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.