The best question ever asked

I've said before I'm kind of a "Rain Man" when it comes to dates and anniversaries of things.  Today marks ten years since Nate asked the best question he ever asked me - if I would marry him and be his wife.  
The story of our engagement might almost sound somewhat anti-climatic when told.  But it was still one of the best days of my life.  It was 2005, I'd been out of college for just about a year.  At this point Nate and I had been a couple for about seven years.  It was pretty much a given at that point that we would be getting married, it was just a matter of when.  We had agreed that it would be best to wait until Nate had a full time job and was able to move out of his parents house before we got engaged.  It took him close to two years after he finished his degree (he did a two year program and finished school a couple of years before I did) to find a full time job.  I had these crazy ideas that we would be engaged before I graduated and married by the following Fall.  Oh how silly and naive we are in our early twenties sometimes.  
Anyway, he finally got a job in late 2004 and started saving his money so he could buy a ring and also move out.  And I started getting antsy. Well ok, let's face it, I'd been antsy pretty much from our fifth dating anniversary and on.  But once I knew that we were getting closer, I got REALLY antsy. In early 2005 he started looking at apartments in person and asking more questions about what type of ring I wanted.  I knew it wouldn't be long.  And I think he kind of enjoyed watching me squirm.
We also had agreed that we would never get engaged on a "special day" such as Christmas, Valentine's Day, etc.  We wanted the engagement to be something special and stand on it's own.  I almost completely shot myself in the foot about a month before it finally happened.  Nate's sister had been home on spring break.  After she left, we were at dinner and Nate was saying how his sister commented she was bummed we didn't get engaged on our dating anniversary while she was home, because she would be able to celebrate with us and wouldn't be getting home again until her graduation in May. So I said to Nate "and are we going to actually be engaged by her graduation in May?"  And his response was "um, yeah."  Oops. 
So that was late March, so of course now I'm on total red alert and pretty much am expecting it ANY DAY.  The weekend it finally happened I just had a sense about it and yet was still pretty surprised. There were signs I didn't even notice. Friday we went to a going away party for a friend of mine where another friend pulled Nate aside and was like "are you going to make this official ever?" And he told her "it will be taken care of this weekend."  She gave me an extra hug when we were leaving and at the time I was like, that was odd.  Looking back it makes sense.  Saturday I sang at a wedding. Nate kept asking me what time the wedding was. He really needed to know how long I'd be gone.  I thought that was so strange, but figured he just wanted to know when I'd be available to hang out that day. What he was really doing was going and visiting with my parents and asking for their blessing (how sweet was he?).  Saturday night we went to dinner and he had to step out to make a phone call - again I thought that was kind of weird but shrugged it off a little bit, apparently he just had to tell his parents that my parents knew about the plans he'd made for the following evening to celebrate our engagement.
Finally it was Sunday the 24th.  I went to church in the morning as usual.  Nate had asked me when he dropped me off the night before if I wanted to go on a picnic at Como Zoo with him since we hadn't in awhile. It sounded good to me.  After church I went home, put on kind of a scrubby hoodie and jeans because it was a sunny day, but cold.  I remember while I was at church, I even told a couple of the girls of the plans for the day and kind of jokingly even said, maybe I'm getting engaged today.  Because even though I hadn't really noticed any of the signs, I was still on my highest guard. I just had this feeling.
Nate picked me up and we drove to pick up sandwiches and he's just not his usual self.  He's talking to me, but it's much more generic, babbly stuff than his normal banter.  We get to the zoo and find a grassy island in the parking lot and spread a blanket to eat our sandwiches on.  I remember he was wearing cargo pants and even went back by the car for a second - later I would find out he was moving the ring box so that he could sit on whatever side without it bugging him.  And the cargo pants were the perfect way to hide the ring box too.  So we're sitting there eating and I'm really starting to suspect something's up because he's so quiet and I think, maybe he's going to wait until we're somewhere inside the zoo.  We finish eating and I ask if he's ready to go, and he says yes "but there's something I need to do first."  He gets up on both knees since we're pretty much on the ground anyway - and here's the part I regret slightly, while I was ready and even expecting it, I kind of went into "oh my god" mode and just kept saying that over and over while he's saying super sweet things - I remember he took my promise ring off that I'd been wearing since high school and I know I remember hearing the words "will you marry me?" as he pulled out the most beautiful ring.  And I remember saying "yes of course" after I finally stopped stuttering "oh my god."  It was so surreal, I'd been waiting for so long and it's like the world just stopped and it was just the two of us.  I was brought back to reality when as we're sealing it with a kiss a person yelled out "congratulations!" I thought at first maybe it was someone we knew - nope, just someone looking for a parking spot who saw what was happening and stopped to watch.  We're like, um thank you?  
After that we packed up our stuff and walked around the zoo and I remember thinking "can people tell there is something different about me right now?  I'm getting MARRIED!"  We celebrated that evening with our parents and even his sister - she drove two hours like crazy to get to the restaurant in time, she didn't want to miss it.  So, she really did get to see us before her May graduation I guess! We picked a date almost right away for the following May, giving us just over a year to plan.  I had always wanted a Fall wedding, but the timing just wasn't right, we'd either have had a short engagement or a longer one than I really wanted, so Spring it was.  I never used to like Spring that much to be quite honest, but after that year, it became my favorite time of year.  And I still know the exact spot we were engaged and every time we go to Como I always smile and remember.  Someday I'll point it out to Ollie and I am sure he'll roll his eyes and go "Mom, you're such a sap!"
I don't have any pictures from that day, but I'll share what I consider our official "engagement" photo taken a couple of months later at our engagement party with friends.  I may have shared this picture before, I can't recall.

