Remember When...

Remember when I was young and so were you
And time stood still and love was all we knew
You were the first, so was I
We made love and then you cried
Remember when

Remember when we vowed the vows and walked the walk
Gave our hearts, made the start, it was hard
We lived and learned, life threw curves
There was joy, there was hurt
Remember when

Remember when old ones died and new were born
And life was changed, disassembled, rearranged
We came together, fell apart
And broke each other's hearts
Remember when

Remember when the sound of little feet
Was the music we danced to week to week
Brought back the love, we found trust
Vowed we'd never give it up
Remember when

Remember when thirty seemed so old
Now lookin' back, it's just a steppin' stone
To where we are, where we've been
Said we'd do it all again
Remember when

Remember when we said when we turned gray
When the children grow up and move away
We won't be sad, we'll be glad
For all the life we've had
And we'll remember when

Remember when
Remember when


by Alan Jackson


Our wedding song, six years ago.


One of the easiest decisions we made for our wedding was when we choose this song for our first dance.  As the years have gone by it has become even more perfect to us and now our family.  


Happy Anniversary Sweetie Pie.  I love you.  

Really?...

I was just updating my profile (because I ended up on that page somehow...honestly, I'm really not sure how I got there).  As I was saving changes I noticed that it said I'd been on Blogger since March 2010 and I thought "wow it's been almost a year since I started this blog".  As my mind processed that thought it started arguing with itself and I realized that "Holy crap I started this blog almost 2 years ago!"  I really have to get my butt in gear here.  I'm just not a good blogger.  I will continue to write when ever the moment grabs me and I will continue to claim I will try to do better.  But the fact is, I've come to terms with the fact that I am not the best blogger, it's time you did the same.  :)  Talk to you again soon!

Guess whats coming up!?!

Tales from my mommy hood...

AJ  - He loves 'Cars 2' and would watch it daily if I let him.
         One day we were out buying new house phones and AJ decided the customer service person was the perfect person to inform that we had "moved to a new house".  She was polite and feigned excitement  so he told her "yea, it's really big".  When he then explained that it was so big it "had an echo" I explained we didn't have the furniture to fill the space so it was pretty empty.  She was impressed that he knew what an echo was.   AJ caught onto the fact that I said we didn't have a lot of stuff and with the way little minds work he blurts out "well, there is a lot of crap in the pink room"  We are a little shocked and give a little giggle which is just enough for him to then exclaim "yea, there's a lot of $h!t in the pink room".  Ok time to leave, thanks for the phones!

Ryan - She can recite almost word for word her Ni-hao, Kai Lan videos, every character and every tone.
            I'm trying to give her more freedom when we are out so that she learns to listen instead of doing whatever she wishes (cause she has a mind of her own).  So I let her wander a bit in Costco and as she started to round a corner I told her to stop.  She stopped, turned around and faced me, then stood there all defiant.  I told her to come to mommy or sit back in the basket.  She told me "No!" gave me a scowl-ly face and then in one fluid movement turned around, crossed her arms, shifted her weight to one side, stuck her leg, sank into her hip and stood there with her back to me.  It was very cute, I couldn't help but giggle and shake my head, but if that girl had been 12 instead of 2 she would be grounded for a week!

The two of them, man do I have my hands full!

Moving...

I never got a chance to share with you our news and the story behind it, so here goes...When Jasey was first hired at OD we started talking about what our next step was as far as living arrangements.  Everyone was starting to get a little edgy, we knew mom wanted her space back, I was getting very stressed and yelling more, it was even starting to wear on the kids, they had little space to play and no place to get away from each other (hence my yelling).

We went and checked out a few places and got some rough numbers.  Out of the places we looked at we found one we really liked and said that is the one lets keep an eye on it.  We knew that we wouldn't be able to move right away and decided if we buckled down that by September, or October at the latest, we should be able to be on our own again.  That, of course, is a fine time line when life is filled with leprechauns and unicorns. But life is filled with, well, reality.  

