Childhood | Marriage Confessions Childhood | Laugh. Fight. Stay Married.

Roses are red

Violets are blue

Remember that night

We went out for fondu?

It was the night before our wedding

And we were needing a break

From all of the demands

A bride and groom must take.

So, the night before our vows

We snuck away from our crew

And had a quiet dinner

Just me and just you.

We talked about our lives

That were about to begin.

We laughed and we planned

And we kissed and we grinned.

That night as we dreamed

as only young lovers can do

I had no way of knowing

How blessed I would be to have you.

Our life hasn’t always been perfect.

Sometimes the storms raged against our shores.

But you stood there beside me

No matter how hard it poured.

And when times were good,

Well, you made them better.

Life was sweeter and brighter

When we were together.

If I could go back

To that fondu dinner for two,

I’d tell my young self

To stop planning what to do.

Because after all these years

There’s one thing I know.

We could never have planned

How deeply our love would grow.

So, roses are red,

And poison ivy gives me hives,

I’m so glad you’ll be my Valentine

For the rest of our lives.

26 comments | posted in Changes, Childhood, Flashbacks, holidays, Marriage Confessions | tags: love, Marriage, Relationships, Valentine's Day

Last weekend, my BFF, Sarah, made me run another 5k with her. Chris said that since I have now run two 5k’s, I am officially a runner. But I don’t think it counts if the ONLY time you run is when your friend drags you through a 5k…

(Do you like our socks???)

I put pictures on Facebook and Twitter and I had so many people congratulating me on being so “athletic.”

I feel like I should clarify.

I am about as athletic as a bag of Doritos. I want to work out. I want to be healthy. But I just don’t have time! And, I know, I know. You make time for what is important. But I have made time for my job, my kids, my husband, this blog, my home life, my church life, and, occasionally, a good book. There just aren’t enough hours in the day for any other priorities right now. So, working out falls to the wayside.

Well, not the wayside exactly. I try to let it fall to the wayside, but freaking Sarah keeps trying to force me into healthy living. At least every other day, Sarah calls to ask me to go do something healthy – walk around the neighborhood (yes, we grew up together, teach together, and we now live in the same neighborhood), go for a jog, explore a nature park, take a yoga class. Every other day, Sarah calls or texts me with some activity for us to try. Which means every other day, I have to come up with an excuse. It’s becoming tiresome.

LET’S STOP THE CHARADE, SARAH!

But, she won’t stop. She is tenacious and unforgiving. It’s kind of like I’ve stepped in chewing gum and it won’t come off my shoe. I keep telling her I liked her better when all we did was drink and shop, but she will have none of my complaints. She’s tough, that Sarah.

So, last weekend, we ran a 5k. Well, “ran” is really ambiguous. Bless her athletic, vegan, little heart. She stuck by me the entire time and pretended to be as winded as I was. I started out alright. For the first mile(ish), I ran pretty good. I was passing people, tossing my hair, and picturing myself looking somewhat similar to those paparazzi pictures of Carrie Underwood when she works out. Then, I got a cramp in my side just as we came up on the first mile marker.

Now, I would like to pause here and appreciate the fact that I even made it a MILE. The last time I ran was in December at a 5k in Sea World. A mile without dying was a miracle to me.

With that cramp, I told Sarah I thought we had to stop and walk a bit.

“Oh, good,” Sarah said politely. “I’m tired, too.”

Now that was just a blatant lie. Sarah runs all the time and I’m pretty sure she doesn’t sweat. Like, ever. So the fact that she pretended to need a break for my sake was nice of her. We slowed to a quick walk pace for about 10 minutes.

“Okay,” I said. “I think I’m ready.”

We started running again for about 5 minutes and then I was POSITIVE I was going to either:

a) throw up
b) pass out
c) die

We were running on a cobblestone road and I really think that it was looking down at those cobblestones that made me suddenly get sick to my stomach. Well, those and the fact that in the past two months I hadn’t run further than to my car in the Target parking lot when it was raining. I told Sarah we had to stop.

“Oh, good,” Sarah chirped happily. “I’m winded.”

But she didn’t look winded. She looked windblown in that sitting-beside-a-breezy-beach-drinking-a-margarita way. But she stopped and walked with me anyway.

And we never ran again.

I walked the last almost two miles and I thought I was going to either:

a) throw up
b) pass out
c) kill someone…preferably Sarah

In the last fourth of a mile, the cameras and crowds started lining the street and yelling to encourage us. I wanted to yell back at them to shut the hell up and let me die in peace, but Sarah insisted that we actually RUN across the finish line. When I started running again, I couldn’t feel my legs. At all. I figured that meant either:

a) I was about to throw up
b) I was about to pass out
c) my legs had actually fallen off sometime during the second mile and I hadn’t even noticed

But, I did it. Dammit. I ran my short, fat legs across that finish line and I even resisted the urge to hit the runners who had already finished the race and looked all fresh-faced as they cheered for us and congratulated us. So, there’s a win. Nobody got punched.

