Thirty Years of Us!

 On a cold, but sunny day in Denver, on December 18, 1993, a couple of young kids got married.

 

Here are a few random facts about our early relationship and wedding:

-We met at BYU.

-I was officially introduced to Glen when I was going on a double date and the other guy canceled super last minute.  My brother offered to find a replacement date for my friend and came back with Glen.   He dated my friend for a while, then she went on a mission and the rest is history.  Haha! 

-Both of our birthdays are on the 25th of the month (me in April, him in June), so he asked me to marry him on September 25th.  We likely would have married on the 25th as well, except the 25th doesn't really work in December. 

-My aunt made my wedding dress and it cost right about $100 total.

-I truly didn't care about my wedding colors.   I originally picked peach and green (it was the early 90's, so don't judge!) and happily changed it to burgundy and green after my Mom informed me that those colors were hard to find in the wintertime.

-Actually, I really didn't care about many of the details of my wedding and I went along with whatever my Mom and Glen's Mom told me would be easiest.   We even had a potato bar for the luncheon, despite me not liking potatoes back then. 

-We jumped in the car the day after we got married and drove to Minnesota with my family for the reception and to spend Christmas with them.   I feel bad for my younger siblings in the back of the car with us. 

-It was bitterly cold in Minnesota the week we were there (like -40* with windchill type of cold) and Glen very quickly redacted every naive statement he'd ever made about how growing up in Colorado meant he knew all about cold. 

-The first place we lived together after we got married, in South Orem, was the sketchiest neighborhood we lived in in our whole married life. Police were in our little culdesac on a semi-regular basis. 

-Glen's first job out of college was in Baltimore, Maryland...thus beginning our 25 years of living on the East Coast. 

-Our first three kids were born in three different states.  Spence in Utah, Cami in Maryland, then Emma, Adam, and Ellie were all born in Virginia.

  We were certainly pretty clueless about life when we got married, but we were filled with a deep love and naive hope for the future.   It's probably a good thing we couldn't really glimpse the future at that point, though, because I think we would have been pretty petrified at some of the things we'd be facing together.   It turns out though, that we make a pretty good team and while our family is far from perfect, it's perfect for us.  

Our official 30th anniversary celebration was the trip in October/November that I have yet to blog about (but will eventually), but we enjoyed celebrating today in our own low-key kind of way.  

We started off with a long walk (6-1/2 miles),

Then stopped for a delicious  brunch at a place called Communal,

 

 

 Then, just as we've done every anniversary for the last 30 years (except when it falls on a Sunday), we went Christmas shopping.    We also found a Giving Machine at the mall we were at and took a little stop there. 

Weirdly, I'm not sure we'd ever been up close and personal with a Giving Machine before and we were impressed with how it works.  Can you guess what I picked to give?   

After a few pitstops, we headed home where we had a boat load of Christmas cards waiting for us in our mailbox!     Any of you who's been following along with this blog for long, knows that I am quite a Christmas card aficionado and it made me smile!   

And with that, Glen had to skedaddle down to the Outpost.  😐

The trip was a grand way to celebrate, but today was a perfect low-key way to commemorate the beginnings of our family.  I'm grateful to have this man by my side through life and into the eternities.  

What Happens When…

What happens when you realize the same year you turn 50 years old….

the invitation to my 50th birthday party where I tell no one it's my birthday

Is the same year you drop your baby off to college….

a piece of my heart is now at  BYU-Idaho

And is the same year you celebrate your 30th wedding anniversary?  

our wedding announcement:  Dec. 18, 1993

Well, if you're us....you plan a big trip!   

 It was originally supposed to be a 3-week trip to Egypt, Israel, Jordan, and UAE...but with world events being what they are, the Israel and Jordan part of the trip was canceled shortly before we left.  We were excited/relieved that the whole trip didn't get canceled, but it did mean that we had the week and a half to fill in between the end of the Egypt portion and the beginning of the UAE.   And in case you aren't aware of the timing--our trip was scheduled to begin on October 20th, the Hamas attack on Israel happened on October 7th--so this fill-in-the-gap trip planning/rearranging was happening with VERY short notice.  It was a tad stressful figuring out those details, but we did it!  

Stay tuned for a more detailed glimpse at our trip coming soon...

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22-Years of Us!

On December 18th, Glen and I celebrated 22-years together by taking a trip to New York City!   My sister watched the kids and we left the hustle and bustle of home and drove to the uber hustle and bustle of the Big Apple!  

It's only four hours from home, but NYC has a culture all its own that gives it a bit of a foreign feel.

We thought these billboards in Times Square were especially cool. 

This was the view from our hotel window, which  meant that our room was light as day all night long. 

We ate good food, watched "Something Rotten" on Broadway, got some shopping done...

and watched the Christmas Spectacular performance by the Rockettes, which happen to feature one of the coolest nativity scenes we'd ever seen in our entire lives! 

After that we braved the cold and the wind and took a tour bus ride and ferry boat around town.  