I can't even begin to recollect the seemingly daily twists and turns that kept coming up, I just remember the feeling of every time we got things straight another collision with life would occur.  We kept pushing our moving date back further and further until we thought, heck it'll be next March before we are "back on our feet".  So we set a new date.  Then things started looking a little better so we set a new one, the first of the year.  January 1st was our time.  Then it was the 15th, crap...then it was the first again....grrrrrr, frustrating!  Just before Ryan's birthday we decided that the first was the perfect date, everything was in order, we were going that weekend to put a deposit down on the apartment we had decided on 2 months earlier.

Jasey called, made an appointment and started doing a little bit more research on the place.  Good thing he did!  The place had horrible reviews in the previous 3 months.  Rude staff, terrible maintenance, sketchy neighborhood goings on and thefts!  No thank you.  So back to the drawing board.

Instead of going to reserve our new home that weekend we went up to our town house to get something out of the attic.  While Jasey was talking to our tenant I took the kids for a little walk around our old neighborhood.  And then I sighed.  I remembered our three years in our first home. And then I got sad.  On the drive home I told Jasey that I wasn't going to be able to drive up there with him anymore because it made me sad to see our place with someone else's things in it.

That night we went out for a drink to talk about the idea of moving back to our old community.  We had both agreed on the other place because we thought the other person liked it and the other person wanted to be there and that it would be good for the other person, but we were both kind of doubtful of it.  I didn't want Jasey to have the long drive but he didn't want that extra time in the car to be taken away from the family.  He didn't mind the drive and I didn't mind the extra time, it was still less than I had dealt with in the past.  We decided to look in Abacoa for another place.

Barely two weeks into that hunt things were going no where fast and we were frustrated.  Every place that we liked was either already under contract or didn't allow pets.  Jasey started looking in other communities and in other towns.  In his first search he spotted a place in a new community, a place we had only heard of for the first time a few months back.  Instead of north it was a little south and a lot west, but the kind of area we knew would be perfect for us.  We went to check it out an hour after the posting went up.  Two days later we were filling out Lease Agreements and HOA applications.  Two weeks later we were approved and had the OK to move in.

In the middle of November we rented a uHaul truck and loaded up all of our things that had been in storage for the past year and a half.  We stayed one last night at moms and loaded everything from her house up the next day and unloaded it all at our new place.  Two days after we moved in we loaded the car back up and headed to Georgia for a week for Thanksgiving.

It was a crazy two days of cleaning, finding and setting up the necessities, getting the kids settled so that they had a smooth transition, unpacking what we would need right away, trying to figure out where those things would go, packing for a week long trip and figuring out where everything was that we would need for that trip.  Of course all while trying to maintain a semi normal life, keeping the house in working order and entertaining two small kids one of which still needed to be driven to and from school everyday.

Madness I tell you! and completely worth it.  We had a great time in Georgia and we have since settled, rather nicely, into our new place.  We are renting and don't know what the future holds so it's a little hard to call it a home yet but we are all very comfortable and hope that we will be here for a while.  We are still doing some unpacking and figuring things out but that would be no different anywhere else.  Kirby has more space, the kids have their own areas to play alone if they want to and I have noticed that I am not as stressed anymore, so less yelling!  woohoo!

I will do another post to tell you about the house and even post a few pics.  So stick around!

A Little Belated...

Happy New Year!!!

It's 2012!

I'm a little behind, as usual, but wanted to say Happy New Year! all the same.  As you can see Jasey and I had a wonderful new year.  The kids stayed with my mom and we headed to a friends wine bar to ring in the new year.  Jasey cooked up this idea only a few days before the 31st.  A friend of his from the program at FAU started this wine bar just a few months ago and we have been trying to make it there to check it out.  We booked a bed and breakfast right around the corner from the bar and Jasey made dinner reservations.  