Look at those babies!  Aw, memories.  Mind boggling that it's been ten years. And even if it was kind of anti-climatic and I was totally expecting it, it was still so special and magical. Hands down it is the best question I've ever been asked and the best answer I've ever given.  I'll say yes every day for the rest of my life.

Hair, down to here, down to there

Well, if you follow me on Instagram, you may already know this news.  I have made a major decision.  I don't take these things lightly.  I am going to grow out my hair.  I know, I know, I keep saying I am probably a pixie girl for life and the thing is, I think I'm a short hair girl for life, but I need a change.  Plain and simple, I am bored.  I've contemplated growing this style out a bit and then changing it into something else for awhile now, so I'm taking the plunge.  I have pretty much warned everyone I'm going to be whiny and cranky for awhile because growing out a pixie is THE WORST. I did it once before.  I had cut my hair super short at the tail end of college because I thought "I'm going to be a professional, I need grown up hair" and then ended up working with kids for the next two years instead of the corporate world.  I pretty much started growing my hair right after graduation because I knew Nate and I would likely be heading towards a wedding and I wanted an updo.  I didn't get my hair quite as long as it was in the lovely Glamour Shot style picture I shared with you all on last Friday (the post is here if you missed it) but I did get my hair long enough for an updo by my wedding.  After our wedding I continued to let it get long over about a year, but then decided I'd had enough of that (my hair is THICK and just gets stringy the longer it gets) and somehow just kept getting shorter and shorter each year until now.  For fun, I thought I'd share some pictures I have stored on my computer so you can see some various styles I've had over the last almost ten years or so!

This picture is from my engagement party in 2005 - and it's after about a year of growing out the pixie the last time.  And yes it was red.  I used to dye my hair red quite a bit.  This look Nate lovingly refers to as my "mushroom hair."

The date on this next one is wrong, my camera never worked right for that - it's actually April 2006, one month before my wedding and there I am with baby Taylor.  So we're at almost two years of growth there.

The next picture there I'm with my friend Gina at our church show in early 2007 - this is about as long as my hair got and then I chopped it all off almost immediately after this.

I don't have a date on this one, but it's right around when I first cut it shorter again, so probably March 2007.  This is the length it would stay for kind of awhile, sort of that angled chin length bob.

