a family of three and it felt blissful.  It felt like family.  It felt like home.

These are the best days of my life.

Sam was a little under the weather so we stayed home in our pajamas all morning.  We watched cartoons and read books and the kids played on the bed while I tried to fold laundry.  Finally Kate decided she wanted to get dressed and opted for a blue princess costume.  She's twirling in circles in the living room behind me.  She's in her own world.  It's a world of magic and wonder and her favorite characters from Angelina Ballerina and I get front row tickets to watch in amazement.  It takes so little to brighten her day.  She came up to me with an imaginary wound on her forehead asking for a band aid.  When I got one from the medicine cabinet her face lit up and she threw her little arms around my neck and in a tiny toddler voice exclaimed, "Thank you Mama!"

Sam had a hard time settling in for his afternoon nap.  I listened to him toss and turn in his crib trying to get comfortable for a while.  Finally, frustrated and awake, he started to cry.  I came to the rescue with open arms and a bottle of grape juice.  I brought him out to the rocking chair in my bedroom and cradled him like a newborn and sang song after song until his eyes got heavy and he started drifting to sleep.  Occasionally he would look up at me with big giant eyes and sometimes I'd close my own eyes only to feel a tiny little hand pat me on the chin.

That evening Dave came home from work and we met at the grocery store where the bus drops him off.  We walked around with the kids in a race car cart and picked up frozen yogurt and a rotisserie chicken.  The girl at the check out gave Katelyn a strip of stickers that read "I've been Krogering."  When we got home, Kate promptly peeled off all the stickers and stuck them on the two of  us until we were covered in smiley face stickers of primary colors.  Finally, with our two beautiful children fed, bathed, and fast asleep, I sat down on the couch to eat my dessert and watch re-runs of Seinfeld with my best friend.  Now, almost seven years later, when we hold hands there is a warm and comforting familiarity that I love.  We'll go to bed early because we can and I'll smile when I think back to the days when goodnight meant goodbye so we tested the limits of our ability to stay up late.  I'm so lucky to be able to say goodnight but not goodbye to my love.

That was one of the best days of my life.

That day was today.

#tbt - sister sister

Today was a sad day because I had to say goodbye to my sister Lauren as she packed up to fly north for the winter.

I tried unsuccessfully to convince her to simply transfer down here and start going to UH.  She cut me off before I could explain that she could crash here.  The walk in closet is already occupied by Katelyn but I was pretty sure Lauren would be comfortable sleeping on the couch.  She could fall asleep to the soothing sounds of any of the five TV stations we receive.  We can't offer much in the way of social attractions but last night Dave and I played a pretty rousing game of Scrabble in which, at the end of the game, I flung the game board into the air, laughing hysterically as the little wooden pieces rained back down on us.  As I was cleaning Kate's toys this afternoon, I was almost certain I would find a lettered tile or two.

My family is historically bad at goodbyes.  We take it beyond a normal level of tearful sadness.  I think it's an anxiety thing.  The whole last day gets turned into a dismal "party" that we are trying to enjoy.  Each hour grows weepier than the last as the number of times the phrase, "This is just so sad" increases.  We really don't like saying goodbye.

Sure enough, as we stood around in my kitchen next to the front door, things got even more pathetic.  Saying goodbye in my family is like trying to remove a stubborn bandaid.  We each have our own method of choice.  When Jack went into the MTC and we knew we weren't going to see him for the next two years, he chose the "rip it off quickly" approach.  When the time came, we each got one quick hug and he was gone.  My goodbyes always seem to be drawn out.  I was the kid who was convinced that the easiest way to remove a bandaid was to slowly and painfully pull on the adhesive, bit by bit until you got to the end.

Kate, of course, was running around completely oblivious.  She kept trying to goad a tearful Aunt Lauren into another game of chase.  She was blissfully unaware and had no concept of a longer term goodbye.  All she knew was that Aunt Lauren was asking for three times as many hugs and kisses as usual.  When Aunt Lauren finally did walk out the door, I'm sure Katelyn's innocent toddler mind was expecting her to walk right back in tomorrow morning to go swimming with us.  Somehow, her complete ignorance of time and her inability to understand missing someone made the situation even more sad.

So forgive me if I'm a bit melancholy tonight.  It seems fitting to devote this Throwback Thursday to sister memories.