After mom got out of work on Saturday we dropped the kids off with her and headed to Stuart, since that's where the bar is located.  After driving around the block and making sure we knew where everything was we checked into our B and B, a little place called Inn Shepard's Park.  It was a very cute little 4 bedroom, open air, Key West style house.  We stayed in the Rustic Riverview room, it was very cute and the bed was so comfy!  I didn't feel at all weird about poking around the main part of the house and the little garden outside.  I even bumped into a couple of other guests and chatted/made pleasantries.  We helped ourselves to a snack and took a short nap before getting ready to head out.

About a block and a half away was the marina where we had dinner reservations.  A place called the Sailor's Return.  They had a limited menu for the new year crowd but we had no trouble finding lots of yummy things to eat.  Too many yummy things in fact.  After a few drinks, appetizer, dinner and dessert I was in pain.  I haven't been that full in I don't even know how long.  I knew I was overeating at the time but I couldn't help it, everything was so tasty and we were heading out after that so I couldn't get a doggie bag, there was no where to put it!  We relaxed for a moment until I was sure I would be able to leave without rolling out the door.  

From there we had another short walk to the wine bar, Crush.  What a great place and Mario is the nicest guy.  I had never met him before dispute the fact that he and Jasey went to school together for 2 years.  From the moment we walked in the door he was nothing short of an amazing host.  He made it feel like you were walking into his home.  Though in a way Crush as been like his home for the past few months, you can tell that a lot of feeling went into the place, it's not a hobby or an after thought.  I'm not a big wine drinker, I'll have a (half) glass every now and then but I would definitely love to go back to Crush time and time again.  Too bad it's not closer.

I was still overly full and uncomfortable from dinner (seriously, I cannot express this enough) but I made use of my lazy time by sitting on one of the many comfy couches and checking out the place from my vantage point.  It was relaxed but not boring, sleek but not trendy, fun but not childish, sophisticated but not stuffy.  They have a vending system of sorts for the wine.  You buy a card when you walk in and load as much money on it as your wish.  Then all around the bar there are cases set up with open bottles of wine in them.  You place your card in the slot, decided how much of which wine you would like and as the machine dispenses your wine it deducts the money from your card, awesome!  

My stomach finally eased up just before midnight and I toasted the New Year on my feet and smiling, woohoo! This is the first year that we have gone out since being married and having kids, I did miss AJ and Ryan but they had a great night with lots of treats from Momah and were asleep by 10 anyway.   We met a few of Mario's friends and I some how made another 'friend' all my own.  A nice yet slightly toasty woman that talked to me about, I'm not sure what, before disappearing into the night.  Mario's friends were a fun bunch.  I am a shy person so it takes me a while and I feel awkward but they were easy to talk to and by the end of the night we were all dancing and having a great time.  

We were the last to leave the bar at about 2 in the morning, later than I have been up in a long time.  It was a nice, short walk back to the B and B which was good since Jasey indulged in wine the way I did with food that night, also the exact reason that we were staying the night at a place close enough to walk to and from...clever, clever.  Safety first!  We made it back to the B and B and for a brief moment thought we were locked out, but we weren't!  We both passed out as we were falling into bed.  But mommy mode had me up before 8 that morning, ugh.  After a lovely breakfast of homemade quiche, fresh baked blueberry muffins and hot tea we were on our way home.    

I didn't make any resolutions this year, I think I do better day by day.  Also, considering I already got much healthier last year it was kinda pointless to resolve to do that this year.  I was trying to think up a belated resolution (I do everything belated)  I came up with something along the lines of be more assertive but in the same thought came up with let things go.  Maybe I should try to stop over analyzing everything, like whether or not I let things slide too often or if I should tell people how I feel more often.  Or maybe the glaringly obvious one, stop being 'belated' all the time!  Oh well, I am who I am, don't like it? Tough!

(that was assertively letting things slide..you see what I did there?) :)

I hope you enjoyed our New Years adventure as much as we did.  Have a wonderful 2012!