One Day

Some of my favorite movies of all time are Empire Records, Can’t Hardly Wait, and Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist. All of these movies take place over the course of one day when the main character’s lives are forever changed by the events that take place.

I know it might sound a little silly to say that someone’s life can change in just one day, but it can, and my story is a perfect example.

It all started the beginning of my Junior year of high school. I had a boyfriend that I wasn’t really that fond of but that my parents seemed to tolerate. I had gotten myself into some trouble earlier in the summer but my parents trusted the new boyfriend and would let me go out with him. While it was nice that I could get out of the house it was obvious to me that something was missing and it was time for us to break up.

Earlier in the summer I had driven from Tampa, Florida down to Ft. Myers, Florida with my friend Gretchen so that she could finally met a guy she had been talking to online. I’m not sure what we told our parents but off we went, Gretchen and I, on a two hour car drive south to meet a complete stranger. While in Ft. Meyers I met an older boy named Jay. He was the typically bad boy and I was quite smitten.

Over the course of the summer Jay and I shared a few phone calls and lots of letters. (Yes letters, before the use of email was widespread.)

Labor Day weekend of my Junior year I had decided that I was done with my current boyfriend and a trip to Ft. Myers to see Jay was just the thing that I needed. I’m sure I told my parents I would be at Gretchen’s for the weekend and she told her parents the same. We had it all worked out.

Friday afternoon once school got out I chickened out and decided that driving to Ft. Myers for the weekend wasn’t a smart choice to make. To this day I can’t decide why I changed my mind, but I’m happy that I did.

So it was Friday night and I was free! I didn’t know what I would do to keep busy but the first thing that popped into my head was to see what Ed was up to.

Ed was my boyfriend Shawn’s best friend. We had French together and I had been talking to him for the last two weeks about how I wanted to break up with Shawn. I’ll admit it, I was a wimp and didn’t want to be the bad guy. Ed knew all about my plans to go see Jay for the weekend so I felt safe calling him. He invited me to his house and we hung out. I asked him not to tell Shawn (his best friend and my boyfriend) that I was in town.

[Let me just pause for a moment and comment on how manipulative teenage girls can be. I didn’t realize it at the time, but looking back...]

Over the course of the evening my interactions with Ed went from casual to something else. We played Mario Kart on the Super Nintendo and it was obvious that he let me win a few games. We met up with Gretchen and Ed’s buddy John. We went to pick up Gretchen’s paycheck from Sweet Tomatoes.  I sat shotgun as Ed drove us around town. He even let me steer the car as he drove!

While hanging out at Sweet Tomatoes I began to realize that something was happening. It was strange, but Ed was waiting for me to get out of the car and he was standing just a little too close to me.

After Sweet Tomatoes’ we decided that a late night movie would be great. So Gretchen and I, Ed and John all went to see The Crow: City of Angels.  I made sure that Ed and I were sitting beside each other. Once the movie started I kept point at the screen and talking to Ed. Eventually he got the hint and he grabbed my hand. We spent the rest of the movie sitting side my side just holding hands. At some point I must have placed my head on his shoulder and drifted off to sleep. The next thing I remember is Gretchen waking me up and telling me the movie is over.

After the movie we went back to Gretchen’s house with the boys and turned on Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. I think I quickly fell asleep and only remember Gretchen waking me up and saying that the boys had to go home.

I walked Ed out to his car and gave him a long hug. He kissed me quickly on the cheek and whispered, “Let’s just take it slow. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

I remember going to my friend Lindsey’s house the next day and telling her that I thought I could be in love! I know it sounds strange but even in the very beginning I knew that there was something different about this one.

The rest of the weekend was a little bit of a blur. I went home and called Shawn and told him I didn’t think it was working out between the two of us. When Ed called I told him that I had broken up with Shawn and he said he needed to talk to Shawn before anything else took place between us. Ed asked Shawn if he could ask me out, Shawn gave us his blessing and the rest is history!

The Monday of Labor Day weekend we had our first date. He picked me up from my house. I got past the “If you want to go out on a date with a guy we must have met the guy before you go out” rule because Ed had been over to the house to swim a few over the course of the summer. (He was my boyfriends best friend, remember?)

