Reflections on a Two Year Old Marriage

2 years ago today, I was getting married to my man, Aaron. It was not a day of perfect bliss--I was stressed out and late for nearly every event that day except for the actual ceremony. I got to see all of my family, but I didn't really get to talk to any of them. And, worst of all, I had lost my appetite with all the excitement and couldn't enjoy all of the amazing food I saw everywhere around me. I, who vowed for years that I would eat food at my reception, did not even try a single cookie.

Yet this day was still one of the greatest of my life, because it was the day I started life with this hottie:



Aaron is a great match for me. I think that more now, and I like him more now than I did when we got married. These are a few things about Aaron that make him a great husband:
1)He doesn't let me win at Big Boggle.
2)When there are two gallons of milk in the fridge, one nearly empty and one full, he uses the nearly empty one, even if it is behind the full one.
3) Aaron is a reflective person. He has good judgment because he takes time to think about things.
4)He plays with Annie and makes up songs for her.
5)He does millions of nice things for me and listens to me.

Here's a pictoral history of our relationship:

Here's when we were dating. This was taken at a ward activity where we had dinner and went ice skating. I remember it as a very happy, flirty evening. My roommate Jill knitted that scarf for me.


This was taken when we were engaged. The lighting is kind of weird, but I just think we look really happy.


Here's a good smoochy, smoochy picture from our wedding day.


Then this little beauty entered the family, and life got even better.


So basically, Aaron is pretty great. I knew our names rhymed for a reason.

3/4 Of A Year

Annie's 9 month mark has come and gone. She gets smarter and smarter about life every day. I sometimes just watch her and think to myself, "How did you figure that out?" I need to realize that she is growing up, because recently Annie has been having lots of accidents due to her new level of mobility. For instance, she can now get out of her Bumbo chair and land on her face. She can also get her arm caught in the Wal-mart shopping cart. And she can roll off our bed. We're living in a new world. Annie will be crawling any day now. Currently, she either rolls to get where she wants to be or she kind of pushes herself around using her legs with her face flat on the ground. Now that I think of it, this motion kind of looks like an inch worm.

Annie has also been learning the art of blowing raspberries. I consider that a sort of rite of passage on the road to childhood. Here's a video from when she was still in training.




Annie loves food of all kinds and has been getting excited about finger foods lately. She usually likes to pick things up with her thumb and index finger, but sometimes using your face is just easier.



So here is a day in the life of 9 month old Annie Dennis:
--Wake up at 6:00 am to nurse then go back to bed until 8:30. (Awesome!)

--Play with toys, eat some food, roll around on the ground, do the inch-worm workout until 10:30.

--Take a nap for 1 or 2 hours.

--Go up up to campus with Mama to take lunch to Papa.



--Take another nap
--Play with Papa when he gets home.



--Eat dinner and get ready for bed, including letting Mama try to brush my teeth.


--Go to sleep.

Life as a 9 month old sounds pretty great. I think it is except for the teething process (Annie has 4 teeth) and the occasional bout of constipation. (TMI?) We love our little munchkin and are glad for the chance to raise her.

Blogging Frenzy

We haven't blogged in a while, so I'm just going to throw a bunch of things into the same post.

Recently, my sister Abbie and her family moved to the area. They will be here for a few years while her husband gets his PhD. I am very excited to have them living close. Abbie and her kiddies came down to Provo to get a look at BYU. Niece Emily was amazed when I told her that we were in the 199th ward. Where they come from, there are not more than 2 or 3 wards in a city.

We visited the bookstore, of course, where I realized how difficult it is to have small children in a store. Kudos to all of you moms out there who have children that can walk. I will never judge you for giving in and buying that treat. We also went to the Eyring Science Center, and ended our campus tour with a trip to the Creamery.




After the Creamery and all through the BYU tour, cute little Victoria would point to me or Annie and say, "Can we go to her house?" Abbie says she does the same thing with complete strangers. That's one way to make friends.

And we also gave the grand tour to Phil and Kelsey.


They took down a lot of the cool things in the Eyring Science Center--the air drum, the sound travel thingy, among other things. I wonder what happened to them? Seeing those little gadgets used to be one of the highlights for me as a kid visiting from South Dakota.
Thanks for coming to visit us, family. Sorry for the somewhat boring tours of campus, but we definitely enjoyed seeing you. We're getting quite proficient at giving tours...so anyone is welcome to come visit us anytime.

