11 Years and look what it gets us

Last week, Tom and I celebrated our 11th anniversary.

Yup, eleven years.

And celebrate in grand fashion we did. 

After I successfully retrieved our lovely red van from the shop where it had its torque converter replaced for the second time, I ran to meet my husband for lunch, with grand visions of sushi rolls combined with deep and profound conversation.

Instead, we ended up hanging out at Tom's work for a while while everyone ogled our cute baby, stopping at a church where I'm trying to arrange a concert for my daughter's performing group, driving by a houses for rent and peering in the windows, nursing the baby in the front seat of the van in the Whole Foods parking lot, and scarfing down Orange Chicken from Panda Express.  Our ten minute lunch conversation alternated between the scintillating topics of "Who is taking which kid where this weekend?", and "Wait?  Where's Max?" 

I dropped Tom back off at work, and drove back to Abby's school to watch the famed 3rd grade Disney Program. Well, "watch" might be an exaggeration.  It really consisted more of me changing the leaky diapers of two boys, and then comforting one onery baby and trying to keep crazy Max from running on stage during "Kiss the Girl" than it did actually watching the program.  We then left as soon as the program was done to haul Abby to Salt Lake for her violin lesson and recital rehearsal, which we left a half hour early (much to her teacher's annoyance) to haul back to yet another run of the Disney program which we arrived to five minutes late, (much to another teacher's annoyance.)  I then drove home, changed into a skirt, drove to the stake center for an interview to renew my temple recommend, and finally arrived home just as Abby called to say she was done and needed a ride home.

Once the kids were finally in bed, we partied in grand fashion- Tom playing an xbox game and me falling asleep reading blogs.

Like I said, we partied.  We celebrated. Look what eleven years of marriage will do for you! 

Actually, we're headed to Hawaii in June, and are calling that our anniversary trip, so we're not as hopelessly unromantic, uncreative and uncelebratory (what?  It's a word!) as this post makes us sound.

And if you want to read our love story, it starts here.

The Love Story, Part 3

Apologies for taking so long to post part 3.  If I were a "making excuses" kind of gal, my list would look something like: teething baby (two molars in one day, and more to come, yikes!) two violin recitals and one more to go, major surgery for the baby in a week, etc.  Good thing I don't like to make excuses.

If you need to catch up Part 1 is here and Part 2 is here. 

Our Engagement Photo- I look like such a baby!

We finally called it a  night sometime way after the Holy Ghost went to bed, and I was alternately terrified and exhilarated.  I had never had a night like that before, and I was filled with excitement, adrenaline, and yes, hormones.  On the other side of it, I was reeling from the weight of the profound conversation.  What had just happened?  Did I really just talk about spending the rest of my life with someone I had barely met?

The next day was Sunday, and the thought of seeing Tom again had me guessing.  Were we officially dating?  Would we sit by each other and hold hands, proclaiming our couple-hood to the ward and start the rumor mill flying?  Was I supposed to hug him when I saw him?  Kiss him?  Or would we just smile at each other shyly and pretend nothing had happened the day before?  Unfortunately, I had lost my book of instructions for this kind of event. 

I'm ashamed to tell you that ten years and three kids have managed to suck the memory out of what actually happened at church that day.  Despite wracking my brain for days, I have no memory, however vague, of those three hours.  It's a little disturbing, really. 

But after church, I decided to do what all good girlfriends do on Sundays: cook dinner.  (OK, the truth is, I had little to no experience in this department.  Either the cooking dinner department, or the girlfriend department.  I was flying blind.)  I cooked up some noodles with alfredo sauce, (It was alfredo sauce out of a jar.  How emabarassing.  But the worst part is that I felt so gourment!) added some salad out of a bag, (Told you, move over Julia Child) and set out to call him to see if he wanted to come over for dinner.  I ran into a bit of a snag when I realized I didn't remember his last name and had to ask my roommate who exactly I had gone on a date with the night before so I could call him.  And then I had to get over my years of being conditioned by my parents that "Nice Girls Don't Call Boys."  But I did.  I found out his last name, picked up the phone and invited him over and everything.  And most importantly, I didn't turn into a pumpkin.

Tom came over and joined me four my amazing two course feast, (And it was years before he told me that he had just finished eating his own dinner when I called, and that he doesn't like alfredo sauce at all!) and afterwards suggested we go to Temple Square.  We did the ultimate sappy-couple thing and walked around Temple Square holding hands, talking, and yes, kissing.   If I hadn't been half of the sappy couple, I probably would have been nauseated by the sweetness and romance.  Once again, my memory fails as to what exactly we talked about, but I was becoming more and more convinced that this was heading in a serious direction.

After a full day of classes Monday, I managed to convince myself that I was obviously going off the deep end.  I had only been on two dates.  I didn't want anything to do with boys!  I was going to graduate school, remember?  I had all but talked myself out of it;  I was nearly positive I was going to call Tom up and break it off that night. 