After Ed picked me up we went to the book store. We grabbed a few books that we wanted to “look” at and then sat down in the floor. We had our first kiss amongst the fiction section of Barnes and Nobles. After the book store we went to a movie. We saw “House Arrest” but I don’t remember much about the movie.

After that first date it all happened very easy. We were happy, giddy, and very much in lust!

That first weekend was fifteen years ago! Today we celebrate our 8th wedding anniversary! I love him so much!

Some Days Are Meant to be Lazy

We started out the day with such grand plans. We'd been planning on cleaning up the attic for some time and today seems as good of a day as any. After an easy breakfast of homemade monkey bread and oranges we pulled down all of the toys from the attic and set them in the kitchen so that we could go through them to decide what we wanted to keep and what we could possibly donate.

The kids were super excited about seeing all of the "new" toys.

I'm saving this picture for when he's a teenager!

We had very good intentions of cleaning and sorting but the boys were having such a good time playing we just let them be. I spent some time in the kitchen making some yummy vegetable soup. And the kids just played.

Ellis is obsessed with painted toe nails, so I got out the polish and touched up his toes.

And then he fell asleep on the couch while the polish was drying!

Owen stayed in his PJs all day! Sometimes you just need a day that's carefree - even if you're a kid!

Life Right Now

It's been very busy around our house lately. Here are a few of the things we've got going on...

- Owen is now in his third week of 2nd grade. He's got 14 kids in his class and LOVES his new teacher. We feel very blessed that he enjoys school and seems to excel.

Owen on the first day of school. No, he doesn't have to wear a uniform but this is the outfit he picked out.

- After months of training Ellis has finally gotten a handle on using the potty. We aren't 100% of the way there but we've made a lot of progress in the last week.

- Both of the boys have become obsessed with Katy Perry. They love running around the living room dancing like crazy. Look at cute little Ellis swinging his hips!

- Last weekend we managed to get the baseboards installed in kitchen. We're slowly making progress on all of the different projects around the house. We also managed to get the trim along the bottom of the dishwasher installed, the trim around the closet in our bedroom installed, and the door to the new bathroom hung. We've got a few more rounds of drywall mud to put up and sand down before we can paint and install the floors in the new bath, but once we get the drywall complete the project should finish up quickly. (Famous last words, right?)

Life is good.

The Silent Tree

We had every intention of having a very lazy and low key Saturday. We had debated taking the boys to the pool but neither of them were really excited about that idea and I wasn’t jumping at the thought of spending the day in the heat.

We had talked about going shopping for a new living room rug, which we really need, but our hearts weren’t in it.

I was close to finishing my latest book and Ed was excited that the English Premier League Soccer was playing their first game of the season. The boys were actually playing nicely together in their room, which is sort of rare these days so we just decided to take it easy.

About 10:45AM I decided to run get a quick pedicure while Ed finished the soccer game.

When I got home an hour later no one was in the house. This was strange. I quickly checked the bedrooms but still, no one. My next thought is that everyone must be outside so I walked onto the back deck to this view…

I know it’s a little hard to understand the picture, so let me explain. We had a very large tree fall in our back yard last night. The odd thing is that no one heard a thing. I would have thought that such a large tree falling would have made some loud noise, but we didn’t hear a thing.

The tree hit the corner of the back of the kids fort. The fort had a swing hanging off the back of it. The swing was mounted to a 4 x 4 board. The board was cut in half by the force of the tree falling. I’m fortunate that the house wasn’t hit and that no one was hurt.

After examining the tree I’m still not sure why it fell. It did have some damage from some carpenter ants, but at the base of the tree where it broke to fall over it looked healthy.

Now we have the fun task of trying to get the yard cleared up. We were able to get most of the small branches with leaves off with the help of a hatchet and a small hand saw. A neighbor brought over a gas powered chain saw but we can’t seem to get it to work. Another neighbor let us borrow an electric chain saw so Ed has managed to get the top of the tree cut up. Now we’ve just need to come up with a game plan for the rest of the tree.

I’m thinking we’ll try to rent a chain saw from a hard ware store. Only tomorrow will tell.

I’m still pretty amazed that such a large object could fall in the back yard and we didn’t even notice. Nature is very strange at times.