My first memory of Lauren was before she was even born.  I was five years old when my parents found out she was a girl.  I was so excited and imagine playing dress up and Barbie dolls with this new "baby" in just a few months.  Imagine my surprise when all the baby did was sleep.

When she finally did get old enough to play Barbies with me, my parents bought us a Barbie Fold n Fun house that I'm sure they deeply regretted every time we asked them to set it up.

At some point in our childhood, it was decided that we were going to share a bedroom.  This made for some epic late night screaming matches.  We slept on a blue metal bunkbed and I somehow was assigned the top bunk.  (To this day, Lauren claims that she falls out of bed frequently.)  Lauren would put her feet up on my mattress and kick me in the back for sport.  Sometimes I would laugh about it and think it was funny and sometimes I would be annoyed.  Sisters can be loose cannons like that.  The bed was pushed up in the corner of the room against one of the windows.  Once Lauren very quietly and very sneakily climbed up the side of the bed so that she was standing on the window sill and her face was right above mine.  There have been few times in my entire life when I have been that badly startled.  We laugh about it to this day.

When I was sixteen, I broke up with my first boyfriend.  I found out that he had lied to me so that he could secretly hang out with some other girl behind my back.  It was one week before the Homecoming Dance so I had no date.  It was very dramatic.  I remember sitting with my mom in the upstairs loft of our old house crying my teenage eyes out when I heard little ten year old sniffles and realized that Lauren was crying just as hard as I was.  I had no idea why she was crying because she hadn't been dumped.  I realize now that it was one of those rare times when you get to witness someone who loves you so much that they experience your pain and feel sad just because you are.

Years later, when I actually experienced a more serious and life altering break up, Lauren was crying alongside me with a fierce loyalty I have rarely ever seen anywhere else.

One time, we were watching TV and the most stupid show came on with some joke about two women who brought in the same coffee mug and kept yelling, "Coffee twins!"  As if it was some weird sisters dog whistle, we both picked up on some crazy strain of humor that no one else in the room could detect and we laughed, as my mom would say, like hyenas for days.  We still find humor in some of the same things that almost no one else laughs about and we have a nearly identical sister chuckle so that, when we really get cracking up about something, it sounds like one person laughing in stereo rather than two goofy girls.

Of all the people I told about the impending arrival of Baby Kate, Lauren's was the most extreme.  She immediate burst into tears and not the quiet one-tear-rolling-slowly-down-your-check kind either.  She nearly collapsed into a puddle of sobs and it was then that I knew that Aunt Lauren and Katelyn would always have a special bond.

I think that's what made Lauren saying goodbye to Katelyn the saddest part about today.  I am forced to remind myself to keep this in perspective.  She is going to BYU for four months, not crossing the Pacific on a sailboat, not boarding a shuttle for a moon landing, and not being exiled to Elba.  It has just been nice having her around.

Not everyone is lucky enough to have a sister.  No one but me is lucky enough to have one as good as Lauren.

the family table

When I was growing up, sitting down to a family meal each night was the rule rather than the exception.  My mom cooked dinner almost every night and we would all sit down when my dad got home from work.  We talked about school and friends and other various topics and we couldn't leave the table until everyone was done.  When the meal was finished, we each had to do some chore to help with the cleaning.

(If you were lucky, you got to take out the trash.  If you were unlucky, you were stuck doing the dishes.  Luckily if you complained that "nobody ever helped you," my dad would help until the chore was done.)

My childhood evenings were filled with classic meals like spaghetti with garlic bread and chicken with rice.  We ate things like meatloaf, shepherd's pie, and soup.  On Saturday mornings my dad fixed pancakes (although not in a fancy dress shirt like in this picture).  No one was forced to eat anything but there was always something on your plate that you liked.  Family dinners were a happy time that we all looked forward to yet took for granted at the same time.

For the first few years of our marriage, Dave and I were both either working or studying full time.  At home, we were tired and worn out and cooking a meal just didn't sound fun.  Most nights were spent rummaging for ready to eat food and sitting on the couch bathed in the glow of a TV screen, surrounded by the din of commercials rather than family conversation.  I always planned on having family dinners.  It just made more sense to wait until we had children and I was at home to prepare our food instead of out in the workforce tired like everyone else.