We were living near the University of Utah, and one of my favorite things to do when I was anxious, stressed, or needed to think was to drive up East Canyon at crazy break-neck speeds.  I'm not a wild driver by nature, but there was something soothing about taking those curves at 75+ miles per hour.  I would usually stop at the top of the canyon to think, cry or pray.  I picked Tom up Monday night, and informed him we were going for a drive.  The conversation was intense.  I kept telling him all the reasons we were being crazy, and he kept telling me all the reasons we weren't.  We talked for what seemed like hours in the canyon.  We both confided in each other that everything felt wonderful, right, and calm when we we together, but as soon as we were apart, we both started having crazy doubts and fears.  As we said goodbye that night, instead of breaking things off, I had a calm, unmistakeable assurance fill my heart, and I knew we were going to get married.

The week passed in an insane blur of classes, jobs, practicing and seeing each other as much as posssible.  The next Saturday, Tom wanted to take me to the symphony, because it was his night at the symphony that started it all.   After the concert, as we were waiting in the never ending line to get out fo the parking garage, Tom told me he had a question to ask me.  Being an impatient kind of girl, I said, "Well, ask me then!"

He turned to me and asked, (seriously this time,) "Will You Marry Me?"

Of course I said yes. 

Ten years and three kids later, we still love each other.

You get a lot of funny comments from people when you get engaged after only a week of dating.  We went back to Tom's apartment that night, and as all good boys should, he called his mom to tell her the news. After talking with her for a few minutes, he said, "Here Mom, talk to her. You'll love her. Her name's Stacy," and shoved the phone at me. After glaring at him for not even giving me half a second to prepare, I took the phone. After approximately 47 seconds of small talk, his mom asked me, "What are your intentions with my son?" We still laugh about that one. Because  we all know that I am obviously the evil temptress who tricked him into marrying me.

When we showed up in our singles ward the next day, (holding hands and being all kinds of cheesy,) everyone was shocked to hear that we were engaged.  The rumor mill hadn't even had time to pass on the news that we were dating, let along getting serious, or engaged!

The next Monday, during a break between classes, I sat outside the music building and called my good friend Marti to tell her the news.  "I didn't even know you were dating anyone!" she squealed. 

My response?  "I wasn't!"

We got engaged Novemeber 13th, 1999,  (I realized after Max was born that we got engaged 9 years to the day that he was born.) and got married in the Bountiful Temple on March 16th, 2000. 

It was a wild and crazy ride, but I wouldn't have changed a thing.

In hindsight, I sometimes shake my head at how crazy it was to assume that I knew someone well enough after *one week* to marry them.  But as I look back, I marvel at how perfectly it worked out. Before this, I was queen of the "date someone forever but never go anywhere with it,"  so if Tom hadn't been so forthcoming with his feelings, I probably would have given him the big fat brush-off.  If we hadn't started dating when we did, I wouldn't have given him the time of day, because I would have been too far invested in the graduate school process.  I love looking back on this story and realizing how everything worked out so perfectly. 

The Love Story, Part 2

We waited a week for our date, and I though I thought several times about calling it off, I stuck with my original resolve to have some kind of social life. 

When he picked me up, we were able to talk quite easily.  He had planned a double date with his cousin and his cousin's girlfriend, and we headed to their apartment to eat dinner.  Normally, dinner with one person I only slightly know and two that are strangers would make me panic, but it was surprisingly easy to laugh and joke with them. 

After dinner, they had decided to take us to "Quick Wits" a clean, comedy-sports troupe in downtown SLC.  The comedy act itself was hysterical, but I got a little distracted when Tom decided to put his arm around me and lightly scratch my back.  What did he think he was doing, anyway?  I didn't even know him!

But it was on the way home that things really started getting interesting.  I wish that we would have somehow had a tape recorder or video camera, so I could review how in detail this all unfolded.  But from my admittedly fuzzy memory, here's roughly how the conversation went down:

Him: "You know, I'm really tired of playing the dating games, so I'm just going to tell you something straight out.  I like you. I really like you."

Me: (After scraping my jaw up off the floor...) "Well, I like you too."

Him: "You're the kind of person I could imagine spending the rest of my life with."

Yes, he actually said that.  At that point, I wasn't sure if I was flattered or horrified.  We had a good time together, he was easy to talk to, but I definitely wasn't positive this was the person I was going to spend the rest of my life with! 

We kept talking.  The backyard of the house I lived in at the time had a huge parking area in the back of the house, so we parked and talked some more.  He is a huge country music fan, and had his car stocked with all manner of country love songs.  He played several of them for me, including "I Can Love You Like That" and "I Love the Way You Love Me" by John Michael Montgomery.  And yes, he sang along. 