Summer 2008, still kind of that same look going on.  Still dying the hair red.  And glasses - this was pre-Lasik and after I gave up wearing contacts.

Here is Fall 2008, I started going a little bit shorter, still that angled bob type look, but I was having it cut much shorter in the back.  Gave up on hair dying somewhere around here too.

This one I think is from early 2011, shortly before my Lasik surgery and when I decided to go all in on a short pixie for the first time.  From that point on, while the type of pixie style I've had has changed here and there, this has pretty much been my hair style now for four years.  And as I said above, I'm bored.  So, we'll see how far this goes.  I am also not sure if I'm going to try to grow my bangs or not, I kind of feel like this time I might keep the bangs, but grow the rest of the hair. Thankfully it's still winter, so hats will be my friends for awhile.  I've been digging out all my old headbands, bobby pins and barrettes.  I'm ready.  Here's hoping I don't kill anyone in this process! And for fun, here is my hair as of today - I'll keep sharing progress as I go - and where I'll stop, nobody knows, I'm just embracing (word of the year alert!) change.  Let's do this!

Flashback Friday - First Love

So with Valentine's Day tomorrow, I thought I'd share a little post about love.  But it isn't the typical post you'd be expecting from me - I have already shared on the blog before the story of how Nate and I got together and many other things about us along the way.  No today I thought we'd take a little trip way back to the story of my first boyfriend.  Grab a coffee, get cozy, it's Days of Our Lives Middle School style.
It was February 1996, I was 14 and at the tail end of eighth grade.  And I was bumming because my latest crush (who happens to be a drummer for a fairly well known local band now) started "dating" (I put that in quotations because come on, how can you really date when you're 14 and can't drive?) another girl.  I was tired of crushing on boys and getting burned.  I was lamenting about this to my friend Jen (whom is also the same friend that I kind of credit with helping Nate and I get together in fact) when she was over at my house for a sleepover one night.  She made a suggestion to me - a nice boy that we'll just call "D".  She had actually "dated" him earlier that year, but stayed friends with him after they broke up.  Through her I had become friends with him too but hadn't thought of him "that way" before.  She listed all the merits about him and pretty soon we were writing him a note for me to give him "asking him out", because apparently we were radical women who decided a girl could ask a guy.  We decided I'd give him the note on that following Monday.
He and I were in the same health class and I delivered him the note at the end of the class.  This was pretty big for me, in the past if I wanted to communicate with a boy that way I'd make a friend do the dirty work for me!  This was right before our lunch hour and it was an agonizing rest of the day because I didn't know what he was going to say.  He ended up writing me back and asking if he could call me that night, he didn't have an answer yet but just wanted to talk more about it I guess.  So I gave him my number and said that yes, he could call me.  He was the first boy that ever called my house.  And we talked that night a long time, got to know each other better and he promised me he'd give me an answer within the next day or so (SO romantic, making me wait).  The very next day he gave ME a note at the end of our health class and I met up with some girlfriends in the restroom before we went to lunch and started reading it.  He wrote all these nice things and then at the end of the page said "Oh and my answer is...." and you flipped it over and it said YES in very big letters. Swoon right?  Naturally, my friends and I started shrieking like 14 year old girls.  And of course, by the end of the lunch hour, everyone knew that "Beth and D" were going out.  
The next two weeks were as blissful as they could be for two 14 year olds who were dating but not able to really "date".  We talked on the phone every night.  We went to our Valentine's Day Dance together and I had my first slow dance.  We gave each other Valentine's Day cards and presents.  But at the end of those two weeks, everything came crashing to a halt when D decided to break up with me.  And he made his friend do it for him.  Yep, classy right?  Of course I was absolutely crushed. But here's what's funny - we ended up talking after the fact and decided we wanted to stay friends and so really not that much changed....we even still talked on the phone most nights, we hung out with friends at school.  We just weren't "linked".  Eight grade finished up and summer came.  We talked throughout the summer and even met up with a mutual friend of ours to hang out one day.  
Ninth grade began and we both found ourselves at the first dance of the year hanging out - we had each even been trying to help the other hook up with other people - but had both struck out.  We were talking about how bummed we were when suddenly "our song" came on at the dance (oh yes, we even had a song, this was important stuff people!) so we danced and realized - we want to be back together.  So, we gave it another go.  And this time two weeks lasted closer to two months. It was much more of a real relationship this time, he even gave me my first kiss and I think we were even moving towards love.  But again, we were so young and stupid and he was fickle - but I think he was also maybe smarter than I was and saw that really, we were just meant to be friends.  So he broke it off again.  And I was crushed again.  This time I needed some more time to get over it so we didn't talk for a little while.  But we were both in the school musical and we came to a reconciled place and got to be friends again and would remain friends.  We almost gave it a third go on multiple occasions but I'm thankful that we didn't.  I think we could have played the on again/off again game for awhile. 
In tenth grade I ended up in a pretty bad relationship for a little while right before I got together with Nate and I kind of stopped talking to D as much.  After that relationship ended I started talking with D more again and even sought advice from him on the very school trip that I got together with Nate on, asking him if he thought I should go for it.  He gave me the thumbs up and was actually very sweet about the whole thing.  We kind of stayed friends the rest of that year, but the following year he turned on me a bit and said some hurtful things about Nate and I (probably out of jealousy) and our friendship kind of dissolved.  We did manage to make peace by the end of high school, but we didn't really keep in touch after that.
I don't think ill of him though.  I look back on those days fondly.  As first boyfriends go, he was a good one, he was courteous, kind, respectful.  We had some good conversations and a lot of fun together.  He wasn't my one true love, but he was still an important person in my journey.  I heard he recently got married and I'm so happy he has finally found someone to share his life with.  I wish him all the best and every time I hear "our song" I'll always remember our time together.
And for fun, here's a picture my friend Jen took of me to give to D back in the day - we did "Glamour Shots" at home for fun one night and this was the result.  I mean come on, wouldn't you want to date this girl??

