Love at first sight is easy to understand; it's when two people have been looking at each other for a lifetime that it becomes a miracle.

Okay, so maybe Dustin and I haven't been together for a lifetime yet, but yesterday did mark our 4th wedding anniversary. Traditionally on that year the gift is linen or silk. The modern gift is an appliance......seriously, an appliance. Could there be a less romantic gift? This shouldn't be a surprise to anyone, but we decided to do our own thing. Instead we wrote the top ten things we love about each other. It was fun to think of all the things about Dustin that I love then the hard part was narrowing it down to the top ten. He sent mine to me via text because he was at work until 8:00 p.m. I think all couples should do this from time to time.
I was reading Real Simple magazine and in the Thoughts page I found this quote

"Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh."
--W. H. Auden
Very fitting for Dustin and I :)

There was a big storm the day we flew out with all sorts of freezing rain and massive delays at the Portland Airport, so once we landed in Honolulu we had missed our flight to Maui. So with a couple hours to roam around we found a photo booth and we were being very silly.


Here we were, four years ago on Makenna Beach in Maui just after we got married.

Wyatt picks family day

The other day I was dividing family day planning on our calendar between Dustin and I. Wyatt was really interested it what I was doing. I told him that I was writing down what activity that either dad or I would pick to do that day. He really wanted to have his name on a day. So this week was Wyatt's first time picking out what we did. He picked Chuck E. Cheese. I think he's seen some commercials on T.V. a few (hundred) times. We went at 10, when the open. Should you ever have to go there, that is the best time to go. We looked around until Wyatt spotted the "18 Wheeler" game. He played it for the entire hour we promised to stay. I had all these tokens, so I played a lot of skee ball and some weird bowling game. I got enough tickets for Wyatt to get three bouncy balls, some stickers and an activity book.

Holy Moly I can ramble

The older I get the faster Christmas seems to come and go. As a kid the month of December would drag on for what seemed to be forever. This year was a little different. Being snowed in was fun the first couple days, but once the power went out I was ready for some good old rain. Call me a weather wimp, but two weeks of snow is about ten days too many. We did make the best of it. Dustin read stories out loud and Wyatt.....well he is always entertaining. We really worked the Santa stuff "be good so Santa can bring you presents" or "naughty boys only get coal" It worked amazingly well on a three-year-old. Dustin, a workaholic, actually started to enjoy being home. He drove me up to see Becky in McMinnville while she was in town. She had awesome exciting news.....She got transfered to Oregon!!! So awesome to have my two best friends here again!! She'll be moving in April.
Christmas Eve we baked cookies for Santa and wrote him a note informing him that we would like the presents delivered up to his Grandma and Grandpa's house. I'm the over anyalizing mother that was sure that if the Santa presents were at our house that we'd never get Wyatt to leave to go up to Dustin's parents house. Santa was more than happy to follow the request and even wrote back to Wyatt. It was funny how Santa wrote/talked like Dustin. ;) We went to Christmas Eve service, which is my favorite mostly because of the candles and singing. I also love to hear the Christmas story and see all the families there together. Anyways, I thought we'd have a hard time getting Wyatt to bed, but he was out before we made it home.
Christmas morning was awesome....as usual. Because of the snow situation we didn't get to do any Christmas things with Andy, Kim, Luke, Mia, and my dad, so around noon on Christmas we drove up there for a couple hours. Luke and Wyatt are definately each others favorite people. They play and wrestle and fight, but never ever want to leave.
We went to a delayed Christmas party (darn snow) a couple days later. The hightlight of the evening was that Santa came (carrying presents..thanks Helen) They also had a great big area for kids to dance and a woman singing songs. It was great.
I'm so not into the party thing for New year's eve. Thankfully, I married someone who is totally down with sleeping through it. We rented movies, but both of us were asleep by ten. I briefly woke up around 11:55, but couldn't make it to watch the ball drop. I woke up on New Years day and took Wyatt to the gym, which he loves. I thought about the resolutions I could make. I think they are great things to do, as long as it's attainable. I decided on being more organized with school-no papers everywhere, to voluteer at Wyatt's school, start planning the dinners a month at a time again, also planning family days a month at a time again.
Okay, so those were the holidays from my perspective. And that was the condensed version! ha ha.