2 Years

I've been a Shimp for two years now.

!!!!!

Sometimes it feels like it was just yesterday that we got married, and other times it feels like it's been 80 years and we are an old married couple. But e'er day, whether it's good or hard or boring or adventurous, I'm glad I married this super-hunk.

We half-celebrated our anniversary a day early, on Saturday, August 8th. Our anniversary traditions are:

-Write love letters to each other
-Do something we love doing
-Do something we've never done

We wrote love letters on our wedding day, and I love that someday we will have a huge stack of all the letters. Your relationship changes every year and I think it will be cool to look back and see how we loved each other differently at the different phases of our marriage - from our newlywed days to our married with children days to our empty-nester days.

After getting engaged, Stephen took me to La Jolla Groves. It is a fantastic restaurant in the Riverwoods and we have gone back every year! This year and last year, that has been our something we love doing.

2013, directly post-engagement

2014, after one year of marriage. The lighting is not great in La Jolla Groves, but everything else is!

2015, after two years! There was a wedding going on this time, so they put us in a different room than we've been in the past two years. It wasn't as cool of a room, but the food, especially the salmon, was just as delicious as ever.

For our thing we've never done, we had a few ideas that all fell through. We wanted to go on a ropes course - it closed too early. We wanted to spend a night at the Anniversary Inn - it was booked. We wanted to go to a drive-in theater - and we did! But we took Sabie, and she is a tard car, and when you turn on the car just a little bit so you can listen to the sound of the movie, the lights come on too. Personally, I didn't think it was that big of a deal. They weren't on all the way and I didn't think it would bother anyone. But Stephen was extremely self-conscious about it and refused to have the car on, so we had to hang out our windows listening to the movie through other people's car speakers, and in the end it was just about the worst date we had ever had!

On Sunday, our actual anniversary, we celebrated with a heart-shaped breakfast and love letters.

Then church, and then a walk to Stewart Falls! Back to where it all started, if you want to say it started when we got engaged. Walking hand-in-hand along the beautiful trail, this time with Stephen's family, was a perfect way to celebrate our anniversary. (And it was also one of the best dates we've ever had :)

All my single lady friends.....get married! There is really nothing better. I loved being single, but I love being married more than I ever even imagined I would. There is so much satisfaction and comfort I feel from being in a relationship, one that I know is forever, with a man who is wholly and unconditionally mine.

I can't imagine life without him - I can barely remember a time when I didn't know him, and I love how effortlessly he fits into my future. He is my person, and nothing makes me happier than how securely I feel that :)

26 Things I Love

I started getting ready for Stephen's birthday on Saturday. I went to the store and bought decorations, some gifts, anddd candles.

"Won't this be cute!" I thought. "A 2 and 6, since he's turning 26."

It probably would have been cute, if he actually was turning 26.....But no. He's turning 27. So actually it is just embarrassing.

Anyway, here are 26 things you might not know, or that I love, about Stephen:

He has this thing about armpits. Like as in, they gross him out. I didn't know this until less than a month ago when he told me, and I started asking him more questions about it, and he said, "Like, I don't even want to think about them, this is making me not want to eat right now."

He wants to climb Mount Everest and has asked me probably 8 times if I would be mad if he did one day.

He loves videos about science / weird facts and is subscribed to all these YouTube channels, like Mind Blown and IFL Science, which he loves to watch and tell me about.

My kids always love when he comes to school, because he can do tricks like the human flagpole, and he plays tag and 90% of the 2nd graders join in.

He wants to go sky-diving and bungee jumping and every extreme thing you can think of....except free soloing (rock climbing without a rope).

This is about as extreme as I get....a zipline, followed by a 60-foot "free fall" that's not really a free fall but feels like it for about 2 seconds, in Park City.  

Sometimes he thinks that he wants a dog and he shows me pictures of husky puppies, thinking I will eventually get on board with that idea.

The cutest thing he's said to me in the past two weeks was when he said: "I do want one daughter, so we can spoil her." (We are not pregnant.)

This isn't a girl baby, but it is a baby.

When we first got married, he went through this phase where he would hide and then jump out and try to scare me every time I got home from school. Embarrassingly, it worked like 95% of the time.