Aaron and his parents and sisters also hiked Mt. Timpanogos. It took a grueling 14 hours. Aaron came back with an awesome sunburn.






Last week, we took Annie with us to hike the Y with the singles' ward. She did great and even fell asleep in Aaron's arms on the way down. And we also changed her diaper at the top of the Y. How many people can say they've had their diaper changed on the Y? We forgot the camera, but someone should be emailing us some pictures. We really liked getting to know the people in the singles' ward. They seem cool and down-to-earth. And we met some folks who will be or already have served missions in Taiwan. That was pretty nifty.
I almost died on the way up to the Y. I do not remember it being so steep. My age must be getting to me.

Eat Mor Chikin

July 9, 2010 was the annual Chik-fil-A "Cow Appreciation Day." On this day, anyone who goes to a Chik-fil-A restaurant dressed like a cow from head to toe gets a free meal...not just a free sandwich but an entire combo meal. Our friends Jack and Natalie told us about it. What a great deal! Aaron, Annie, and I went along with Aaron's brother Alan who went all out with the handcrafted cow udders.

Aaron was a little bit sheepish (cowish?) about going to the mall dressed like a cow, but he manned up and came along. We really looked good. Some people were definitely not dressed up head to toe, but they still got food. It's probably not great for business to argue with a customer about whether or not a lame, latex glove cow udder should be considered enough of a costume.

I realized once I got to the restaurant that our ears were not very authentic. Cow ears do not stand up straight like the bunny ears I made. They are a little more floppy and more to the sides of the head. So it was kind of embarrassing not only to go to the mall dressed up like a cow, but to be doing so incorrectly. I could just hear people whispering, "Somebody didn't research their cow costume very well."

Annie dressed up, too, but she didn't get any free food. She had enough fun eating our black, garbage bag spots, though.


And the food was really tasty too! Moo!

Kid's Books

I've been getting into the baby books for Annie at the library. We can't get ones with real, paper pages because she mostly just likes to put them in her mouth. So we checked out this board book called Ship Shapes. The book shows the kid a bunch of shapes at the beginning and then has the kid identify the shapes throughout the rest of the book. But according to the blurb on the back of the book, here is what the book can do for your child:

"At Barefoot Books, we celebrate art and story that opens the hearts and minds of children from all walks of life, inspiring them to read deeper, search further, and explore their own creative gifts. We focus on themes that encourage independence of spirit, enthusiasm for learning, and sharing of the world's diversity. Interactive, playful, and beautiful, our products combine the best of the present with the best of the past to educate our children as caretakers of tomorrow. Live Barefoot!"

Gag me! Having my daughter recognize a triangle will help her to open her heart and mind? One of the characters is black, so thankfully that covers the "diversity" requirement. I'm so glad that my child, as a "caretaker of tomorrow," will be able to tell the difference between a square and a rectangle. And learning shapes encourages Annie's "independence of spirit!?" What! "Other people call this a square, but you can call it whatever you want." To be brief...I think their description is a bit of a stretch.

