A Car Story

When Zac and I were first married, neither one of us had a car. We had been college students with our roots out of state, heretofore able to get everywhere by foot: school, church, work, groceries. We hadn't needed a car and we couldn't have afforded one anyway. Plus, going home for vacations and summer to NJ and VA, respectively, was easier without a car to worry about.

But then, we were a married couple. We borrowed a truck from our good friend's girlfriend to use to leave our wedding reception and I taught Zac to drive its stick shift on our honeymoon. It was sort of hilarious, but we were just so happy to be married, we really didn't care much. When we went back to school in January (and returned the truck), Zac was riding his bike in the snow to work at night from 10 pm - 2 am (not the most ideal). Our church for married students was farther away than previous congregations had met. It was possible to walk there, but it took a long time. So we ended up asking for rides (especially when it was snowing) and that was kind of a pain. And yeah, walking back from the grocery store with bags of food on our backs and draped over each shoulder and arm was getting tiring.

So we decided to look for a car.  Wohoo!!
Zac found a 96 Toyota Tercel that was in our price range; a salvaged title but only 17,000 miles, 2 years old, and in great condition.
We had a friend drive us to look at it and purchase it. He drove us 30 min away to my uncle's bank where we applied for our loan.
And then we were the happy owners of our little Tercel.

The following summer (1999), after I had graduated and given birth to Abigail, Zac had an internship at an accounting firm in DC. We did an apartment swap with a couple in Fairfax so we stayed in their furnished apartment but we still had to bring some dishes and baby gear, plus clothes etc for the whole summer. We packed all of this bumper to bumper, floor to ceiling, in the Tercel and drove from UT to NJ (first) to VA with Abigail only 3 weeks old. I remember she still had her umbilical cord stump attached when we left. It came off sometime during the trip. She was nursing and we stopped about every hour or so the entire trip, either to breastfeed, or change diapers, or comfort her in some way. It was quite possibly the most uncomfortable, tiring, hot, awkward, and LONG trip of my entire life. We pulled off on highway exits just to stop on the side of the road (because there really isn't anything else around on some long stretches of Wyoming, etc) and sat there to nurse her. One night in particular we sat in the car in the dusk, facing some fenced off field full of cows, and the cows came closer to investigate this silly sight of me feeding a baby with the side door open (it was hot) on the side of a road where I'm sure not many people ever have reason to stop.

But we made it. We visited Zac's parents in NJ, then went on to Fairfax, VA where we stayed for the summer. Then we reversed the entire trip to go back to UT at the end of the summer. Abigail was a few months older then, of course, so it wasn't quite as difficult, having settled into a somewhat more regular and spaced out nursing schedule. But, still. Oh the memories of being crammed in there with all our stuff, sitting in the backseat with baby Abigail so I could try to comfort and entertain her all those miles.

The summer after that (2000), Zac graduated with his Masters and we actually moved out to VA, where he had accepted a job with the same company he had interned with. And we drove that same trip again, in the same little car. Except this time, most of our belongings were in an ABF U-Pack truck making their way across the country without us. Phew!!

And then, when we ended up moving back to UT (yet again) after living in VA for just a year, Zac drove the Tercel yet again cross country. I flew by myself, with Abigail (age 2) and Isaac (age 2 months). This was an adventure in and of itself. But I was just happy not to be driving in that car again for that long with a nursing baby.

Anyway - we've kept that car for 16 years. It's been Zac's commuting car. And as it got older, the clutch became more temperamental. The engine light came on at random times for reasons we didn't really want to find out. 2 seatbelt latches in the backseat broke and the driver's seatbelt sometimes required some coaxing to get latched (dumb thing). Zac crashed into a deer, smashing in the side and roof and front window. The window was replaced, the dents weren't so easily fixed. The paint started rusting and peeling. But it was a good car, still running, and doing its job.

We thought we might keep it to have Abigail learn to drive on (I've always thought my kids should learn to drive stick!). But then, we paid off our minivan and the Tercel had its registration up the end of July. We would have had to have it pass safety inspection to register it again and with the engine light on, we didn't really want to have to pay to fix another problem to get it to pass. So, the timing was right. It was time for a new car!