The moral of this pathetic story? Find friends who are lazier than you and who want you to become lazier than them, instead of friends who want you to be healthy and live a long, full life. Those kinds of friends are overrated. So is running.

25 comments | posted in Childhood, Friendship, Just for Fun, Marriage Confessions, Out and About, Understanding Katie | tags: Friendship, humor, running

This past weekend we went to Atlanta to have Christmas with my side of the family at my sister’s house. My sister and John Michael have the cutest little condo in downtown Atlanta. It is just what you would picture for a successful, young couple to have. And Ginny has decorated it perfectly. When we got there, it was beautiful in its Christmas glory, with their huge Christmas tree front and center.

Twenty minutes into our visit and we had destroyed their house.

I blame my mom and dad. They went above and beyond for all of our Christmas presents this year (like every year!). It was really incredible! My favorite gift, though, was a Kindle! They gave one to me, my sister, and my Grandma. We all love to read and so that was the perfect present. Although, they also got me a label maker for my classroom, which I will geek out on as soon as I get back to school. I’ve already labeled everything my kids own in the 24 hours that we’ve been home.

Gracie got her first baby doll, too…

…which she promptly ate.

And Bean got an awesome Thomas the Train set. Thomas chugs around the track and there’s even a crane that lifts boxes onto the freight part of the train. Bean quickly figured out that the freight thingy could also carry Lightning McQueen and, suddenly, it was like two cartoon worlds collided. Bean was mesmerized.

We spent Saturday afternoon opening presents and spending time together. It was really nice and I actually enjoyed it almost more than Christmas morning itself because we stopped to chat or eat between rounds of opening presents. It just seemed a lot less frantic than Christmas mornings can be and it was nice to be able to pause and enjoy each other even more than the presents.

Although, some of the presents were pretty awesome…

On Sunday morning, we laid around and had a slow-moving morning, with breakfast on the couch in our jammies. Bean must have been in the Christmas spirit because he shared his bagel with Gracie. And Bean doesn’t share food, like, at ALL. It was a Christmas miracle.

Later that morning, my Grandma came over (she’s been staying at my Aunt and Uncle’s house in Atlanta this week) and we opened presents with her, too.

Later, we all got dressed and went to the late church service at my sister’s church. I figure, I have about a year where I can dress Gracie in things like this before she starts protesting. I plan to take full advantage.

After church, the guys went to play golf with some of my dad’s old golfing buddies from when we used to live in Atlanta and my mom, sister, and I took the kids to two of the most Atlanta places you can go…

The Varsity is an Atlanta icon. They serve hot dogs and hamburgers, french fries and onion rings, Coke-a-Cola (of course) and their famous Frosted Orange, which are like orange frosties. Delicious! And we partook of it all! Even Gracie ate French fries!

After The Varsity, we headed to Lenox Mall to ride The Pink Pig.

Now, if you aren’t from Atlanta or even the South, this is going to sound very strange. The Pink Pig has been around since the late 1950s. It began as a little train ride at Christmas that went through Rich’s department store (back when Rich’s was still around). It hung from the ceiling and went through a pink winter wonderland inside the store and then it went outside to the roof top and you rode through an outdoor winter wonderland. My mom used to take me and my sister every year.

This is the original Pink Pig train that I rode when I was little.

Now, they have that on display and they’ve upgraded (or downgraded, if you ask me) to little trolley-like trams that take you through a tent in the Lenox Mall parking lot that is set up like a pink Christmas village. We waited in line for 45 minutes to ride a 2 minute train, but it was totally worth it. And I’m so glad it was my mom who got to take the kids for their first time because she’s the one who used to take me.

Later Sunday night, we met up with the guys at my Aunt Joan and Uncle Tim’s house to see them and my two cousins. My cousin, Abby, graduated this weekend from the University of Georgia (which I will forgive her for) and my cousin, Jake, is in his sophomore year at West Point. They definitely got all the brains in our family.

We don’t get to see my aunt and uncle very often, so it’s always nice to spend some time with them. Their house is beautiful and my Aunt Joan is one of the best hostesses. You can call her about an hour before you show up on her doorstep and she’ll still have a huge spread out for you to eat. I don’t know how she does it.

My Grandma is staying with them through Christmas and so she was there while we opened presents with Joan and Tim’s family. It was a lot of fun and I can’t wait to show pictures of this beautiful butterfly mobile they got Gracie. Bean got, among other things, this stretchy, slimy frog, which he keeps trying to feed his sister.

I actually have a pretty small family, but you’d never know it. I know I never knew it when I was growing up because the small little family that I do have is filled with the love and kindness of hundreds of family members. I think family is the same as Christmas. It doesn’t matter what day you celebrate or what kind of family you have to celebrate with, it is what you make it. And this weekend we made it pretty darn awesome.

24 comments | posted in Childhood, Family, Fun Things, holidays, Marriage Confessions, Operation BWYP, Vacation | tags: Atlanta, Christmas, Family, Macy's Pink Pig, The Varsity

(This post is dedicated to my sister, who will laugh so loud at it that they will probably be able to hear her in the Space Station.)