Ah, youth.  Happy Valentine's Day everyone!  I send you all love and kisses!!

Friday Five - Nostalgia

So I don't know what it is, but in the last few weeks there have been several things that have been sparking memories of my youth - and I have to say it's been kind of fun riding down memory lane just a bit.  I thought today for a Friday Five, I'd highlight a few of them.
Music - New Kids on the Block are coming here in concert again and one of our local channels is giving away concert tickets.  So naturally, they decided to play "Hangin Tough" in it's entirety on the radio the other day.  This gave me the brilliant idea of starting a New Kids on the Block Pandora channel.  Best.Idea.Ever.  I put it on in the afternoon at work and it totally makes the day go faster - I've heard great old songs by not just NKOTB but also Paula Abdul, Boys II Men, Mariah Carey.  Oh it takes me back.  My tween self is happy.
TV - I'm sure by now everyone has seen the Saved By The Bell reunion on Jimmy Fallon.  If you haven't I'm going to leave it here for you.  Best eight minutes I've watched this week.  I have seen every episode of that show more times than I can count and this sketch was incredibly well done!

Cosmetics - I saw an article this week that Bonnie Bell Cosmetics is shutting down.  While I can't tell you the last time I bought a Lipsmacker, I will say I was sad to hear this.  I know most of my friends are bummed about never getting a Dr. Pepper flavored Lipsmacker again, but my favorite was always the Strawberry.  It will be strange to not see that end cap at Target any longer!
Shopping - Speaking of things closing down, I also saw a couple of weeks ago that Deb stores are closing.  I never bought any of my formal dresses at Deb, but I always at least looked at them every year when Prom season came round.  I remember owning a few pairs of shoes from there and some other cheaply made clothing because where else do you shop when you're 16?  I remember when I was a lot younger and thinking it was the coolest store ever because it had pink carpet.  The mall will not be the same!
Games - Again, old news here by now, but I have been kind of addicted to the fact that you can now play classic Apple games like The Oregon Trail on the internet.  I remember Computer Lab day was like the best day in school and it was because of games like this.  So it's been fun reliving this as an adult, though I have to say, using your own family names as an adult is a little unnerving when you see something like "Oliver has typhoid" or "Pippin has died."  I started making up fake names after that, ha!