And thus we said goodbye to the first car we owned as a married couple. The little Tercel we had driven cross country so many times and had been through so much with us. We didn't want to mess with trying to sell it so we just took it in for a trade. They gave us a whopping $350 for it! 

And now we have a new-ish car. We love it.

And that's the story.:)

Things You May Not Know About Me (Bonus Edition)

If you've been on Facebook lately, you've seen the thing going around where someone gives you a number and you post that many things about yourself that not everyone may know about you. But not all of you may be friends with me on facebook and some of you stalwarts may not even be on facebook at all.  I know. 

 So, I am reposting the 8 random things that people may or may not know about me. And then, as a BONUS for those of you that already saw this on my facebook page, I am going to give you some extra stories that you may not have already heard!! So keep reading, you won't regret it!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  Alright I was given the #8 so - 8 things people may not know about me. I've made a lot of new pain buddies and many people who have only known me since all of that started so there are some things that people may not know about me before all that started such as: 

1. Right as my pain was starting I was training for and completed my first and only sprint triathlon. I miss really exercising. 
2. I read approx 100 books a year on average and I will read books about just about anything.
3. I've written in over 50 journals.
4. I birthed 3 of my 4 children naturally and breastfed for a total of ... approx 6 1/2 yrs - lol.
5. I never figured out what I wanted to be when I grew up. I was interested in too many disparate things. This still really bothers me. I'm a stay at home mom, which is what I really wanted. And now I am mostly bedridden with pain anyhow. But if I wasn't those things, what would I be? I don't know.
6. I consider myself a half expert in ultra marathon running since my better half is an ultra runner. It's a funny thing being a spouse of a crazy person like that. 
7. I play the violin but it's another thing that is aggravated by the facial pain. I haven't really been able to play.
8. One thing I love that not many people know is bread making. In another life I think I'd like to live in Germany and own a bakery. Yummm.

One thing I learned when my older sister did this on her facebook is that when she and I were quite little (I was 1 or 2, and she was 4 or 5), my parents apparently picked up a hitchhiker and had him sit in the backseat with us. He proceeded to threaten my sister and I with a knife to rob my parents or something. My sister remembers this happening to her. I obviously do not - but I'm still kind of disturbed to learn about it.

Another thing that happened to us when we were very little is that my mom was traveling alone with us by train to visit relatives once and when the train was crossing a bridge over a river it crashed and tipped over and everyone had to walk along the windows to evacuate. I was a baby and so my mom was carrying me. My sister was 3 yrs old and my mom was holding her by the hand. This was in the middle of the night, so it was dark and she could only hear the river rushing below them. I imagine this must have been terrifying.

One thing that I do remember happening when I was little was when we had a copperhead snake on our back patio. This must have been in the somewhat early 80's. Our neighborhood had it's own police force so my mom called the police and the officer came to our house and blew the snakes head off with a rifle. I'm not exactly sure why this was the best course of action, but it saved the day!

We had a lot of snakes around our semi-rural neighborhood when I was little. I remember a time when I was riding my tricycle around my driveway, I must have been around 3 or 4, and I came around to the front of the house to our sidewalk and there was a huge black snake in the middle of the sidewalk and it reared it's head up at me. I have no idea what kind of snake it was but I was absolutely terrified and I just jumped off my tricycle and ran away.

It seems that we also somehow had snakes that got into our basement somehow. I don't know how it happened. Mom? Dad? Someone might be able to tell me how we got snakes into the basement. It might have had something to do with flooding. I'm not sure. But then I developed quite an irrational fear of having snakes in the basement. I had nightmares about it for years.  In fact, it's entirely possible that this didn't really happen and it was all just dreams but I really hope that's not the case because that would be really freaky.  I really think it did happen once and that's what started the nightmares.  And my new neurologist is also a sleep specialist and he asked me a lot of questions about my sleep and dreams history and he says that it's really not normal to become confused between what is real and what you have dreamt. So. Yeah.

I also had fears of seeing Giants looking at me through our second story windows. No idea why.  And tornadoes.  I had a huge paranoia of tornadoes. I had heard that they sound like trains so I would lay in my bed at night, listening to the wind and straining to hear if it sounded like a train approaching, my heart pounding.  I also slept on the top bunk of a bunk bed and I was so afraid of a tornado coming, I would move to the floor to sleep, because I thought that if our roof blew off I'd surely be the first to go with it and I didn't want to get blown away by myself.  This was when I was about 9 years old. I know this kind of fear is developmental as children learn about the world and become afraid of all the bad things that can happen but I'm not sure if all kids are as afraid as I was or for as long as I was. I don't really know.