He is super-protective of his sisters and one time he ran to this guy's apartment and banged on the door and got up in the guy's face and told him he (the guy) wasn't ever going to take his (Stephen's) sister on a date, because Stephen knew that the guy was in a contest to see how many girls he could kiss in one semester.

And another time, when I asked him what present we should get for Natalie, and mentioned that she wanted stuff for her dorm or college, he got really annoyed and said: "She's going to college! Man. Guys are gonna try to marry her so fast."

Pretty much every handyman thing he did on our house is something he either learned from doing it at Shimp Optical, the glasses business his family owned the whole time he was growing up, or from YouTube videos.

One time, when we were ripping up the carpet in our house, I tried to take a candid picture of him standing in the mess that we had created. What I got instead was a 4-second video of him shaking his head and saying, "No, it'll be alright." He was responding to a question I had asked right before I started recording, but I can't remember what the question was. I just know I kept that video and watch it sometimes just because I like seeing him take charge of a project and hearing him say "No, it'll be alright."

When he went to Peru for his mission, he got really good at Spanish, and really tan. Eventually, people there started asking him if he was from Argentina, because he didn't even have an accent.

For a while, he considered going to Puerto Rico for dental school, even though all the classes are in Spanish.

He always said he was definitely not going to marry a blonde, because he didn't want to marry someone who looked like his sisters.

......No comment.

He is like, the least picky eater on this planet, and he actually enjoys gross things like chicken hearts, oysters, and frog legs.

One time, the blender broke. And I was doing Whole 30 and I NEEDED my breakfast smoothie, so Stephen got a drill and held it on the bottom of the blender (like where the blade turns) and finished blending my smoothie. 

He loves watching fixer-upper house shows and actually has a really good eye for home design. He thinks it would be cool to fix up a beach house, or a cabin, and just make it super-nice and spend tons of money fixing it up.

Unlike me, I think he actually means it when he says that he doesn't care what happens on his birthday. October hits and I'm over here like, "EVERYONE PAY ATTENTION AND DO ALL THE NICE THINGS FOR ME!" But when Stephen's birthday rolls around, he would seriously be content with bacon and a chance to sleep in. (And something lacy. ) He is so low-maintanence that his birthday sometimes feels more like my special day than his.

He pretends like he can't cook....but actually, he makes this really delicious grilled chicken and green pesto spaghetti that is bomb.

Once when he was in 1st grade, his teacher moved his desk because he wouldn't stop talking. So naturally, he pushed over his desk. (The teacher grabbed him by the ear and dragged him down to the front office, and he says he just remembers his teacher yelling at him, and then the principal yelling at him, and then his parents yelling at him.)

Currently, he is going through this phase where he loves listening to BBC Radio. He's gotten me into it, too. And now we've all of a sudden started having intellectual, globally-minded conversations.

His eyebrows are pretty much perfect and I want to just point them out to everyone. At first I thought that he plucked them or did something to keep them up, but somehow, they are just naturally perfect.

When we were talking about where to go for dental school, I told Stephen I was starting to feel kind of nervous about going somewhere new where we don't know anyone. Then Stephen said, "I wouldn't think of it like that....I would just think of it as, Stephen and Heather going on an adventure." And my whole attitude changed, and I fell in love with him all over again.

He loves watching videos of animals and narrating them, and it is so hilarious that that's almost half of our messages to each other on Facebook now: funny animal videos that I want him to narrate later. (The other half are me asking where he is because I need to pick him up and his phone has died, which, by the way, never bothers him.)

Most of the time I think he is going to be such a good dad (no I'm not pregnant) but then sometimes, he gives his brothers dead legs and shoots them with air-soft guns, and they cry and say "I hate you, you're the worst brother EVER!" and throw vases at him, and even though it's really funny....I wonder what parenthood will be like.

It's his birthday....and so far today he has installed some cabinets (not in our house), dropped a stove on himself in a ditch (also not our stove), and nearly electrocuted himself. Now, while he cleans the stove, I'm waiting to take him out for a birthday dinner.

I love all these things I've learned about him! And I love this day that I get to celebrate him, and everything that makes him him, and everything that makes him mine.

