What Stephen Thinks are my Favorite Things

Here's a real live conversation that just happened. It miiiiight be TMI, but I thought it was really funny so I have to share.

Me: Stephen, what are some of my favorite things?

Him: Food. Like free food.

Me: I already got that. What else?

Him: Working out.

Me: Meh.

Him: Rock-climbing.

Obviously he is trying to tell me something here.....

Me: No, Stephen. Like, my favorite, favorite things. In the whole world.

Him: Oh! Sex.

Me: No!

Him: That is your favorite thing, you just don't want to admit it.

Me: I'm posting this on Instagram.....I'm not saying that. What else?

Him: Vacations. Spending money. The beach. Going fancy places.

Me: I do love the beach! Okay what else?

Him: Do you want to donate your body to science one day?

Me: Like when I die? No.

Him: What, why not? Then anatomy students could actually have a pretty cadaver to look at.

Excuse my face....

Me: Can we get back to my favorite things? I need one more.

He picks up a guitar.

Him: What song do you want me to learn?

And there it is: my other favorite thing. My most favorite thing.

It's the man I want to pour all my love into, one packed lunch or rock-climbing date or back massage at a time.

I love him for every time he's gotten out of bed to bring me a cold water bottle from the fridge, for every fried egg he's made for me, for each time he's called me "cutie" or complimented my butt or painted the nails on my right hand. For every baby he's ever played with, every cheesy picture he's ever taken with me, every homeless person he's ever given food to, every time he's skipped class to cuddle with me when I'm off-track.

It makes for a really mushy blog post, this love. I just never imagined it would be this wonderful!

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 :)

Baby McElderry

Half of my friends are pregnant. Sometimes I get dramatic and say all of my friends are pregnant, and that's not really true. But literally, half of my friends are pregnant right now. Or just had a baby. 

Christine is one of my friends from freshman year of college. The first time I met her, she was eating Ramen out of a mug and I thought she seemed nice. The second time we met, she was running out the door with some other friends, wearing a toilet paper pageant sash and a crown, on her way to look for candy, or boys, or both, and I decided we needed to be friends. 

So when she told me she was pregnant, and then later when she asked if we could have a gender reveal party at my house, I was thrilled both times! I love hosting parties. I love thinking of a theme and looking on Pinterest and making my house cute and making treats, and the one part that kind of stresses me out about parties - inviting people and wondering how many are going to show up - was already going to be taken care of for this one. 

Besides, it gives me a real reason to clean my house. I know I live there and I should like it to be clean all the time, but I'm just gonna be honest: if no one is coming over, I have a hard time keeping it clean. And so does Stephen. We just aren't the best at it. 

But we do manage to come through every time we have a party! Just, in our own very different ways. Here's how I clean for parties vs how he cleans: 

I....put everything away. I mean, everything. Where it belongs. Socks, tissues, computer cords, everything needs to go in its place. It is time-consuming, but I hate just hiding the mess. 

He.....puts everything he doesn't want the guests to see on our bed. He closes the door and says no one is allowed in there. Efficient? Yes. Long-term effective? No. 

I....wipe off tables / counters / chairs and sweep. I do not mop before a party, unless something is totally goopy or unacceptable, because everyone's going to come in and ruin it anyway.

He.....re-wipes off everything I just wiped. Re-sweeps everything I just swept. And steam-mops every room. 

I....make cute little treats / snacks and then have to re-wipe off all the counters. When I'm done, I'm always running out of time, so I just shove all the dishes in the dishwasher without rinsing them or anything. I'll take them out after the party and actually wash them, but for now, I'm hiding them.  

He.....could care less about the treats. He gets stressed about the clean counters that I'm ruining. He opens the dishwasher at least twice and starts trying to put away the dishes that are haphazardly crammed inside before realizing they aren't clean, and I am up to my old tricks again. 

I....like to hang up cheesy decorations, usually made out of tissue paper or some cute printable I got off of Pinterest, and usually hanging too low for people that are a normal height. 

He....likes to poo-poo my decoration ideas. I guess I understand....They are cheesy, and they will stay up for at least a week following the event. I just like them and want to keep looking at them!

Christine and Joe will be having a BOY! One day he'll grow up and get married and get a house. And when that day comes, I wonder how he will clean up before his parties?

Once Upon a Kitchen

Once upon a time, Stephen and I lived in an apartment with a kitchen the size of a hallway. There was a fridge, oven, 8 cabinets, and just enough space for a counter-height table for two, and one bar stool. There was no dishwasher, which means that 80% of our newlywed fights were about dishes, and our microwave - the smallest one we could find - took up one-third of our countertop space. Which left us with two countertops.