Anyway - so hmm there's an interesting collection of stories about me that you may not have already known. Some interesting little traumas I don't even remember which reminded me of some little weird memories and some of my early fears. What were you afraid of as a child? Do you think my fears were unusual?  Do you have things you dreamt that you can't remember if it really happened or not? Do you think early traumatic experiences that you can't even remember can still affect you? 
Anything else you feel like commenting?  Please do.:)

Fourteen: a "blogging-as-therapy" post

If you're a long-time reader of my blog, you may remember that I went through a stage when I was very self-conscious of who I was in my youth. I was kind of embarrassed by it, in a way I guess. I had issues with integrating who I was with who I am. Yeah, I just had issues.  We all have issues, right? It's no big deal. And I am mostly through with it. I've worked through it, partly through writing some great blog posts on here where you guys helped me come to terms with who I was and who I am and that it's all ok and no one really cares and it all works together to make me who I am and I can like who I am and like who I was, even though I may not like parts of who I was and still not like parts of who I am now and still want to become better even though I accept where I'm at and everything will all be ok.  It really will be ok. I don't judge you and you don't judge me and we try to create a safe space here on my blog where we all have our own stuff, right? Because we're all imperfect and we're all just doing the best we can. Ok.  So we're all clear on that.

So. But sometimes I still like to use my blog as therapy. Writing is a great therapeutic tool.

And so you see my daughter, my oldest daughter, my firstborn, this one that turned me into a mother . . . she turned 14 in May . . . 14?! How can this be? Yes. 14.  And this turned my head around and whipped my mind around in circles and kind of kept me up at night in reflective thinking, flashbacking to some kind of memories and aching and wondering how such silly old memories could still seem to hurt so much, remembering and wishing I didn't remember some things. Then wondering how she and I are so different and our experiences will be so different (of course, because we are different), but then how we might be the same, and how can I be her mother, how can I best help her through these years, and why were they so hard for me, why were they just so hard and what was I supposed to learn from them . 14 was a transformative year for me. A hard year in a lot of ways. Much of this was through my own dumb choices which I recognize, but which I was blind to at the time, I guess. Who knows. What do we really know at 14.
14. Ugh.

I turned 14 in the middle of 8th grade. I had already had 5 so-called "boyfriends" (eeeeek, please please remember that little clause about not judging too harshly). I'd had a boyfriend attempt suicide. A friend who had been raped. A few friends who used drugs (although I had never had it offered to me). And one of these so-called boyfriends who did clearly only want "one thing" - he asked for it as his Christmas present. Nice. I had my older sister call and break up with that one for me - because I was very clearly mature enough to handle this on my own. hahahahahahah.

 I also got mono at the end of 8th grade which meant I was very sick for what felt like forever. I ended up in the hospital  for 3 or 4 days with abscessed tonsils that had to be drained. Then towards the end of that summer when I was 14 I had to have my tonsils taken out, which was awful. So it felt like I was very sick that entire summer.

Anyway, I don't know how others would have described me at that time. I guess I was shy? Insecure? Self-conscious? That sounds pretty typical of a teenage girl, but I think maybe it went beyond that.

You see, I had a problem with talking.
Let me explain.

My first "boyfriend" was in 6th grade, but I've told my kids that we didn't even talk, so it hardly even really qualified as a relationship.  And that's no exaggeration.  I mean I did not exchange words with this poor boy, ever. I even called him one night (our one and only phone conversation) and we said hello and then sat on the phone listening to each other breathe for 20 minutes. I kid you not. I'd like to say we share equal blame for this, which I suppose must be true to some extent.  But I just don't really understand it.  Why didn't we say anything to each other?!? How did that even happen? I don't know. And then the thing is, this kind of thing kept happening throughout my relationships.  So I began to see that it must be me.

It was excruciating.