And then we had Katelyn and Dave started working and life went so fast so soon.  He never gets home until seven and by the time we get up the stairs and into the house it just made more sense to put Kate in bed and eat something from the fridge, or worse a fast food restaurant.

Lately, I've been watching a show on BYU TV called The Food Nanny.  At first I started watching it because I will watch any cooking show.  I continued to watch it because I couldn't take my eyes off the show's hokey gimmicky antics and the annoying timbre of her voice was like passing a train wreck.  I just couldn't take my ears off of it.

Eventually though she grew on me.  I realized that past that obscenely chipper Utah accent and frosted hair was a woman who actually felt strongly about family dinners and genuinely cared for the families she was helping.  Episode after episode, she tries to help various haggard parents at their wits end about family meals.

(Only a cooking show produced in Utah would prepare recipes designed for eight to nine servings, by the way.  It is so Utah.  She helps families of multiple blonde children with last names like Christensen and Young.)

So I made the commitment to cook at least five family dinners a week.  On Fridays, we have a date night and go out to eat and Saturdays would be spent eating leftovers from the week before or in the absence of leftovers, breakfast food.

At first, it was difficult.  That first Monday evening as I drove to pick Dave up from the bus stop, I briefly considered driving through Wendy's for some side salads and chicken nuggets.  Instead, we went home and I threw frozen chicken and broccoli into the oven.

Gradually though it got easier.  I planned ahead and wrote down the menu on my calendar each week.  I found that by briefly thinking through what we would eat the next day before I went to bed, I saved myself time and effort the next afternoon.

I learned that I actually enjoy the half hour it took me to put dinner together in the evenings.  Dave sits with Kate in the living room and I get to prepare our meal serenaded by the sounds of squealing laughter and books being read.  It has given Dave and Kate a chance to spend time together before she goes to bed for the night.

We sit down together and have a prayer before we eat.  Katelyn has learned to fold her little arms that are so chubby she can't even fold them completely.  Dave tells me about his day, I recount our adventures at home, and Katelyn laughs as we try to keep her from dumping her plate on the floor.

Family dinner has become my favorite part of the day.

Family dinners have become a part of our nightly routine that I look forward to.  The social, emotional, and financial benefits of eating together as a family are countless but what I think is overlooked is the health benefit.

I have found that I'm eating less throughout the night.  First of all, I'm eating a healthy balanced meal with ingredients that I have chosen and prepared instead of a processed or fast food meal with a high starch and sugar content.  I know what I am feeding my family because I purchased the food and put it together myself.

But perhaps more importantly, by making our family dinner an event instead of an evening of grazing, I am telling my brain that I have eaten.  I prepare the food, I sit down and enjoy eating and conversation, and at the end, I help clean up and put Katelyn to bed.  The entire process takes well over an hour.  By the time we sit down for the night, it is almost nine o'clock and my brain has processed that fact that I enjoyed a meal, am full, and am pretty much done eating for the day.

I hadn't realized it but by eating small amounts of even healthy food over a long period of time in the evening, I wasn't allowing my brain to comprehend the fact that I had eaten.  Enjoying a healthy meal with my family causes me to stop and focus on the food I am eating.  When I am done I know it.

So I guess I should have been less annoyed by the Food Nanny and more grateful.  She saved family dinners at our house.

miss diva kate

Recently Katelyn has started a stage.  I think I will call it her "diva" stage.  She has just started realizing that she sometimes has different plans than I do.  She's also figuring out that she has a voice when it comes to not getting her way.  ...a very loud voice.

When Kate was first born, she was so quiet and rarely ever cried.  No one could believe what a good baby I had.  We could take her anywhere and she would just sit quietly in her car seat for hours on end.  Eventually, we discovered that she was so tired because of her jaundice.  Once she got her bilirubin under control, she let us know what was what.

One night, we went to Bountiful to eat dinner with my uncle and his family.  We drove separate cars so Dave drove our car back to the condo and I followed behind with my mom and Kate.  Kate decided that she didn't really feel like making the drive through Parley's Canyon to Park City.  Before we left, I nursed her so she wouldn't be hungry.  I positioned her in her car seat just right and swaddled her with a blanket so she would be warm.  Like a nervous new mother, I made sure that everything was perfect before we started our journey.

