Out With the Trash

Calamity. After a long, beautiful, relaxing vacation in Panama for our 10-year anniversary, we unpacked our big backpack. I took out the dirty clothes, carefully separated in a kitchen garbage bag, put them on the table in the garage by the washing machine, and then got distracted by something. That is the last I saw of that bag, and trash day was yesterday.

I hope the landfill enjoys our swimming suits, underwear, favorite T-shirts, pants, and Sunday clothes. I'm now drowning my sorrows in online shopping (actually, filling online shopping carts, but never actually checking out).

This all reminds me of when we moved to Austin just after we got married, and Mom loaned me all of her parenting books, which I stuffed into a garbage bag and never saw again. Same thing happened with a bag full of puppets Mom sent with Jeremy to me from Utah. I still wonder if those books might have made us better parents (or worse??), or if the puppets could have made my children happier.

You'd think I'd have at least learned from my past garbage bag tragedies to stop putting important things in garbage bags. Sigh.

It's just stuff, right?

Why I Married the Coolest Guy in the World

(In no particular order and by no means exhaustive)

He does the dishes and claims he likes it.

He tells me I look hot in the morning straight out of bed. And then he makes the bed.

He likes it when I do brainy things.

He works hard even when I try to talk him out of it.

He fulfills callings simply, faithfully, and with inspiration.

He eats nearly everything I cook.

He made my laundry space in the garage functional with a ladder, some repurposed plastic containers and a garage sale find.

He took me to the temple and continues to take me there. Sometimes in the temple he looks at me from across the room with "smoldering" eyes, and I melt.

He has really cool ancestors who lived in tents, gave up their land for schools, wrote cowboy poetry, and a grandma who shoots rattlesnakes and rarely cries.

He knows how to talk to people at parties. He talks to our neighbors.

He tells our kids bedtime stories about how things work.

He knows stuff about just about everything.

He builds things out of microchips with Isaac and built the deck with the boys.

He eats ice cream sometimes because I need to.

He's got a great biker body.

He has endless confidence, and knows how to fake it when he doesn't feel it.

He's a great home teacher.

He gives amazing talks in church and at funerals.

He plays with the kids and works with them.

He does the bedtime routine almost every night while I decompress.

He rarely asks what I did all day.

Though sometimes he'd like to have another baby, he's willing to wait for when I'm ready.

He loves and misses his mother.

He can fix just about everything.

Happy 10th Anniversary to Us!