 I think all of my so-called boyfriends had given me lines at some point such as "you should talk more" "why don't you talk" "you're too quiet" "what are you thinking" (except for the boy who I never actually talked to).  These words would swarm around my head like bees and buzz so loudly I couldn't hear anything else until I couldn't even hear any of my own thoughts anymore and I would clam up even more than I had been before.  Teenage Kristen Rule #1: If you wanted me to talk, don't bring attention to the fact that I wasn't talking.  Some of the time, until they brought it up I wasn't even aware that I "wasn't talking".  It was just comfortable quietness or listening to them talk, or laughing, or whatever.  But then.  Once I was aware.  Then it always became awkward self-consciousness. Which I hated. Was I talking enough? What if I wasn't? What if I was too quiet? Was it not ok to be quiet?  Other times, usually when I was very emotional, I would have so many thoughts and feelings and something would happen where I would physically shut down and I could. not. talk.  I could not make words come out of my mouth.  It is very hard to explain - but it's almost like standing at the edge of a high diving board and just not being able to make yourself jump off. I would be frozen. Shut down. One of those things.  Anyway.  And it just kept happening.  So I knew it just wasn't one other person who felt like I didn't talk enough.  It was me.  As a 13 and 14 year old girl I felt very acutely that something was wrong with me.

Summer after 8th grade. 14.
My first church youth conference. I had a boyfriend who was going. This was a boyfriend who would take the phone and play basketball with it sometimes across the room sometimes when I wasn't "talking", just throwing it into the trash can over and over, and I would sit in silence.  I remember that. Why did I sit there? I don't know.  I can't remember if we had broken up officially at that point when we went to youth conference, maybe we had. Maybe we were kinda sorta getting back together.  I don't remember all the details.  We were riding in big charter buses to drive several hours to a college campus for the conference.  I sat next to him. He leaned his head on my shoulder and slept. I really liked him. I thought I did. I had a heart that liked too much too early and yearned to be liked - and I mistook all sorts of other things for being liked in return.  How could I have protected myself? This is what I ask myself. Maturity would have helped. Self-confidence... Why didn't I have any?  I don't know.

At any rate, as things went on at the youth conference my 14 year old self felt like I was being given very clear signals that this boy still liked me and we were very much still together.  There were unmistakable signs. Clear actions on his part.  At least the first night there were.  And then the next day there were various workshops to attend etc and I felt like he ignored me completely. We didn't go to workshops together like we could have. Or go eat meals together at the cafeteria. I didn't see him anywhere, although I tried.  He didn't try to see me. I felt discarded.  He didn't talk to me again for the next 2 days of the conference.

The last night of the 3 day conference there was a dance. I was tired of feeling so confused and sad and used.  I waited around at the dance for him to show. He did.  He didn't ask me to dance.  I gathered every bit of courage I had and asked him to come with me for a walk outside so we could talk.  Because we needed to talk . . . . didn't we?  Because I needed to know why he'd been ignoring me.  I needed to know where we stood.  I needed to know why he had acted (very clearly) that first night like he liked me if he really didn't.  Oh my poor little 14 year old heart.

So we walked down a sidewalk and sat down on a bench. I had words in my head that I wanted to say. So many words. Like a huge puzzle of words. I had to say them. I had to. They were exploding out of my head, but it felt so hard so hard to get it out of my mouth.  And we sat. We sat. The silence. The longer the silence built, the harder it became to say anything at all. What was wrong with me? What was my problem?!? He started picking flowers off of a nearby bush and dropping them on the ground and crushing them beneath his shoe.  I watched. Agonizing.  And we sat in silence. And I felt paralyzed. I wanted to speak. I wanted him to speak. I couldn't get any words to come out of my mouth. Nothing.  I felt like I couldn't even move. I don't know how long we sat there.  How long could it have been....?  Finally he said something like "well, if you're not going to talk, I'm going to go."
And he stood up and walked away.

I sat.

I looked at the crushed flowers on the sidewalk by my feet.