That just wasn't good enough for my little diva.  She started crying before we backed out of the driveway.  By the time we had reached the freeway she had upgraded her crying to screaming and once we were in the canyon, it became obvious that she was furious.

We tried everything we could think of: making sure she had her pacifier, giving her a toy, singing songs.  At one point, my mom reached back to try and hold her little hand.  That just mad her more angry.  We looked at each other and nervously laughed as I started to realize that my precious little angel might have more devil in her than I thought.  Now whenever Kate screams angrily or throws a fit, we call it Parley's.

Today, we were shopping at Target when I passed the cutest little floppy hat.  I put it on Katelyn's head and she loved it.  She thought she looked so beautiful.  I looked at the eight dollar price tag and said, "No way," and took the hat away.  Kate freaked out.

I put a bag of beans next to her and when I took it away (fearing that she would open it and beans would spill everywhere) she freaked out.  When I wouldn't give her a sip of my drink (she makes a huge mess and soda isn't good for babies) she freaked out.  When I wouldn't let her hold the bag of turkey (that had just been cut at the deli) she freaked out.

Finally, we got to the dollar section and found these cute little sunglasses.  "Okay," I thought, "She can have these."  When I put them on her little face, she beamed and started waving at people like some kind of celebrity.  At the few people who were not mesmerized by her beauty, she yelled.  It took nearly thirty minutes to finish shopping, check out, and get to the car and Kate never once tried to take the sunglasses off.

 Temper tantrums?  An affinity for accessories?  Waving to her adoring fans?

I think I just might have a diva on my hands.

EGGIES!!!!!

One time at a family reunion, one of my cousins (who was probably seven or eight) picked up a small bag of potato chips and started repeating the word, "Chipees!  Chipees!  Chipees!"  This went on for fifteen minutes.  Literally.

(And I always use that word correctly.)

It has now become a running joke in my family.  Whenever something reminds us of that (It could be as simple as a bag of chips in general) we start saying, "Chippes!"

Yesterday, my mom ran into the dollar store while I waited for Katelyn in the car.  She came back with a bag full of treasures and said that she bought me a prize.  I spotted a GIANT bag of popcorn and was hoping that it was destined to be mine.  Instead, he handed me a box of EGGIES!!!!!!!!!

EGGIES!  EGGIES!  EGGIES!

I really am a sucker for TV infomercials.  I had to have a magic bullet because I just loved the infomercial.  Whenever I come across it channel surfing, I usually sit and watch it for a few minutes.  It is that good.

Eggies' big claim to fame is the fact that you can hard boil an egg without having to peel it.  I actually don't mind peeling hard boiled eggs.  Thanks to watching Alton Brown on Good Eats, I have the perfect egg peeling technique.  However, I HATE poaching eggs and I LOVE eating poached eggs.  A soft boiled egg is basically identical to a hard boiled egg.  Eggies are perfect for soft boiling eggs.

This morning Katelyn got to try the first batch of eggs from the Eggies.

You can always tell how much Kate likes a food by how much of it ends up in her eyelashes.  By the looks of this picture, the Eggies were a great success. :)

we had a wonderful valentime!

 When I was a teenager I thought the idea of Valentine's Day was so romantic.  I dreamed of receiving fifteen dozen roses delivered to where ever I was working so everyone could see that I had a valentine.  In addition to the 180 pink or red roses I was to receive, I expected a balloon bouquet, boxes and heart shaped boxes of chocolates, and the fanciest dinner at the most expensive of restaurants.  Valentine's day was going to be so romantic.

Last year for Valentine's Day, I was pregnant with Baby Kate and teaching school and I forgot to bring my lunch.  So like a knight in shining armor, my valentine Dave drove up to the school to bring me something to eat.  As we sat in the car eating our lunch, I could tell something was stressing him out.  He explained that he very worried about Valentine's Day.  He didn't have an expensive gift for me, he had tried making reservations at the most exclusive restaurant in South Jordan but they were all booked, and he was pretty sure that he has ruined Valentine's Day.

I laughed and told Dave that my ideal Valentine's Day included nothing too fancy, no expensive restaurant reservations, and definitely no gifts.  He breathed a sigh of relief and we had a wonderful time.  We ended up sharing a delicious meal at the Olive Garden, strolling down to Rocky Mountain Candy Factory for some caramel apples, and I came home to find some beautiful flowers waiting for me.  It was ideal.

