Thursday, February 28, 2008

On being an adult

Sometimes I look at my life and think “how did I get here?” and more specifically, “how did I get here SO FAST?!” At 25 I’ve been married for almost 2 years, I have a bachelors in chemical engineering which facilitated a good job in a well paying (if not volatile) field, we own a house, two cars, have two dogs, and a baby on the way. We pay taxes, a mortgage, utilities, health insurance, car insurance, homeowners insurance, tithing, and put a nice chunk of my salary into a 401K. Seeing it all listed out makes me look like such a responsible adult, which I suppose I am, most of the time. I guess I just thought it would feel different, like maybe I was expecting some sort of graduation ceremony where someone said “alright, now you’re a grown up.”

Maybe part of it is that growing up is comprised of such clear beginnings and endings. We start and end elementary school, middle school, high school, and college. Each of those takes a specified amount of time and (depending on how hard you work) you know when you can expect to be done. That isn’t true in the real world. There is no set amount of time to date before getting engaged, no set amount of time someone has to work before buying a house, no set amount of time you have to be married before having kids.

The same is true of ages growing up. At 16 you can get your drivers license, at 17 you can see R-rated movies without an adult, at 18 you can vote and buy cigarettes, at 21 you can legally drink. Again this isn’t true of other life events. There isn’t a law saying ok, now that you’re 24 you can buy a house, or now that you’re 26 you can have kids. Which is good; laws like that would be pretty ridiculous. They would be like the car rental companies who say “ok, now that you’re 25 we’re going to stop charging you an arm and a leg to rent a car,” because apparently at midnight on September 26th 2007 the driving skills fairy stopped by my house and turned me magically from a bad driver to a good one. Anyway…

I shouldn’t be surprised to be here. If someone had asked me at 15 where I would be in 10 years, my description probably wouldn’t have been too far off. In fact, at 15 I probably expected to get married younger and have kids earlier. Still, somehow the anticipation did not prepare me for the real thing. Like at my college graduation where I spent the entire time staring at my diploma thinking, “Really? I’m done? I don’t know enough to be an engineer!” (and also, “Man, good thing they spelled my name right.”) Maybe my problem is that I group things into “things that are happening now” and “things that will happen in the future” and then I fail to realize that this “future” gets closer every day. And I suppose that’s why it feels like I got here “so fast.”

Sunday, February 24, 2008

Introductions and pictures!

Let's try for some better introductions. Here we are:
That picture is from last July, and while Brian looks the same, I look more like this:

















29 weeks along.

A quick run-down about us: we met at the end of September in 2005, moved to Texas in January of 2006, married in June of 2006, honeymooned in Tahiti in November of 2006, and then had a seriously busy year in 2007. So busy, in fact, that I wrote a blog about it for my myspace page, so I'm going to cheat and copy that over to here!

January:
In January we paid off the loan on Brian's Kia and we were officially out of debt! After being out of school since 2001, Brian got back into school mode and started his first semester of college. As of January 9th, I had been working for Baker for 1 whole year, by far the longest I've ever worked at a one job. Even if you add up the three summers I worked at Choice Hotels. (How fun was that job by the way)

February:
We celebrated our first Valentine's day as a married couple, and actually got to spend it together since I wasn't out of town! Brian turned 24 and we probably did something... We decided that now that we were out of debt we should get back in big time and buy a house.

March:
We bought at house! With 3 bedrooms, 2 and 1/2 baths, and almost 1900 square feet it made us really appreciate living in Midland where housing is affordable. Then, the same day we moved in, we called on a newspaper ad, drove up to Andrews and brought home our two lovely greyhounds, Onyx and Brenna. It took them awhile to warm up to us but they are definitely worth it.









Front and back views of the house.









Brenna on the left, Onyx on the right.


April:
Ok, I don't think anything particularly interesting actually happened in April.

May:
Brian finished his first semester of college, with a 4.0 of course:) We decided we were ready to start a family and found out that Kirsta and Joe were doing just that when they called to announce that they were expecting.

June:
I got to meet lots of Brian's family in Florida before we left on a cruise with my family. Took a cruise to Grand Cayman and Cozumel with my family where we ate tons of good food, tried escargot, and sang lots-o-karaoke. Found out I was pregnant just in time for our 1 year anniversary! Had our 1 year anniversary!












The ship we were on. Brian and I all dressed up for the formal dinner.






July:
I had a miscarriage. After which I found out that people really don't know what to say to you when you tell them you've had a miscarriage. July was the month of other people's babies; I attended 3 baby showers within one week. My parents came to Texas to visit, got to see our house and meet our dogs. We visited Carlsbad Caverns while they were here. Plus we took them to KD's, the best BBQ in the world. Seriously.

August:
We took lots of quick trips in August. At the beginning of the month we went to San Diego for a wedding celebration where we found out that Eric and Amy were also expecting. Later in the month we spent a weekend in Denver for Brian's cousin Brianna's wedding and I got to meet lots more of his family. Brian started his second semester of college and somehow during everything else I managed to get pregnant again! As soon as I told Brian I was pregnant, he told me it would be a girl.


















Brian with Brianna at her wedding.






September:
We went back to San Diego where we got sealed in and attended my cousin Jason's wedding at the San Diego temple. Which is gorgeous, by the way. I turned 25 and spent my birthday working and watching TV. At 8 weeks pregnant I wasn't up for anything more than that. Plus cake sounded disgusting so we had birthday milkshakes from Burger King.

Brian and I with my parents and Kirsta and Joe.

Jason with his new wife and the extended family.

October:
Had an ultrasound at 10 weeks and listened to the baby's heartbeat:)

November:
Blood tests showed that I have heterozygous Factor V Leiden (random since Brian has it too) so I got to add aspirin to my morning prenatal. Brian's family came to visit for Thanksgiving and got to see the rare occurrence of Midland snow. Brian's mom did all the cooking, which was wonderful, and even made a ham since pregnancy has given me an aversion to the texture of poultry.


Nicholas showing off his snowman.













December:
Brian finished his second semester of college, again with a 4.0:) More blood tests showed that I also have a homozygous MTHFR mutation. So I got to add 4 mg of folic acid to the morning supplements. Brian was proved right when the 18 week ultrasound showed a girl! Went back to Colorado for Christmas and had the longest vacation I've had since starting work for Baker. We spent an exciting New Year's eve driving over Monarch pass (Vail was closed) and back into Texas. Then we partied it up! Oh wait, I mean we watched TV in a hotel in Amarillo. Happy New Year to us!

So there it is, 2007 in review. More to come soon.

Saturday, February 23, 2008

Timing

I started a blog and then left town for the rest of the week for work. I don't suppose that was the best way to get into the habit of writing often. Although the hotel had wireless and I did consider posting while I was there, I really wasn't doing anything worth writing about. Then again, when am I ever doing anything worth writing about? And let's not lie, all I ever do when I'm in hotels is watch TV. I'm thinking over a better introductory post, with pictures and everything. Maybe after that's posted I'll actually tell people in real life that I'm writing a blog!

Monday, February 18, 2008

Here goes

I've decided to start a blog. I'm not sure how it's going to go or what I'm going to write about or who's going to read it but oh well! At first I thought I should come up with a fantastic first post so that everyone would be intrigued, but then I decided that maybe it would be better to keep expectations low. So here goes.