The next morning we boarded the buses to go back home. All of my friends, including this boy, somehow ended up on a different charter bus than me. I don't remember how that happened, as we had all been on the same bus when we had come.  As if I wasn't already feeling crushed and heartbroken enough (and also hating, hating myself), for some reason this added to it.  I sat in a seat by the window, overwhelmed by such overpowering feelings I could not even deal with it. It wasn't just the sadness, although there was that. It was the self-loathing - this not being able to believe what had happened, not wanting to accept this part of myself, this way that I was, this thing I did. Then the rejection. And feeling alone. And the happy noise of the bus all around me but not being a part of any of it. And it was too much.  It was too much for some part inside of me that just broke into pieces.  And it was then, on the way home from youth conference on that bus, there in that window seat, sure that no one was paying attention to me (and they weren't), that I first self-harmed. I won't go into details because you really don't need to know. But I feel like this was the age (if not before) when I began having depressive episodes.  This was definitely the beginning of one. I feel like they continued ever since although I didn't recognize it as such until much much later.

And I hope you don't feel like I am placing any blame on this particular boy or what he did, although rejection can certainly play into triggers for this kind of thing. My goodness, I can only have very vague and compassionate views of what goes on in any 14 year old boy's head. And certainly I am very forgiving of any poor boy who did his best to like/love me back in my teenage years. Sigh.

14.
And so, that was one of the defining turning points during the summer after my 8th grade year.  Along with having mono/being hospitalized with abscessed tonsils and then getting my tonsils taken out. It was just a bad summer.

My problems with talking, by the way, continued to plague me well throughout my dating years, even into my marriage, although Zac has been able to patiently work that out with me when I would shut down over the years.  It's been a hard long process even with him, which I am somewhat embarrassed to admit. But he never told me I didn't talk enough or that I was too quiet. So that is to his credit.

So, you may think I am making a bigger deal out of all of this than I should. I certainly don't see any point in comparing what should be a big deal and what shouldn't. And this is just my story, one part of my story - I can only tell my own and what it meant to me. I look at my sweet daughter, my 14 year old daughter, and I know she will have her own story to tell, which will not be like mine (in the time since I first started this post, she has gone to her first youth conference!!).  And I hope I will be able to help her navigate through her own. I hope she will not have to suffer in the same ways I did. I hope she will be confident and will be loved and love when she is more ready. (So far there has been no mention of any boys (fingers crossed).) But I also hope that there was some purpose to what I have gone through. That there is some reason for it all in helping me become who I am.

This is only one little story of me being 14.
It is hard sometimes to think about.
But it takes out some of the sting to tell it out loud.


(me second from left, a couple days before I was hospitalized with the abscessed tonsils. I got very sick very quickly. This is pictured with my siblings and visiting cousins)

"If I don't write to empty my mind,

I go mad."

- Lord Byron

becoming a mother

 “When a woman gives birth, 

two are born; 

a baby 

from the womb of its mother 

and a woman

 from the womb 

of her former existence."

 -Marianne Williamson

The arrival of Mother's Day always does something to me, puts me in a contemplative mood, perhaps especially because it coincides with the month of the birth of my firstborn, so I am always thinking in particular of when I became a mother.  This child, my daughter, this baby, who suddenly came into the world and transformed me into a mom.  I struggle, as perhaps all moms do, with feeling adequate, with feelings of guilt, all my shortcomings laid out in sharp detail with every parenting misstep, every single day.

And now I find myself in an interesting stage of parenting.  This middle stage. All my children are in school.  It's an "easier" stage in a lot of ways.  Not yet driving or dating. No potty-training or diapers. No nap schedules or nursing schedules. We can leave them with a sibling who can babysit. Admittedly, there is more fighting, whining, screaming, throwing things, hitting, and crying than I would have expected at this stage, but I am learning that things are very rarely, if ever at all, like you expect them to be.  Really. Like my face pain.  Just when things were supposed to be getting "easier" . . . nope, BAM! Let's hit you in the face (almost literally) with chronic pain instead. Have fun with that. 

Anyway.  I wanted to tell you the story.  This story of when I became a mom.  Just because all stories are fun, right?  And this is my mother's day story. And we all have our own stories. I don't mean to diminish anyone else's or glorify my own. Yours may be a story of not wanting children at all, or wanting but not being able to, perhaps a story of having children young or waiting til you're old, whether by choice or by circumstance, of adoption, of infertility, of being rich or being poor, or having a single child, or 12 children, or something in between, of being married, single, divorced, widowed. I don't know all of your circumstances, how can I. We each have our own story to tell. 