It's hard to describe what I was feeling at that point.  I was incredulous that I was sitting there with a boy that I hardly knew who was singing me love songs, when a week before I was swearing off romance, dating, and the opposite sex all together.  I thought of the brochures for graduate schools that were laying on the floor of my bedroom, and the audition trip I was planning.  But I couldn't deny that he was treating me the way I had always wanted to be treated, (I mean, really, what girl doesn't want to be serenaded with love songs?) and that I was amazed that he was going out on such a limb.  And the more we talked, the more I liked him.  So many of the things we valued and wanted were so similar; it surprised me how in sync we were with our goals and desires. 

We talked for a while longer, and I kept insisting that he was crazy: no one could possibly know, after one date, what he was professing to know.  But as late night talking often does, talking led to, well, kissing.

But here's the most important thing for all of you reading this to know:

He kissed me first!

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, we've been arguing about this, good-naturedly, for the entirety of our marriage.  But since you're all reading my blog, it's important for you to know the truth.  All that happened was that I stopped talking for a minute and leaned towards him and he did the rest.  He insists that I did the kissing first, but I know that when we get to heaven and we get to have a DVD playback of our lives, it will show the real truth and the argument can be settled once and for all.

More to come...

The Love Story, Part 1

Tom and I celebrated ten years of marraige yesterday.  Well, celebrated might be a little too strong of a word.  The real celebration came over the weekend, while the actual day yesterday was marked with two trips to Salt Lake for violin rehearsals, a pot of soup left on the stove for Tom to eat with Max and Ashlynn, and both of collapsing in front of "House" after all three kids were in bed.  Not quite the romantic, exciting life we envisioned when we tied the knot ten years ago!

I spent the summer after my junior year of college working at a music camp in Michigan.  It was a crazy, wild, fun summer.  I was pretty involved with a boy from my single's ward who moved there, and we had some pretty intense, romantic times together, but it ended badly.  I came home to Utah with a incredibly broken heart, only to learn that every single one of my girlfriends were either engaged or married.  Every. Single. One.  It was terrible.  I was roommates with two of my engaged friends, and they so smitten and sappy that you couldn't carry on a conversation with them without it including the words "tulle" or "wedding cake", and it seemed that those who were married may as well have fallen off the face of the earth for all the interacting with the real world they did.

I was so tired of dating, tired of relationships that lasted forever and went nowhere, tired of being around friends with whom I could only discuss wedding plans that I decided to swear off everything.  No dating, no boys, no relationships, nothing.  I was going to graduate school.  I started sending away for brochures, planning audition trips, and talking to people about letters of recommendation.  I was even determined that I was going to go to a family ward, because the last thing I wanted was more of the Singles Ward scene.

Then, one fateful October night, one of my engaged roommates convinced me to go with her to a Sunday night church social.  It sounded as much fun as practicing Kreutzer Etudes, but I knew that I needed some semblance of a normal social life or I was going to need my practice room turned into a padded room.   So I went, and she promptly ditched me, leaving me to navigate through a room full of strangers.  I started talking to the boy sitting behind me, making all the normal small talk.  You know, "What's your name, what are you studying, etc."  When I told him I was majoring in violin performance, his eyes lit up and he immediately blurted out:

"Will you marry me?"

He explained to me that he had been to the symphony for the very first time the night before, sitting on the front row, right in front of the first violins, and had been mezmerized the whole night.  We chatted a bit for a few more minutes, but I didn't really think anything of it, other than that was definitely the first time I had been proposed to after knowing someone for approximately 42 seconds.

A few Sundays later at church, I was feeling lonely and awkward.  I noticed Tom sitting down, (and miracle of miracles, I actually remembered his name!) and asked if I could join him.  I spent my time listening to the lesson, and he told me later that he spent his time watching me.  As we left class, he asked me if I would like to go dancing with him sometime.

I groaned inwardly.  I had no desire to date, in fact, it was exactly the opposite- I wanted to stay as far away from that scene as possible.  Plus, (and this was the real reason,) I can't dance.  I really can't.  The joke in my family is that there was only so much grace to go around in my family, and my sister the ballet dancer received all of it.  It's really embarassing.  You would think being a musician and all that I would have some innate sense of rhythm and movement.  It just ain't happening.  Many people have tried to teach me and have failed miserably.  I'm a lost cause, really.  It's embarassing.

I tried to explain all these reasons to him without making it sound like I was giving him the brush-off.  (I didn't tell him the no-dating thing, of course, just the part about being a completely hopeless dancer.)  He tried to convince me it would be fun, and that he had taught others girls to dance.  I kept trying to explain to him that it wasn't a good idea.  Finally, he suggested something else, and I hesitantly agreed.

"It's just one date," I reasoned to myself.  "I need some kind of social life, and really, what can one date hurt?"

To be continued...