When we moved, it was to our Home Sweet House. Our two-person counter-height table looked sadly out of place in the expansive kitchen, but we were thrilled at the opportunity to find and buy a more appropriate table. Other than that, there wasn't much that we loved about our new kitchen. 

This is what I started out with: yellow formica countertops and backsplash from probably the 60's. 

That wallpaper took me about a week to remove.

I MEAN. I don't want to complain, but I'm just saying. 

The cabinets were durable, but not too pretty.

Aaaand, this was the floor. A beautiful, flowery laminate. 

It was too overwhelming to re-do everything at once. We started with painting the walls.

You can kind of see it here: the two-toned gray that we did in the rest of our casa.

The next thing I attempted to change was the countertops. I scoured blogs about how to paint your countertops to make them look like granite, and one day did it as a surprise for Stephen.  

He was very nice about it, but he wasn't really sold. He is all about the real Mccoy stuff. 

The next big thing we re-did was the cabinets. We wanted to re-do the floor, and in order to do that, we had to take out all the cabinets, and once we had taken them out, it was clear they were not going back in even if we had wanted them to.

When we took off the weird box thing above the cabinets above the sink, we discovered that that wall had never been finished. Ever. 

The demolition part of the cabinet re-doing was actually kind of fun! We used a crowbar and a sledgehammer, and Stephen's brother helped.  

We moved e'erything in the kitchen (appliances included) into the living room.

So that was a little awkward and we looked like hoarders, and I told my visiting teachers they couldn't come over, but I think we can all understand why.

We toiled over the floor (more details on that here) and when it was finally in, we were ready to insert our new cabinets. 

This was enough to keep us happy for a while. Some friends of ours gave us a dishwasher and microwave, which we pretty much peed our pants over. It is our first dishwasher we've had the whole time we've been married! 

With the cabinets up, we had some more choices to make. We had gotten a plain ol countertop from Ikea, but as I mentioned before, Stephen is all about the real Mccoy stuff. After a lot of back and forth, we finally decided to get granite. 

We ended up ordering our granite from Ogden Flooring. We highly recommend them! Sterling was the main person we talked to, and he was amazing. He was so prompt in getting back to us and really made an effort to get us exactly what we needed and wanted. We also ordered our backsplash from them, and the sink.

But unfortunately, everyone else loves them too, so that meant we had to wait another 3 weeks after ordering before the kitchen was totally finished. 

Which meant that when I made pumcakes, it looked like this.  

.....what a life.

Oh! And you know what else? I didn't have a sink for that time. So dishes had to all be done in the bathroom sink, and one time I made tomato soup from my garden tomatoes, and it looked like we killed someone in the bathroom when I was done. 

SIGHHHH.

Oooh. Here's one of me making tuna noodle casserole. No countertops = you have to improvise.

And then! One day! Stephen texted me this picture, along with the caption: "Looks good so far!"

We were so excited, we put knobs on that very night. 

Also, our date night may have been clearing the clean dishes out of the dishwasher with child-on-Christmas-morning-like enthusiasm, and making comments about how warm and clean they were. It's the little things. 

Notice that we moved the dishwashing soap back to it's home, as well as our knives and wooden spoons. 

At this point, we were just waiting on the backsplash and two more drawers. 

Just a few days after the countertops were in, they came back to do the backsplash. We are a little obsessed. 

Clearly, there is one thing in this picture that sticks out like a sore thumb: the oven / stove / range. (Why does that thing have 3 names.) It's the one that came with the house, and we were planning to replace it next. But for the time being, it worked fine and wasn't too big of a concern.

THEN our friends who got us the dishwasher and microwave called to say they also have a new oven for us! When he was describing it over the phone I couldn't believe my ears. It was exactly the kind that Stephen and I had talked about getting!

So it was out with the old and in with the new!

Much better :)

I know I complained loud enough for my ancestors who cooked over fires in the wilderness to hear me, but throughout the whole process, we were really very blessed. It was not a small task, but now I have a kitchen that I am excited for my family to see when they come out here for Christmas! I have an oven that I can safely set to the right temperature, instead of turning it 50* lower. I have a microwave that I can fit a whole dinner plate in without it clanking against the side when the turntable turns. I have more cabinets than I know how to fill and more counter space than I've had my whole life as a married lady.

And best of all, I don't have yellow formica on any walls, anywhere, in my house.

Before.....

After.

Before......

After.

Before......

After.

Before.....

After,

I probably posted way too many pictures for anyone to have made it all the way to the bottom of this post. I just can't stop looking at the transformation! Just tell me if you want to see it in the person. We'll invite you over for dinner :)