This is mine. 

Zac and I had known each other about 4 years when we got married so we felt like  we already had a somewhat solid foundation and knew each other very well. Although there is always an adjustment period being newlyweds, there was a deep well of trust and emotional bond that we had to draw from from the very beginning of our marriage so that we felt we were ready to start the next phase of our life together. Even though we were both still young college students, we felt strongly that as soon as I graduated we should start our family. 

I was graduating in April so we figured May would be the absolute earliest that we'd want to have a baby, counted back 9 months, figured it would probably take at least a few months to get pregnant anyhow (right?! I mean, of course!) and we started trying.

And I got pregnant right away. 

Of course. 

That was September. So I spent Fall semester pregnant, sick and running out of my classes puking. Then Winter semester I had a full time internship during which I became very swollen, uncomfortable and very pregnant.

I graduated 8 months pregnant. 

Here is my department head congratulating my very obviously about-to-pop belly: 

A month later we welcomed Abigail into the world (I've written the birth story on the old blog, which I need to import here sometime):

Having a child I think is like a million other hard but wonderful things in life where you cannot really wait until you feel ready or you will never do them. You are never ready. There is no ready. You can never be ready for something so completely transformational, so unexpected, so deeply individual.  

So was I ready? 

Of course not. 

I would never have been ready. 

No one ever is.

Ask any mom. Any parent. I don't think anyone is ever really prepared for what lies in store when one becomes a parent because it's never really ever what one expects it to be.  It can't be. That's just the common refrain of life isn't it? 

So there I was. I was 24 years old. Just graduated from college. Zac had a really great, well-paying, important-prospecting summer internship at a firm in DC so we were actually packing up our apartment and leaving to drive across country. In 3 weeks. 

Um. Yes. This was slightly crazy. And turned into the perfect recipe for a delicious brew of postpartum depression, but I didn't realize any of that at the time. It wasn't any one thing's fault. It was just a combination of factors.

(Here is zac with 3wk old Abigail at a gas station stop somewhere in Wyoming) 

We packed up everything we thought might need for the 2 of us and a newborn baby that we could possibly squeeze into our tiny Tercel floor to ceiling, front to back, and we took off, stopping at least every 2 hrs to nurse this tiny infant and change diapers and outfits and blowouts at the side of the highways and at gas stations and rest stops and soothe her whimpering and crying all along the way across the country.  I remember she still had a bandaid on her heel from her PKU test in the hospital and her umbilical cord stub fell off somewhere along the way on that trip. It was . . .  perhaps . . .  the longest car trip I have ever been on in my entire life.

Then we eventually arrived to stay in this strange apartment that was part of an semi-attached garage in the house of a lady who attended our church there in Fairfax,VA.  We were sub-letting the apartment from a couple who were coming out to UT for a couple months and thus leaving it furnished and leasing it out for the months they were gone.  We would occupy it for those 2 months.  But the owner of the house was an older lady whom I felt like never really liked us very much (who knows why) and I felt uncomfortable and shy and weird in this other person's apartment with their furniture and belongings. It just felt strange.

Zac worked long hours. I was home alone with Abigail without a car in this apartment. It was so hot and humid outside, I was afraid of the baby overheating, and I don't think I even had a stroller. I felt self-conscious and even paranoid going outside (clearly something was going a little bit wonky in my brain). I was a brand new mom with no friends in the immediate area and I had not a clue what to do. We didn't even have a TV (and this was before prevalent internet). I read some books. I called my mom and cried to her. I nursed my new baby and napped with her and talked to her and watched as she developed new skills. But that was all I ever did. I was lonely and depressed.  But I didn't recognize the symptoms of postpartum depression at the time.  It was only looking back in hindsight that I see it and sometimes I am a little sad that those were my first months of motherhood.  But I know now it was also more than just circumstance - it might have happened to me even under the very best circumstances just because of my very susceptible chemical makeup. Anyway.

