What's a break without a project?

Nate has the week off while he studies for his upcoming Creogs Exam. But, he can only study for so long until some project around the house starts making him itch.

This time around it was the fireplace tiles that was driving him nuts.

This is not at all the most flattering picture of me, (wearing the AWESOME footie pajamas that nate gave me on Christmas Eve), but it IS a good picture of the tiles in front of the fireplace.

You can see that they are chipped and, just plane ugly.


He wasted no time ripping up the old tiles.



Even Alyssa got into the spirit.



It didn't take him too long, and before we knew it had beautiful new fireplace tile.



Wish I had a better picture to show to colors better, but this gives you a good idea.


So, Nate has had this

Eleven Years

Eleven years ago this morning I was nervous, and excited. My hair was curled, my makeup perfect. My eyebrows… desperately needed to be plucked.

As I slipped on my newly bought, overly sequined white dress, I marveled that this moment had come.

As I looked into my handsome boyfriends eyes and promised him my love and loyalty for all eternity, and saw a single tear fall down his cheek, I felt my love for him deepen.

As he promised me his love, and he looked at me with those piercing blue eyes, full of commitment, full of awe, full of love, I felt the realization that what we were doing was permanent. Our love was going to last forever.

I didn’t know then that our journey was not going to go as we had planned. I didn’t know that in only 2 months we would conceive our first son. And although it was very hard being a mother at 19, the love in my heart deepened for Nate as he helped me through postpartum depression.

Eleven years ago I didn’t know that my mechanic husband was going to choose to go back to school, fall in love with anatomy and decide to go to medical school. Eleven years ago, I didn’t know we would be committed to schooling for the next 14 years. It’s been long, hard, stressful, and financially devastating journey… but my love for Nate has deepened even more as I see his devotion to family, his commitment to his program, his hard work ethic as he continually pulls 80 hour work weeks. I’m in awe of him.

Eleven years ago I didn’t know that I could ever love my husband anymore than I did at that moment when we were married. Today looking back I realize how wrong I was. My love for Nate has become so much more.





I love his hands that hold me all night long. Hands that can not only perform complicated surgeries, but hands that can fix the plumbing, lay tile, fix a car, rock a baby, play a videogame with his boys, and hands that hold my hands.

I love his eyes. They are beautiful. They see not only the things that I’ve done that day, but all the things that I’ve tried to do. He sees how hard I work, and he compliments me and is grateful for my efforts. He sees the good in me that I don’t always see in myself. He sees God in every baby he delivers. He sees someone in need and he is there to uplift them.

I love my husband for all he is, and all he tries to be. I love him for loving me, even when I’m down, or feisty, or grumpy. I love my husband for always being patient and understanding, and being such a good example to our children.

He is the man that I want my boys to grow to be, and the man that my daughter marries someday.

What higher compliment can I give?

My love has grown so much deeper over the course of eleven years. And I know that it will continue to deepen as our children grow, as our hair turns gray, as wrinkles form around our eyes from laughing over the years. He will still hold my hands, and look into my eyes, and we will still see and feel the love that we felt eleven years ago today… but much deeper.

Getting ready for winter

It's been a while sense I've done an update on what we are up to, so I thought I would back track a little, and share some of my favorite pictures.

We were able to get both our chimney's cleaned this fall so we could burn this year, so in November Nate cleaned out a space in the garage to put a pile of wood and the boys joined him out in the yard to gather some wood.


I was surprised when I looked out the window and saw Andrew driving the lawn mover hauling the pile of wood in from the back of the yard.

My boys are getting too big, too fast.

Andrew even went out and helped Nate split some wood! They love having a Dad that let's them do a "man's" job.

And I love having a husband who is teaching them so well.

Random Pictures and Ice-skating

I had to get a shot of this. After listening to Austin cry about how much he hated his curls, Nate finally decided to buzz them all off. But he had to give him a mullet first. Alyssa and Xavier love to climb up on her toy chest. So I thought I would snap a picture of them. They also love to throw toys down the laundry shoot. Nate had a few days off for Christmas, and we all enjoyed every moment we had with him. Alyssa is becoming more and more 'Daddy's little girl'. On the 23rd of December we decided to take the kids to Lock 3 in Akron and go ice-skating. The kids LOVED it. Austin and I had fun going around the rink holding hands. It took him a while to find his balance, but he did find it and really enjoyed it. It was so funny watching him "run" on the ice. Andrew was a natural. He just took off. Dad loved taking Alyssa around. I think it took them about 20 minutes to make it around once... and Dad's back was hurting from bending down, but they had a lot of fun. Alyssa took her skates off after that, and just walked around the ice in her boots. We all had so much fun. What a great way to kick off the Christmas Holiday.

Devotion

Nate works some pretty crazy hours. He works on average 80 hour work weeks, and comes home totally exhasted most days. If that's not enough he also has to be "on call" 2 or 3 week ends a month, which means that he goes to the hospital at 5:30am on a Saturday morning, and doesn't come home until 9 or 10am on Sunday morning. Most of these shifts he is lucky just to sit down and eat a granola bar at some point... there has been shifts that he literally didn't get a chance to sit down once in 30 hours! You can imagine how tired he would be after a shift like this.