Happy birthday to my favorite guy ever, the one who sometimes sits through Bachelor episodes with me, never wants to pay someone else to do something he could YouTube and do on his own, and always drives on road trips. (Seriously, he'll drive like the whole time.) Thank GOODNESS your mother birthed you and then you grew up to be perfect for me!

Love,
Heather

Just Missing Joseph

I saw my family this week! Everyone except Joseph.

And now, since I'm stuck in the Chicago airport with butt-long delays, I'm going to write a summary of my trip.

Sarah plays the ukulele now. And she loves noise I think more than anyone else I know! She was constantly singing, playing the piano, playing the ukelele, chatting with me - it was so fun. Also, she is ginormous. The baby of the family is now almost as tall as me! I think my parents had a specific number of tall genes, and at first the tall genes were like okay, no one can have too many of us. We've got to spread ourselves out. And then all of a sudden, it got to the 6th and 7th child and all the tall genes were like oh freak!! We won't have anywhere to go! Hurry! Everybody, unload! This is not a drill!! So now Jacob and Sarah tower over the rest of us midgets.

Jacob is also ginormous but this is nothing new. My favorite part of hanging out with Jacob was when we went to this fannnncy-pants restaurant with a ghost for lunch on my last day (today), and Jacob literally fell in love with his sandwich. He just sat there staring at it and commenting on how beautiful it looked for like 5 minutes, and then he delved into it, and he could not stop smiling! When Sarah asked if she could have a bite, I think she took a bite out of his heart as well. But Jacob is just the kind of nicest-guy-ever who would give his little sister a bite of his favorite sandwich, so he did.

Actually, my favorite part of hanging out with Jacob was seeing what a sweetheart he is. He's just so nice to talk to, and so compassionate, and so helpful!.....but that's a little more boring to blog about. I'm just saying. Whoever marries him is going to be so happy about that delightful turn of events in her life.

We pulled up to my family's new house where there were a bunch of new friends to meet. Apparently my whole family hates quiet, because as the kids all move out, we are being replaced with noisy animals. We've always had birds, but now they have chickens, a turkey, and a dog that looks kind of like a polar bear and barks like it is under attack.
My favorite chicken is this one named Mohawkey, who has crazy hairs, but is actually very nice to hold.

Even the turkey, Rocky Jr., lets you hold him and is pretty calm about it. He kind of reminded me of a peacock. He just stands there and puffs up his feathers and wants to be the boss. If he feels like he's not getting enough attention, or someone isn't doing something he specifically approved, he lets out this "GOBBLEGOBBLEGOBBLE!" that does not even sound like an animal. It seriously sounds like a person who's really bad at imitating turkeys! But it actually is Rocky Jr.

Aldas (All-dosh) is the polar bear dog. When they got her I did not think I would like her. As you may recall, my idea of a perfect dog actually does not exist, since I would like one that doesn't poop, bark, shed, jump on you, whine, drool, lick, disobey, get dirty, bite, weigh more than 10 lbs, smell bad, hump other dogs, want to go on walks when I don't want to, or cost money. This dog does not exist, and I realize that.

But Aldas is like - five things I don't like! She is huge, hairy, sheds and drools constantly, has a ton of energy, and I'm pretty sure her poops could squash and kill smaller dogs. She lurped out of her house (which is the garage, because she's a white Clifford, you guys) and ran and jumped up on me right when I got out of the car. And then, I loved her.

Despite all her on-paper flaws, she is actually so sweet and so cute! And it's funny to me how she loves being scratched and she plunks down on top of your feet to trap you there so you have no choice but to rub her belly.

She loves to jump in the pond and chase the frogs,

and when she wants attention, she puts her paw very bossily on your leg,

and looks up at you, panting and smiling like she can't imagine a better friend in the whole world.

My grandpa is the cutest little putterer ever. He used to wear suspenders and a baseball cap all the time and now he doesn't any more. But he is still so cute. I just want to pinch his little cheeks! One day everyone left to do something, except Sarah and Grandpa and I. Sarah was taking a shower and I was planning out a menu for my parents and Nicole, who are going to do Whole 30 with me! Because, for some reason, I am doing it again.