 I also had no clothes that fit me. None. I think my socks were all that I still had that fit. Nothing else. Even my feet had swollen and become a half size bigger.  This persisted as a problem because we were still rather poor college students (trying to save his great internship income, of course), now with baby costs, and also I was still holding out great hopes that I would soon be able to fit back into my pre-pregnancy clothes. That's what "everyone" said would happen, right? That was the expectation. So I wore Zac's baggy clothes to get by and tried to adapt to my new body that felt so foreign to me.  I remember the first time I tried to go for a run that summer, the first time since sometime before I had gotten big into pregnancy, and I felt shocked by what my body had become.  It wasn't me. It couldn't be. And yet I looked down at myself and yes it was.  Oh. 

And I never did get back into my pre-pregnancy clothes. I guess that's part of my point in this story. More than just the clothes, I never went back to person I was before I had Abigail. I never could. I don't know if I would want to. Everything changes. Everything. When you become a mother. If I wrote about all the ways that I changed, this story would never end. 

But this is my story now.  It never ended. I guess it wasn't how I expected it to be. Nothing ever is.

This is the story of when I became a mother.

Everyday I become 

more of my story.

This is my story.

Everyday is my story.

I become more 

everyday.

Related posts that got me thinking:
Why Mother's Day is For the Birds
Don't Call Me Mommy - Unless I Birthed You
Birthing a New You

Outgrow birthdays?!?

No, never.

Why should I?

If anything, I should think I certainly have more to celebrate about myself and my life now than I did when I was five.

Although, admittedly, that was a pretty awesome cake. ;)

Happy Birthday to meeeee!

a sheltering tree

Had the chance to see one of my oldest, best friends today.

There is not much else quite like being with someone who has known you since you were 12. Girls camp, church dances, sleepovers, concerts, youth conferences, letters, all the way up through college roommates. Then continued friendship through mission, marriage, having kids, living closer in the same state, and living across the country. There are things we can talk about that almost no one else can understand. I think we have a level of trust and safety with each other that just takes a lot of years to develop, even through some of the times that we aren't in touch as much as others.

Anyway, I appreciate having a friend like her. And it was a lot of fun to get together again for the first time in a few years.

Thanks to the random person I snagged in the parking lot to take our picture.:)

And thanks again to Alyssa for this thoughtful little souvenir, too.:) It sums up everything about our short visit just perfectly.

Home to the Commonwealth: "Look at me! Look at me!" (and other random thoughts)

( ^^ bonus points to any of you that recognize that as a reference to a Veggie Tales episode. Nobody? 'k, nevermind.)


ok, here we are at the very end of my trip posts!! At last! Almost 2 months later! oh well.

One of the funny things I did on this trip was attempt to master the "self-taken portrait" technique. Pretty sure I failed in the attempt. However, it was pretty fun to try. ;)
So, there's a little montage of most of the attempts. I'm sharing them with you for your humor quota of the day. Go ahead and laugh. I'm ok with it because I know I pretty much look like a dork. (My personal fave is the one with me squinting into the sun and tilting my sweaty red face into the picture frame, and effectively completely blocking the Capitol Building which I was trying to get in the background. HA!)
I'm not the most photogenic gal in the garden (whatever that means) - and this proves it. So I think I'll stick to pics of my kids, and flowers, and sunsets from now on. Eh. That's ok.

ok, final random thoughts:

- on the way driving to Melissa's, as we did quite a few times over the 10 days, we passed Fairfax Hospital which is where I was born. Also, incidentally, it is the hospital that Heather and Chelsea were also born in (the 3 of us: 1975, 1984, and 1991). I think we're the only 3 in the family that were born there. And all 3 of us were there together! WOW!! (Someone took a picture to memorialize the great place as we drove by - but I don't know who has that pic). Too bad.

- our hotel was also around the corner from a certain Kaiser Permanente medical building where I went to pretty much all my Dr appts from the time I was maybe 8 until I was 22. Ohhh, the memories. ;)

- Other than that, though, a lot of things have changed unrecognizably and it always throws me off and disorients me. Don't you hate that?

- Inside jokes: "He's so big, he's so cute!!" "It's a Kaiser thing" "In Your Eyes" "and we're merging . . . again"

I don't even remember what else I was going to write about, but it seems like there were some things. Disappointing. Probably more so for me than for you. ;)

phew!! Hope you've enjoyed these recaps and posts about my homeland.
(Now, to catch up on all the summer fun posts I've been letting lag behind . . .
oh, heavens.)