It was a great way to spend our anniversary and made me extra grateful for Glen.  He's a good, kind, hard-working husband that still makes my heart go pitter-patter!

Stay tuned for one more blogpost later today with a BIG announcement....

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21 Years!

21-years ago today, on a beautiful sunny and cold Colorado morning,  Glen and I were married in the Denver temple.  We were young, but very much in love and so excited to be starting our new lives together.   

December 18, 1993

In those 21-years we've...

earned 3 college degrees

(Lara {BS}, Glen {BS, MAcc})

had 5 kids

(Spencer, Cami, Emma, Adam, Ellie)

lived at 6 different addresses

 (1 in Utah, 3 in Baltimore, 2 in Virginia)

owned 1 house

(where we currently live)

been in 4 different wards 

(C H 1st--3-years, Tow./Luth.--2-years, Hamp.--1-year, Vi.--15-years)

owned or leased 8 cars 

(some of them better than others)

(Dodge Shadow [93-96], Ford Taurus [96-98], Toyota Camry [98-02], Toyota Sienna #1 [02-14], 

Toyota Corolla [03-11], Toyota Sienna #2 [11-?], Lexus [14-?], Honda Accord [14-?])

totaled 2 of those cars

(Glen x1, Cami x1) 

owned 1 Christmas tree

(bought it at a Black Friday sale when we were first married)

lost 6 grandparents

(only my paternal grandmother is left)

had 1 kid diagnosed with a life-threatening illness

(He's 2-1/2 years in remission now!!!!) 

had 1 kid diagnosed with a chronic, life-affecting illness

(Ellie told Cami just yesterday that she was glad she didn't have to worry about driving 

when she was older, because the thought of driving made her nervous.  I hope she feels the same in 7-years.)

had 4 surgeries performed

(Spencer x3 {central line placement and removal, appendix removal}, Emma x1 {eye surgery})

homeschooled each one of the kids for at least one year

(actually we're in the middle of Emma's year right now)

had 5 broken bones

(Spencer x2 {finger + toe}, Adam x1 {foot}, Ellie x1 {ankle}, Lara x1 {toe}) 

had 6+ pets

(2 hermit crabs, 2 gerbils, an assortment of fish, 1 dog) 

been on countless road trips together 

(as a family we're up to 42 states, we only have SC, GA, FL, MS, AL, LA, AK, and HI left)

changed approximately 22,812 diapers

(averaging 5 per day, 2-1/2-years per kid)

21-years later…
we're older, grayer, heavier…

and more in love than ever!

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

The Good, The Bad, and the Ugh-ly

The good...

Glen and I celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary on Wednesday! 
As per usual we spent our anniversary date doing some Christmas shopping,
before heading to a favorite restaurant! I sure am grateful to have had Glen

 by my side for the last 20 years!

The bad...

I put Cami on a plane to Utah this afternoon and we will not see her for another 2 weeks.  Although she is beyond excited about going on this service mission project in Mexico (with my aunt, uncle, and family), I am quite sad about her not being around this Christmas.

 The ugh - ly...

We got an Elf on the Shelf.

Okay, perhaps it's not actually ugly, but I have always had some inexplicable vendetta against the overpriced, trendy little elves. In the end, Ellie's enthusiasm and storytelling about her friends' elves made us decide that for the sake of our daughter's Christmas memories, we could swallow our elf-hating pride for a while.  "Delph the Shelf Elf" as the kids named him has only been here a day so far, but already he's winning his way into our hearts and I envision lots of fun adventures with the little dude.  

The really ugly...

There is no picture of this monstrosity, but I went to a white elephant gift exchange on Tuesday night where the hot gift of the night was a LIVE RAT!!!  It was contained in one of those rodent balls, but it still gave me the heebie jeebies from across the room and the distinct notion that next year we will be instituting a no live animal rule.  Or at least a no rodent rule!  

On a slightly different note...

The whole white elephant rat debacle reminded me when, as a freshman in college,  I was visiting my young cousins who lived not too far from campus.  I had lived across the country from them the whole time I was growing up, but was now visiting  them a few times a month to eat dinner, do laundry, etc.  One day they brought me to their basement and very excitedly introduced me to their new pet rats, one of which they had named Lara--named after me they made sure I knew.   All these years later and I still wonder whether to be complimented or insulted by that!

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ONE YEAR!!!!!!

A year ago today (May 31) Spence busted out of the hospital once and for all....

 

 At that point I thought the hard part was over.  But I was wrong.

Everything about leukemia was out of our control.  Him getting it was out of our control.  His treatment was out of our control.  And whether or not the treatment was successful was out of our control.  All we had to do was pray and support him the best way we knew how.

Then he came home and suddenly everything seemed to shift back to us.  The doctors told us that his chance for relapse was quite high, so we've found ourselves celebrating each milestone  with a somewhat reserved enthusiasm and a pervading worry about whether we are doing enough to "help" him stay healthy.