A San Francisco Treat

Aaron and I, being the adventurous folk that we are, decided to stay in California longer than the rest of the family so we could spend a day in San Francisco. It was a bit of a last minute decision. We didn't look up our route on Google Maps. We didn't plan what attractions we would see. We didn't have a map of the city. We were just going to go with the flow.
However, we weren't very good at going with the flow...we almost died 4 times trying to maneuver our way in and out of narrow, steep, one-way, there's-a-trolley-car-coming-this-way, San Francisco streets.
Aaron was feeling tired when we left Woodland, so I followed the freeway signs for San Francisco. That wasn't too hard. But when we got outside Oakland, we realized that they charge people to go across the Bay Bridge into San Francisco, and that they only take cash. Rude. So we got off the freeway at the last possible exit and made our way into the ghetto of Oakland. We found a gas station, got some cash, and had near-death experience #1 when I almost ran a red light.
Things were going great. We got across the lovely bay bridge, and made our way into San Francisco. We both wanted to see Chinatown since Aaron served his mission in Taiwan, I took 4 semesters of Mandarin, and I saw David Bowie's music video "China Girl." (Worst experience of my life) So we took what we thought was the exit. But there was not anything Chinese about that exit. We were lost, had near-death experience #2, I started crying, and Aaron took over the driving.
We finally decided we needed to find a map, but in order to find a map, we not only had to find a gas station, but we also had to be in the correct lane, at the correct time, going the right way so we could turn into the gas station. But we eventually found a map. Things only got better from here.
We found Chinatown on the map and headed that way. We got close to the right spot and decided to park...which also cost money, but parking meters only take change, not cash. So after making cash with a guy in Walgreen's, we parked and headed to Chinatown. Did somebody mix Chinatown with Italytown? Seriously, it was Italy and China side by side. Weird. And we ate at a Vietnamese restaurant in Chinatown. We still wonder if we were in the right place. But there were lots of Chinese shops and Chinese people, so it was something.
Our next stop was Fisherman's wharf. This went a lot more smoothly. Remember how I thought California was supposed to be sunny and warm? Well, nowhere was that less true than here by the ocean. We were cold, but Annie got to see the ocean, and we got to look at Alcatraz and the Golden Gate Bridge from afar.

Alcatraz looked so cool, and Al Capone Does My Shirts is a really great book that includes some stuff about Alcatraz.




After Fisherman's Wharf, we went for a drive down Lombard Street after having near-death experience #4. I don't remember where near-death experience #3 happened, but I know it was in there somewhere.


And then took the scenic route (on purpose--we were not lost) to the Golden Gate Park. By now we were really having a nice time. Annie was being a pretty good sport, all things considered. But she was not keen on the wind.


It was 5:00 by the time we were ready to leave, and we thought traffic would be nasty on the Bay Bridge. So we decided to take another scenic route across the Golden Gate Bridge. And you don't have to pay when you're leaving the city! It was a lovely drive home.

The trip started out rough, but we ended up having a nice time in this great American city.

Here are just a few final observations:
1. We saw a lot of rainbows in San Francisco, a symbol of gay pride. In that same section of town we saw lots of signs for the Aids Walk. It was an interesting juxtaposition.

2. I saw an amazing number of mothers with young children in strollers. How would you like to raise a family (or rollerblade) on these streets?

3. Aaron and I never want to live in a big city.

The end.

Mawwiage: That Dweam Within a Dweam...

Once upon a time there was a boy named William. He lived at the same apartment complex as a girl named Heather. They dated. Then she went on a mission to Chile for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Then she came home. Then William and Heather decided to get married in the Sacramento, California temple.


That's when Aaron and Maren decided to go to California. I had never been to California before, but naturally I had a few preconceived notions about the place. To me, California equals sunny and warm with big cities and lots of people. Hence, I brought shorts and t-shirts and whimpy little onsies and shorts for Annie. Why didn't I get the memo that California was going to be frigid and windy? I guess the stereotypes I had about California mostly apply to southern California. It's a big state and northern California was a lot different. It wasn't cold the whole time, but it was windy the whole time.

Anyway, we drove to California taking I-80. Nevada was actually kind of pretty, but west Utah is ugly! There was this:

and these lovely salt flats for our viewing pleasure:


Once in California, we spent a lot of time at Heather's house. They own a ranch, and have a ton of horses. Heather and her family were nice enough to take time to let us ride them the day before the wedding. Here are some of the things we saw on the ranch:






Doesn't this look just a little bit like a guillotine? It wasn't.

The wedding itself was great. Heather and William are perfect for each other. We're so happy they got together. Heather really impressed me as a bride. Everything went so smoothly, and she was calm, happy, and easy to get along with the whole time. William was a pretty good groom, too. Here are some wedding pics. I didn't get any really good ones of the bride and groom. It was too stressful with juggling Annie and everyone else trying to get pictures. But here's our little family:


And the ladies:


And the men:


Annie was hot and somewhat fussy while we were waiting for pictures. She was really sad that she didn't get any flowers.



The reception was back at the Padilla ranch. The wind finally calmed down a little.


And this was my contribution to the decorating of the car. They were serving chocolate dip...I had a diaper...it had to happen.


So, as my mom would say, the wedding came of with a hitch, and we had a grand time. More on our California adventure later.