Together

The other day as I was blog hopping, I came upon this quote:  "We may not have it all together, but together we have it all."  Pretty cliche, right?  Yeah, that was my first thought too, but it stuck in my head.  And the more I thought about it, the more I realized how true it was.  We have a beautiful daughter who is the light of our lives, a warm home that is getting lovelier by the day and a supportive extended family & friends network.  That's quite alot in my book!  We definitely have it "all."  Remind me of this over the next couple of years, will you?  

As most of our readers know, we've had some tough stuff to deal with since the early days of our marriage and it definitely took it's toll.  These last few months Doug and I have really worked on some things and we are in a much better place these days.  That doesn't mean that things are going to get any easier anytime soon.  Quite the contrary.  In a couple of months, Doug's unemployment will run out.  We've been so blessed to have it all this time, but we knew it wouldn't last forever.  We still want to Doug to complete his degree though.  So our belts will get a little tighter, we'll eat more dinners at home, and a thousand other little changes to keep us afloat during these next couple years.  Doug will also have to get a part-time job during this time.  It's going to be hard, we know this, but we have a plan in place and hopefully it will be a successful one.  That's kind of why we've been scrambling to get projects done lately.  Like Doug said, if we have to sit at home the next couple of years, we need to have some nice things to look at.

Speaking of Doug, he just got up and started talking to me and now I can't remember what I was going to say anymore...

Dream Job

Inspired by a post on my brother's blog (I'll link to it if he says it's okay...), I thought I'd write a little about my dream job. 

Let's face it, work is work these days.  I work because my family needs the income.  There are parts of my job I enjoy.  Helping people find books and answers to off the wall questions can be interesting, but my favorite part is storytime!  Some days I am very glad that I have storytime on Monday mornings.  Because more often than not after I drop off Katie at the sitter's I get a major case of the Mondays.  I love reading stories to the kids, hearing their answers when I ask what they think will happen next or listening to them tell me about what's going on in their lives.  Preschoolers are pretty cool!  Even when they won't sit still or are interrupting your story, it is hard to keep up the Monday blues after 45 minutes of that!  Then Tuesday comes and the blues start all over and I start thinking about what I really want to do...

If our finances allowed, I'd love to stay home and take care of Katie and our house.  Most days, I feel like I am only doing things halfway.  Work only gets half my attention because I'm thinking about Katie, Katie only gets half my attention because I'm thinking about housework, housework doesn't even get half my attention because working and Katie wear me out so much that I just don't care anymore.  I don't even know that I give Doug half the attention he needs.  We are so busy  and when we're not, we're just plain tired.  Not exactly the basis of a good relationship, right?  But, life won't always be this way, or at least that's what I tell myself on those days that I start worrying that I just can't keep up.

It's Been Awhile...

Yeah, yeah. I've been a bad blogger. A whole month without posting, not good. In my defense, we've had ALOT going on. Most of it I won't even go into, because that would take too long to type and much too long to read.

Here's what I will tell you. Doug got a new job. He starts next Tuesday and we are so excited! I'm sure most of you have seen the news about his previous employer and the layoffs, so I won't explain further. I'll just say this, my husband is awesome! He could have wallowed in this, he could have stuck it out until the bitter end, but that's just not my husband. He's proactive and a go getter. As soon as he had an inkling, he went out and looked for something new. That was on a Friday and by the following Monday afternoon he had 10 applications out. That Thursday, he had an interview and on Friday he had a job offer. :) I'm so proud of him!

In less exciting news, I got new glasses last night. I love them! And yes, that is BJ in the picture with me. Can you believe how huge he is? Hard to believe he's been a part of our family for almost a whole year now...
Speaking of a whole year, our anniversary is next Monday. This year has gone so fast! We've had plenty of ups and downs, but it's been good overall. No big celebratory plans. Probably out for a nice dinner and then who knows? I think we're going to buy ourselves a new mattress as an anniversary gift sometime soon. Exciting! We are officially old married people now, right?

Updates

Things are going well with us right now. We've had lots of exciting things come up, some friends getting married and having babies. Not us, though. We're happy to let our lives settle down a bit.

We did our taxes over the weekend and are really going to enjoy that nice refund now that we are married. The hard part is deciding what to do with it!

Doug's birthday is in less than 2 weeks (I still don't know what to get him!) so we're planning lots of fun stuff to do and that weekend is also the Super Bowl, so it'll be like 2 parties! Lucky him. :)

Work is still work for both of us. We're looking at maybe taking a trip/belated honeymoon around our 1st anniversary, so we're planning vacation time already. I can't wait! I'm ready for another vacation. The week off after the wedding was nice and much needed, but this time I want to do something other than write thank you notes on my vacation!

I've started working on our wedding album. It is coming right along. I have the whole ceremony scrapbooked now. I have a few more pictures to print before I can start in on the rest though.

That's pretty much what we've been up to lately. We're pretty boring once we settle down. :)

How's Married Life?

This a question that I get asked at least once a week and I'm sure Doug does as well. I guess we'll be hearing it for a little while longer. Until all that newlywed sparkle is gone. It's probably soon to be replaced with, "When are you going to have a baby?" or "Are you pregnant yet?" Actually we've had all those questions and more in the last month and a half. So, I'm here today to answer these questions for you.

Q: How's Married Life?

A: So far, we are settling into married life just fine. I'm still dealing with all kinds of annoying name change stuff and it seems like now that all the wedding stuff has settled down the rest of our life has to be in an uproar. We've been sick, had car issues, and now our furnace isn't working (hopefully that will be fixed this evening!) so we're looking forward to EVERYTHING settling down and just enjoying our life together. Of course, with the holidays coming that probably isn't likely to happen very soon. :) That's okay, though. We're doing just fine and it really is nice to have someone else there to share all these little annoyances with and it helps to have that other person there to keep you warm at night.

Q: When Are You Going to Have a Baby?

A: We'll let you know. :)

Q: Are You Pregnant?

A: NO! We're not pregnant.

It's Just Me

Sorry, no we post today. I think I'm going to stop posting wedding pictures for awhile. I've pretty much posted everything that doesn't include people that may not want their picture posted on the web and the rest are just pictures of us with our eyes closed. Besides, even I'm sick of looking at them!

We've had some craziness these first few weeks of our marriage, but it's nothing we can't deal with. Mostly we're just stressed. Doug's working lots of OT, which means great paychecks, but that's about it. We have precious little time to spend together as it is, so it sucks when work takes even more of it. We know that we just have to make the most of the time we do have together. Like last Sunday when we were supposed to paint the living room, but decided that spending the day watching TV and cuddling with our kitties was a better idea. We only left the house to get some food. It was a good day. :)

Carmen convinced me to try NaNoWriMo (that's National Novel Writing Month, which begins Nov. 1st, 50,000 words in 30 days!) again this year. She talked me into it several years ago and there was just too much craziness for me that one November. I think I did a pitiful 2500 words. This year, I'll be happy if I make it to 10,000 words. Writing is not something I do often, unless you count my blogs, so this might be a good exercise for me. If nothing else it will keep my evenings occupied for the month of November. So I may post some excerpts, or I may not depending on how extroverted I'm feeling. ;)

Anyway, I'm going to be late for work if I don't stop now.

Happy Halloween!!!

1 Month

Wow! It's hard to believe we've already been married a month. It's been great. We're so happy.