Much to Spence's own chagrin (and teenage appetite) that worry has led me to keep adding things to the list of what  we need to change to keep him healthy.  We've thrown away all of our plastic dishes, I stopped buying processed meats, banished artificial colors and sweeteners, started baking our bread, grinding wheat, and I still sometimes wonder if we should move further away from the freeway.  And yet deep down I worry that it's all too little, too late and can't help but wonder if anything would be different if only I had started all this sooner.

Glen has felt the same helplessness that I have since the end of Spencer's treatment, but has battled it  in a much different way than me.  Instead of selfishly just trying to keep it away from our family like I have, he has chosen to battle against leukemia by putting his heart and soul into finding a cure.  He has tirelessly fundraised over $10,000 all the while training for a marathon, which he ran in March.  Now he is in NY for a 108-mile bike ride which he will ride in the morning.

It seems only apt that he is riding to find a cure,  the day after Spencer's anniversary for being cured.

I think we will celebrate big with some homemade bread and organic peaches....and maybe some ice cream!

Go Glen!   Yay Spence!  

This is the senior ad I created for his HS yearbook.

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Nineteen Years

Here we are on December 18, 1993.
We were young, naive, and very much in love.

In the 19-years since that beautiful day we've....

bought ONE house
ended up with TWO minivans (at the same time)
lived in THREE states
in FOUR different houses
had FIVE kids
said goodbye to SIX grandparents
had our last baby SEVEN years ago
we have EIGHT different medical specialists attend to our family's health
we've held NINE jobs  between us
traveled on at least TEN cross-country road trips together
our average bedtime over the years -- ELEVEN o'clock
we add TWELVE eggs to make our traditional birthday breakfast crepes
we've spent THIRTEEN of those years living in the DC area
Glen and I have run in FOURTEEN endurance events (half-marathons or greater)
our kids have FIFTEEN cousins
we yawn at least SIXTEEN thousand times a day
I swear I was just SEVENTEEN last week
 we've enjoyed almost EIGHTEEN of those years as parents
for NINETEEN amazing years I've been the luckiest girl in the world!

Anniversary Date to Charlottesville

 The longer Glen and I have been married, the mellower and mellower our special days get.  And by mellow, I mean boring.  

This year was particularly bad.   

My birthday was a minor flop, Glen's birthday was an epic flop, and our holiday celebrations almost non-existent. 

So it was with these celebratory flops fresh in our mind, that we decided to celebrate our pseudo-golden anniversary (18 years on the 18th of December), with a little more flair than our normal  dinner at Sweetwater and a movie date. 

We were so gung-ho that we decided to go on an overnight trip to Charlottesville.   

One night, two hours away from home!  Yeah, we go big. 

We had little planned, so mostly we did a lot of wandering through downtown Charlottesville, stopping whenever some store or restaurant caught our eye.  As per our usual style, it was definitely on the laid-back side of things.

So laid-back, in fact, that I didn't think to bring my lactose pills with me to breakfast and I didn't think to ask until the very end of the meal if the authentic Southern grits  I ate had any cream in them. 

They did. 

And so it was that our big anniversary trip turned into let's-see-if-we-can-locate-every-single-bathroom-in-Charlottesville kind of date, rather than than the romantic stroll through town that we'd planned.

On the upside though, I'm pretty sure that it will be hard to beat 2011 for lame-o celebrations.  Next year's gotta be better....right? 





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Day 352--Hurry, Hurry, Hurry...

It's our anniversary, it's a week before Christmas and a huge storm is coming.  Today was spent running all over creation.  I braved the hour long lines and grocery shopped, bought new gloves for the kids, and tried to finish up as much Christmas shopping as humanly possible.  After all was said and done we went out to eat and then to the late showing of Avatar in 3D to celebrate our anniversary.  It was slick as snot on the way home.  So slick that the people who were returning Cami after a babysitting job got stuck in our neighborhood and ended up at our house until about 1am.  We never even saw her though, since we got home right after that.

Flashback Friday: 16-Years-Ago Today

Sixteen years ago today,  Glen and I were married for eternity in the Denver Temple.

A few random memories from the day:

With it being wintertime in Denver we were quite nervous about having inclement weather for the day, but it ended up being a beautiful clear and cold day.  Perfect driving weather for all the people coming in from around the country (Minnesota, Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, Oklahoma).  

We were too cheap to hire a photographer, so all of our wedding pictures are just snapshots.  We did end up with a collection of photos from various sources, but none of them are professional quality.  I've been on a mission ever since then to tell people not to skimp in that department!

Me and my roommates went to store after store looking for a dress and just never found anything that I loved (or could afford).  My Aunt Zina ended up volunteering to sew my dress for me, which seemed wonderful enough at the time, but looking back at her busy life with six small children I'm in awe that she pulled it off so beautifully.

Enough reminiscing now....

Happy Anniversary Glen!  I love you more now than ever!

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Does This Mean We're Getting Old?

There are some of you out there that probably still remember us looking just like this...totally young, dirt poor, and in love!




Fifteen years ago today we were starting our life together in the Denver temple...




since then we've been through thick...



and thin together...



I'm grateful for each day of those fifteen years. I love you Glen!