So anyway, I have been kind of stuck in the late 80's/early 90's over the last couple of weeks here and it's been kind of fun remembering those carefree days!  I love where I am now, but there's nothing wrong with going back in time just a little bit!

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

You've come a long way baby

Thought it would be fun to take a little walk down memory lane for my two year blog anniversary (which is officially tomorrow).  I have definitely come a long way in my prose, my photos, my style, just about everything.  I had no idea when I started this adventure how far I'd go and what it would become - but it has been one of the best things I've ever done.  I love this community so much - and I'll be posting a separate post to say thank you to more than a few special people, because seriously, without many of you, I wouldn't have lasted this long!

First post - June 16th, 2011

February 2012

 July 2012

 December 2012

April 2013

June 2013

And this next year on the blog guarantees to push me further and will definitely be a whole new ride with the addition of this tiny human growing inside of me.  First we'll watch me get bigger - and then hopefully we'll watch me get smaller and re-adjust to life with a newborn - hopefully keeping my style in the process!  I'm up for the challenge, it may not be all sunshine and rainbows, but we'll just go one day a time.

Be sure to stop back tomorrow for my giant love fest for my fellow bloggers - because again - I could not do this without all of you.

The love story continues

Well I promised you all I'd finish the story of how the Pants Monkey and I got together and guess what?  Today is the actual day - 15 years ago we became a "thing" as he called it and so it seems fitting that I share the story along with some pictures of us over the years - so it's a picture heavy post!

First up, let's finish the story.  Basically, a month after the birthday party I blogged about last month, we both ended up on a band/choir trip to New Orleans (he got to come at the last minute - I'd call that fate).  We took a train down and back, stopping twice in Chicago along the way.  Somehow we ended up sitting near each other on the trip down and I remembered how much fun we had at the birthday party and how often our paths had crossed over the last months and I realized - I liked this boy.  I liked this boy a LOT.  So, we ended up flirting and spending much of the trip bumping into each other on purpose.  By the time we were heading back home, our friends were starting to say things like "um, are you guys going out or something?"  And we were kind of oblivious - but on that train trip back we sat together a bunch and in the wee hours of the morning of the 22nd (cause what kind of teenagers sleep on trains?) I finally said to him "so what do you think about about what people are saying about us?  And he was so cute and quiet and was like "Um, I kind of like it."  I wanted to be absolutely sure he was feeling what I was feeling though, so I kept on goading him and trying to get him to be the one to say it and finally he said "OK, do you want to be a thing?"  Of course I said yes - and now 15 years later here we are, happily married for almost 7 of them, and he is seriously the best "thing" ever in my life.  

So now here's a walk down memory lane - you'll get to see a very young Bethie in some of these pictures!

January 1999 - 17 years old, winter formal 

March 1999 - 17 years old - close to our first anniversary, Sadie Hawkins dance

May 2000 - 18 years old, Senior Prom 

November 2002 - 21st birthdays

May 27th, 2006 - 24 years old, wedding day!

April 12th, 2008 - 27 years old, my dear friend's wedding

 June 2012 - 30 years old, a good friend's birthday

 October 2012 - Almost 31 years old, at a wine tasting

Also October 2012 - same winery, this was this year's Christmas card

Because I believe all milestones should be celebrated, today we're both off of work to spend the day together - there will be wine tasting and dinner out.  

Thanks for reading if you got this far and have a wonderful weekend!

Six

 Six years ago on this day I got up early, met some girlfriends, got my hair done and then put on this.
  

 

 Then I happily wed this handsome guy.

It was hot and miserable outside, but it didn't matter.  It was the best day of our entire lives and nothing will ever top it.

Happy anniversary to my beloved Pants Monkey.  Here's to many, many more years together!