Home to the Commonwealth: Day 9, Great Falls, VA

Monday, June 6 was the day that we were flying back home to UT but our flight wasn't leaving until the early evening so we had some time for one . . . more . . . little . . . adventure. Melissa and Chris were off on a little honeymooning adventure of their own, so we decided to drive over to Great Falls National Park since it was relatively close, beautiful, full of memories, and within easy access of the airport to boot! It is, yes, another one of my favorite VA places.

When I was about 14 (?) we came here to go rappelling for a church youth camp activity-thing. We rappelled down a 70 ft(?) cliff down onto the ground right by the water, which was sort of freaky. I was really proud of myself for doing it though. ;) I'll dig up a picture someday to show you.

And then my family and I came again several times.

And I brought Zac there once way back when we lived in VA and Abigail was a teeny thing.

It's just the perfect combination of rushing water, green trees, waterfalls, rocks to climb over, trails to hike. All those wonderful things that I love so much.

(and it's amazing to think about the floods they have there when the Potomac river reaches above where these overlooking platforms are and even higher. Amazing and terrifying. Water is pretty incredible.)

So, there it is. Sigh.

It's been so long since I've been home now, that not only does it feel like the whole trip was a dream, but I am surely forgetting some things that I meant to include in these posts. I'll have to think some more and see if I remember anything really crucial and then I'll have just one more trip post for you!!

Home to the Commonwealth: Day 8, Wedding Photo Extravaganza!

ok. Here's what we're going to do. In the interest of time I'm just going to add some little captions to all of these fabulous photos (and not even put them in order) and hopefully somehow you can piece together the whole magnificent wedding day story.

Oh but first, one part of the story that isn't told in the pictures: the night before the wedding I was woken in the middle of the night with the worst headache of my entire life. Seriously. Severe pain behind my eye and in my head. I considered calling and waking up Zac just to have some consolation from his voice. And, after taking lots of pain meds and still rocking on the floor, crying and holding my head for a few hours, I almost woke up my mom at about 3 am to take me to the emergency room to get some stronger meds cuz I thought I might die. It really was that bad. But another hour later I finally fell back to sleep. But in the morning, I stayed in the hotel to try to get a few more hrs of sleep while everyone else went over to Melissa's for more wedding prep. (Oh and there was another night when apparently I woke up Heather with yelling out in my sleep. I was having a nightmare that I was being hunted down and killed. Yeah, fun times sharing a hotel room (sorry about that Heather).) ;)

ok. Those are just a couple sidenote journal-stories for ya.

Now for the wedding!
me, and all the visiting sibs: Chelsea, Heather, Liz, baby Miles and Devin

wedding ceremony in Melissa and Chris's beautiful backyard

professional wedding pics that I can't resist sharing

my gorgeous little sister Melissa

reception lingering into the night, talking, laughing and listening to great music:)

bride and groom cuteness

um, books from our childhood that Melissa has stashed on her bookcase. Some of them don't belong to her. ;)

my own pics of the reception evening

making a heart pic with sparklers:)

paper chains!

just married spoon!

my brother Devin and his baby, Miles

sisters Melissa and Heather

Melissa, beautiful bride

we made all those tissue paper flowers and strung them all over the car

we did good, if I do say so myself:)

Chelsea painted the directional signs:) And this is Melissa and Chris's cute retro house in Falls Church, VA.

Mr. and Mrs. Forks - no, that's not their name . . . it's just . . . they're forks. uhhh . . .

Melissa knitted the hearts on the cake topper. She also knitted a similar little heart for the ring pillow.

Groom and Best Men in Converse:)

me and Melissa

the happy Newlyweds

we got to pick up the wedding cake! Mom was very nervous about it . . .

Heather's instagram pic of our lovely tissue paper flowers

And a Hans Christian Anderson Fairy Tale book that was my favorite - somehow Melissa ended up with it. I'm determined to find one of my own someday.

It was really a wonderful day. There was rain partially predicted for the day - but it didn't rain. And everything turned out so beautiful! I'm so happy for Melissa and Chris and excited to welcome Chris into our crazy family. And we didn't even get stuck in traffic for the BIG Peruvian election across the street (was it Peruvian?!) I guess that's another story . . . ;)

(Visit Melissa's blog to read her own wedding recap here)