Tonight I was scrub-a-dubbing in the shower and, as usual, I was singing Christmas carols. Without realizing it, I started singing one of my favorite songs of all time, Lead Me Lord. This brought back a flood of memories of where that song came from and before I knew it, my sick ass was laughing hysterically in the shower all by myself. Cold pills are glorious things.

The memory of my favorite song was too good not to share, so here you go. A story from my youth. Merry Christmas.

When I was in middle school, I was in our church choir. (Interesting fact: Chris, my sister, my brother-in-law, and my friend Sarah were also all in this choir) It was not a show choir. Anyone could join, which is the only way I would ever be permitted to join a choir. Or a softball team, incidentally.

Anyway, every year we met every Wednesday for choir practice after school, performed several times during church services throughout the year, performed an end-of-the-year concert, and then went on choir tour, where we basically went on a trip and stopped to sing in random churches along the way. The point of choir was not the singing (thank goodness), it wasn’t even God (sorry, Jesus, I’m just keeping it real). The point of choir were the cute boys and best girlfriends and the trip at the end of the year.

One year, our choir sang such a beautiful song that even today – almost 15 years later – I still sing it in my shower. “Lead Me Lord” sounded like it needed to be sung in a Southern Baptist church with a gospel choir singing back up. Instead, we sang it on the beach in flip flops. The thing about “Lead Me Lord” was the solo. The soloist got to sing over and above the choir as we sang the chorus in the background. It was beautiful. When our choir director announced there would be a soloist for this song and we had to audition for the part, I immediately thought, “I’ve got this in the bag.” Which is actually incredibly funny if you know what I sound like when I sing.

Turns out, my choir director had Q-tipped his ears that morning and heard all the glory of my voice and he gave the part to someone else. And not just anyone else. He gave the part to Ashley Brown. (Interesting fact: Ashley Brown went on to star in Beauty and the Beast and was the original Mary Poppins on Broadway, so I guess technically she had a good voice…) Though I would never admit it at the time, Ashley sang the crap out of that song. I mean, seriously. No thirteen year old girl should be able to sing like that. It was incredible. (Interesting fact: Every year, Ashley comes back from her fabulous Broadway life to sing “O Holy Night” at our hometown church and it is very seriously the highlight of my Christmas when I get to hear her.)

The choir performed that song at our spring concert just before choir tour and as Ashley crooned the gospel song like a pro, I stood behind her in the choir stands, silently mouthing her solo along with her. No, really. I’ve got a video somewhere. You can see me singing with her.

The plan was that our choir would sing this song on choir tour. It was our big finale number (well, as big as middle school church choirs that are open to the general public can be), but in a startling turn of events, Ashley wasn’t able to go on tour with us. Apparently, she had better places to sing. Like, on Broadway or whatever.

I remember the exact moment that I found out Ashley wasn’t going on choir tour. I was standing in line to get on the tour bus and I overheard some people talking about it. As I stood there in line, I started yelling out to our choir director across the parking lot, “I’LL SING IT! LET ME SING IT! I WANT TO SING IT!” But, apparently, our choir director HAD forgotten to Q-tip his ears that morning because, apparently, he didn’t hear me. Or see me waving my arms. Or feel me clinging to his shirttail, begging.

All during the first day of travel on choir tour, I begged our poor choir director to let me sing. He’d walk down the aisle of the bus to go to the bathroom and I’d just start singing out random lines, “Oh, Lead me, Lord! I WILL GOOOOOOOO!” Eventually, I started singing both the choir back up and the solo part, just to show him how dedicated I was. “Lead me, Lord, (OH, LEAD ME!) I will follow, (OH, I’LL FOLLOW!), Lead me I will go (OH, I’LL GOOOOO)…” After hours of singing in the back of the bus to no avail, I made my way to the front of the bus, walking straight past our choir director and up to the bus driver, where I took the bus microphone out of the little stand and clicked it on.

“Warren,” I said over the intercom, “Warren, if you’ll just give me a chance, I think you’ll see I really can sing this song just as good as Ashley Brown. (Interesting fact: That was a lie.) What has been missing from all my auditioning, though, has been a microphone. I sound way better when I’m singing in a microphone. (Interesting fact: That was a lie, too) And, oh! Look! I found a microphone! Right here in my hand!”

And before Warren or the bus driver could wrestle the microphone away from me, I started belting out Ashley’s solo over the tour bus. By the time I was done, the whole choir was singing back up for me and I was ON FIRE! Let me tell you…

When I was finished, Warren and the choir politely applauded and he mumbled something along the lines of, “We’ll see…” But when we got to the church where we were performing, there was no “Lead Me Lord” on the program. Oddly enough though, I didn’t even care. For three shining moments on that tour bus, I sounded like Ashley Brown. (Interesting fact: That’s another lie)

I have a notoriously bad memory. I can’t remember anything from high school, barely anything from college, hardly anything from last week. But that memory is too good to forget.

(Interesting fact: Ginny and I both married boys that were on that choir tour, Sarah and I now live down the street from each other and work together, and Ashley Brown is a Broadway star. Who knew?!?!)