Anyyyway, Grandpa came over and was like "Tell me about your husband." And then we talked for almost 2 hours! It was so fun! He told me about places he's been, and I told him about places I've been, and we talked about hypnosis because, you guys, my grandpa was a hypnotist and I'm not even kidding!, and we talked about Stephen, and my grandma, and it was just so nice.

I love my grandpa because eeeeven though this morning he walked out and said "How are your stocks? The stock market just closed. Yep. And China closed, too." - even though he said that, he is actually very witty and has a great memory. And this gives me hope that when I get old, I can have a strong mind and not be confused all the time.

Julie was in Ohio when I arrived, but she actually left on Sunday, so we only had a day and a half together. But it was a great day and a half! Sarah has the cutest colorful spandex shorts, which she let me borrow so we could go running in the mornings.

The first day, I wanted a picture of this monumental event of me voluntarily going running in the great outdoors. I asked Jacob to take it but that was a REAL struggle, so Julie came out on the deck and started taking pictures. Here are just a few of the things she said:

"Run!!! Keep running, my muses!"
"Goddesses! All two of you! Hair swish, that's it!"
"These are so Instagram worthy! How will you ever choose?!"
"I can't stop clicking. My finger CAN'T STOP CLICKING!!!"

Sarah did not understand that we were trying to take running pictures. She thought we were having a race. 

At some point Aldas, the resident spaz dog, ran up to us.

"That's it, Aldas! Over here! Look at me!"
"Now pet her! Yes! YES!"
"I love the spontaneity, Aldas! You're a dream!"

Julie is just so freakin funny.

Nicole is now home from her mission! She was, of course, the reason I flew out. I have missed her! I hadn't realized it, since we emailed every week, and sometimes even snail mailed. But just having her back, and laughing with her, and seeing her do the same ridiculous things she did before, made me realize how much I love her and did miss her.

She is one of a kind. I know everyone is unique and blablabla, but Nicole is like 10x more unique than other people, I feel like. Potential suitors may apply via me. (Since I am more enthusiastic about her nuptials than she is.)

Here's something Nicole is enthusiastic about: taking pictures in front of fireplaces that Abraham Lincoln gave speeches in front of at the Spread Eagle Tavern. 

My parents are still the same, you'll be happy to know. When Nicole had some post-mission awkwardness and I had a mini-freakout about it, my dad was the calm mediator psychologist who solved all the problems. And my mom remains the happy, sweet, help-everyone-with-whatever-problem-they-might-have, mom of the entire world's population.

Anyone who wants to photo-shop my dad's eyes open is welcome to. I'd appreciate it, and I'm sure he would, too. 

Kelly came on my last day there. It would've been nice if we could all have gotten our craps together, and been there at the same time. The airport schedule went like this:

Pick up Julie.
Pick up Nicole.
Pick up Heather.
Drop off Julie.
Pick up Kelly.
Drop off Heather.
Pick up Julie.
Drop off Kelly.
Drop off Heather.
Drop off Julie.

.....all on different days. Yeah, a little dysfunctional! But that was what worked with everyone's schedules, and at least we all got to see each other, even if not all together.

Anyway, it was fun to see my oldest friend for a day! We went and toured my dad's plant, and went to this fancy-pants restaurant that used to be an abolitionist's mansion home. Now it's a hotel / restaurant called the Spread Eagle Tavern. It was here that Jacob fell in love with his.....sandwich.

I have seriously not seen him behave this way, or look so enamored, since he met Mckenzie Gilmore in Florida when he was like four years old. 

On Tuesday night, Nicole gave her report of her mission. I was so glad I got to be there for it! The whole entire room filled up with the Spirit and I got a little glimpse of what an amazing missionary she was. We didn't take any pictures of us that night because for some reason, we all looked like the dump fairy came and sprinkled her magic not-cute dust on us. Or maybe that was just me. Either way, the only picture I do have from that night is the complete double rainbow that we witnessed.

I kept trying to take pictures and none of them turned out exactly well enough to do this rainbow justice. You can't even see the second rainbow, but I promise it was there, and I promise I wondered what it meant. 

It was so fun being home! I never thought I would call Ohio "home," but if that's where my family is, then it is home to me. The only downside was not having Stephen there....and that's why I had to go back to Utah. He's my home too :)

P.S. He cleaned the whole entire house, soooo, I'm the luckiest wife.