After one such shift I went into the bedroom expecting to find him totally passed out in bed. Instead I found him holding his little girl and reading her a story.



My children and I are so lucky to have a husband and father so devoted and loving. I love you Nate.

Dr. Jokes

Nate has been working in the clinic lately which means he does a lot of check up's on pregnant girls before they deliver. He likes to joke around and make people relax and feel a little more comfortable.

Yesterday he came home and told me a couple of stories that had me laughing so hard.

The other day he was in a delivery room with a couple of nurses. He patient was getting ready to deliver. He checks her and tells her that the baby is crowning and it's time to push. He then yells at the nurses, "The baby is coming, quick, you boil some water, and you get some towels!"


Yesterday there was a lady that came into the hospital because she thought her water had broken, being pre-term this could be a problem. Nate goes in and checks her out and tells the lady, "Good news, your water didn't break."

The lady then says, "Oh, Thank you Jesus!"

Nate says, "Oh... I'm not Jesus, I'm just one of the residents who works here."


Finally a lady who Nate had worked with in the clinic came with with her friend to deliver, and she told the nurses, "I want Dr. Jokes to deliver my baby." They all knew she was talking about Nate.

I LOVE my husband! He cracks me up, and I'm also glad that he can crack others up too.

My first kiss with Nate

My friend wrote a post about that first kiss feeling, and asked people to share stories about their first kiss with their spouse. I couldn't resist. I typed up a response... but it was too long to post as a comment on her blog. Unwilling and unable to edit that much out of my story I decided to post it here on my blog instead. So... here is the story of my first kiss with Nate. Enjoy.



I was technically engaged, but even though my heart skipped a beat every time Ben smiled at me, something else inside me kept tormenting me that it wasn't right. But I wanted so bad for it to be. I prayed, "Please make him the one for me" because the thought of breaking his heart, was breaking mine.

I had to choose. I had a ring on my finger and fear in my heart. That can't be right. After thinking, and praying I finally came to the conclusion that love shouldn't be so confusing. I called Ben up, and through my tears, forced myself to end it.

I was devastated. I cried so much I started hyperventilating. My sister, who was also my roommate became so concerned she ran to our neighbors house and asked if someone could come over and give me a blessing. Nate came.

A few weeks later a bunch of my college friends were heading to the state fair for the weekend. They needed a place to stay, and my family didn't live too far from Phoenix so we decided to stay there. We all squished into Rebecca's (my other roommate) Buick and made the trip to the fair.

I'm not much of a roller coaster kind of person, but I wasn't going to be the only person not riding so I hoped on, and Nate jumped in next to me. The coaster took off. I screamed. He laughed.

Every ride we went on from then on he jumped in next to me... even cutting off Rebecca a couple times, which she didn't appreciate.

By the time the sun fell it started to dawn on me that he was flirting. We boarded the huge ferris wheel, and once more he jumped in with me. I'm terrified of heights. I had a death grip on the safety bar, and a look of horror on my face... while Nate leaned back, looking very relaxed. As the ride moved skyward, my grip got tighter, and my knuckles whiter. He laughed and said, "You make me nervous."

I said, "Why, am I making you think we are going to fall to our deaths too?"

He smiled and said, "No." Then he hesitated, and suddenly more serious he said, "it's just that, I know that you are just getting out of a relationship, but I really like you... and that makes me nervous."

I was completely blindsided. The ride was ending so I told him we would have to talk about it later that night. I didn't want all my friends and roommates to over hear what I knew would end up being a private conversation.

That night I snuck downstairs and pulled Nate into an empty bedroom. I told him how much I didn't want to get into another relationship right now... all I want to do is focus on my schooling, and maybe date around... nothing serious.

He said he would be totally fine with me dating other people... but he wanted me to know that I was the only person he was interested in dating. My heart skipped a beat... and I was annoyed at how easily it did that.

We agreed to take it slow and just see where it went. I turned around to leave, when from behind me he slipped his arms around my waist and held me for a moment. I got weak kneed and chills, and once again got mad at myself. Suddenly aware at how utterly alone we were I quickly opened the door and slipped away from him.

The next morning Ben came over and I gave him back his ring. As hard as it was I was surprised at how much lighter my shoulders felt when he drove away.

That evening we all squished back into Becca's much too small for six people car and headed back to college. I was in the middle of the backseat, between "Big wave Dave" and Nate. I was tired. It had been a long and emotional day. I started to doze off and found my head leaning on Nathaniel's shoulder. I looked up at him, and saw that he was looking at me too. We just stared into each others eyes for a moment, and then he leaned down and kissed me.

I was taken by surprise. Chills exploded down to my toes, and my heart pounded. I kissed him back. I kept waiting for him to end it, I was totally unwilling too. Everything around us disappeared. I didn't notice Dave looking out the window pretending he didn't notice, or my three roommates, including my sister in the front seat staring at us shocked through the rear view mirror. All there was was us. Finally realizing that he was not going to end it, I pulled away and nuzzled my head into neck. And I stayed there, feeling his warmth, trying to catch my breath, and trying to figure out exactly what had just happened.

We were engaged 6 weeks later, and married 7 weeks after that. I've never regretted it... and though we've been married for more than 10 years now, he still gives me chills.