 This year, we did even better.  We had a Valentine's Week.  We went out for dinner and a movie on Tuesday.  The theater was nearly empty and we watched our movie in peace, without waiting in a line and with a comfortable empty seat barrier surrounding us.  On Wednesday, Dave surprised me with a beautiful white and red flower arrangement that I have been enjoying all week.  Tonight, Dave picked up Blue Bell ice cream and two 64 four ounce Diet Cokes on his way home from work.  We ordered our favorite pizza from Pepperoni's (pesto and pepperoni) and laughed as we imagined all the poor souls waiting for a table at all the fancy expensive restaurants.  We ate our pizza and ice cream in our pajamas, washed it all down with Diet Coke, and watched a movie on the couch.

 And it was so romantic. :)

sleep walking

I'm not trying to brag but my little baby sleeps 14 hours a day.  She has been sleeping through the night for about six months now.  I'm not sure how I got so lucky but I certainly don't question it.  She loves going to bed at night.  Her daddy sings a few songs to her.  One of them, The Tickle Song, was written by my dad and sung to my siblings and I.  I'm glad we're continuing the tradition.  Katelyn and Daddy have quiet singing time together and then he puts her in her crib and she is asleep in seconds. (I wonder who she gets that from?)

Sometimes she walks in her sleep.  I mean, come on!  She has places to go.

four more years!

Last night, D and I celebrated our four year anniversary.  The past four years have been the best of my life and I'm looking forward to four more years and an eternity after that.

I've spent the evening reminiscing about our marriage and remembering all of the happy memories we've made.

On the morning of our wedding, we met at the temple dressed in our Sunday best and were taken to a little office to fill out some administrative paperwork before getting ready to be sealed.  I remember sitting in that little room holding hands and giggling nervously, waiting for that sacred ordinance that would bind our spirits together for the rest of forever.  We were just so happy and everything felt kind of surreal like we were floating through some sort of blissful fuzziness.  I felt an exciting combination of nervousness and peace as I smiled at the eternal companion I had finally found.  I remember smiling at D and thinking to myself, "It doesn't get any better than this."

But I was wrong.  One year later, I had graduated, D was a starving student and we were so very poor.  But as poor as we were, we were even more in love.  We had just settled into an apartment that made me feel so at home.  We could barely afford to pay our bills each month but D's parents paid for us to go out to dinner at a fancy restaurant in Salt Lake City as an anniversary gift.  I remember getting dressed up and sitting down to a dinner we couldn't afford across from the man I loved more than the air I was breathing and thinking to myself, "It doesn't get any better than this."

I was wrong again.  The next year, I had a teaching job that I loved.  D was getting closer to graduation and we were in love with each other and the life that we shared.  In an effort to be more like the perfect little homemakers I read about on blogs and Pinterest, I tried to make a three tiered wedding cake.  I'm not sure why I thought we could eat through three boxes of cake mix before it spoiled but I saw Ina Garten bake a wedding cake for Jeffrey for their anniversary on Barefoot Contessa so it seemed like a good idea at the time.  My attempt was in vain, the cake tilted to the side and it all but fell over in the fridge.  I remember laughing with D about my wild idea and thinking to myself, "It doesn't get any better than this."

365 days later, I was proven wrong again.  The next year found me expecting Baby Katelyn, D preparing to become a father, and the two of us in love with the little heart beating alongside mine.  We celebrated what would be the last anniversary as a family of two and marveled at the new life that was shifting and kicking and rolling inside me.  I remember feeling little kicks and jabs from my husband's daughter and thinking to myself, "It doesn't get any better than this."

This year, it was even better.  D took me out to dinner and a movie.  A movie that I wanted to see, I might add.  I came home to a dozen pink roses and Cadbury chocolate (my favorite).  That night, I laid in bed for a while and listened to D's peaceful breathing on my left and my squirming sleeping baby on my right and enjoyed the tranquil feeling of everything in my life neatly in place.  I feel asleep between my two loves, feeling at total peace with my world.  And even though I knew the next year will prove me wrong, as I settled into my pillow and my eyes shut for the last time that day, I thought to myself, "It doesn't get any better than this."