So, some­one com­mented that I had started to talk about how I met Jason but never fin­ished the story. I have had a busy week and been pretty tired at the end of the days, so I put it off, because it is a pretty long story. Tonight, though, I’m going to rem­i­nisce and do my best to make it as inter­est­ing to you as it is to me.

The first time I met Jason was at a Cam­pus Cru­sade Christ­mas Con­fer­ence in Min­neapo­lis. How­ever, that wasn’t the first time I had ever seen him. He was in my fresh­man Applied Cal­cu­lus class. It was a huge class of like 150–200 peo­ple (I’m ter­ri­ble at esti­mates, but this is how I remem­ber it). We had never talked because of the size of the class, but I knew he was in my class. He didn’t remem­ber me from class though. When we are at Christ­mas Con­fer­ence, a friend intro­duced us. We played the card game Hearts with a cou­ple other friends. I don’t play cards, and I am not good at card games. How­ever, that night, I man­aged to win the game by a LOT. We talked a bit through­out the week­end. Noth­ing par­tic­u­larly excit­ing as far as I remember.

We went home and the semes­ter started. We didn’t have any classes together from then on, but we had lots of mutual friends. We ended up being at a lot of the same events and activ­i­ties. Toward the end of Jan­u­ary, Jason called me one day and asked if I wanted to go to a movie. I’m not sure what in the world I was think­ing, but I chose the movie In Dreams with Annette Ben­ing. I chose the movie, and now I have to won­der what in the world I was think­ing!?!? It wasn’t a blind date, but we def­i­nitely didn’t know each other well, nor was I plan­ning on hold­ing on tight to his arm and bury­ing my head in his shoul­der. I don’t know.

We kept see­ing each other. We ended up dat­ing through the rest of the school year, that sum­mer, and into the fall. Then, it hap­pened. Jason men­tioned in pass­ing some­thing about sav­ing money and about feel­ing more seri­ous about me. I flipped out and did the only log­i­cal thing. I broke up with him. Dur­ing the time we were dat­ing, we had spent a lot of time together or talk­ing on the phone. He took the breakup very hard. I knew that he was upset about it and that he was hav­ing a hard time, but I didn’t know how to be a friend to him with­out being a girlfriend.

I had told Jason that I felt like he was expect­ing too much from me in the rela­tion­ship and he needed to develop other friend­ships. So, while we were bro­ken up, he did just that. He made some great friends and become one of the more pop­u­lar peo­ple in the cir­cle of friends we were a part of. He really grew as a per­son and a friend dur­ing this time. After a few months, I could see that he was a com­pletely dif­fer­ent per­son. Dur­ing this time, we saw a lot of each other, but we rarely talked. I made sure of that. I didn’t know what to say to him. I didn’t seek him out, and I often ran away from him if I felt he was going to attempt to talk to me. My friends often ran inter­fer­ence for me. They would talk to him while I would escape and avoid.

For about a year, we didn’t talk much. Dur­ing that year, I spent sev­eral months work­ing at a camp in the Bound­ary Waters Canoe Area in north­ern Min­nesota. While I was there, I ended up dat­ing some­one else. It was one of those rela­tion­ships. There was no poten­tial there. We didn’t click, and it wasn’t healthy for either of us. Great, huh? I ended that rela­tion­ship the day before I turned 21, and I didn’t feel any regret at any point afterwards.

In Jan­u­ary of 2001, I was work­ing at my on-campus job when I found out that Jason had taken a job across the hall­way from me. At some point, things had become less awk­ward for us, and I didn’t think any­thing about Jason being in the same build­ing as me every day. There were quite a few col­lege aged work­ers in my office and in his. We vis­ited. We got cof­fee in the break room. We became friends again. At some point, I asked Jason if he would help me with some com­puter prob­lems I was hav­ing. He told me sure, but I had to make him sup­per and help him dye his hair. I fig­ured it wasn’t a bad trade off. He came over a few times and worked on my com­puter. At the time, I didn’t know it, but later he told me he could have fixed my prob­lems in one evening, but he kept drag­ging it out to be able to spend more time together. (I never had a clue!)

Dur­ing this time, Jason had been look­ing for jobs. He was plan­ning to grad­u­ate in May, and he needed a job. He inter­viewed for a job in Mitchell, SD and one in Min­neapo­lis, MN. Nei­ther of those ended up work­ing out. I knew at this point I was inter­ested in him, but I also knew that he was going to move in just a cou­ple months, so there was no rea­son to start a rela­tion­ship that wouldn’t go anywhere.

Feb­ru­ary came, and so did Valentine’s Day. One of my room­mates had a very steady boyfriend, so she was pretty excited to be receiv­ing a dozen roses. My other room­mate didn’t have a boyfriend, but she wasn’t ever short on male admir­ers. She was darn cute and nice! I was unat­tached and expected noth­ing. Shock­ingly, I got a bou­quet of red roses with­out a card. I called my dad and thanked him for the flow­ers. He didn’t know if they were from him and my mom, but he played along and said thanks. My mom called later, and she denied send­ing the flow­ers. Out of nowhere, she said, “They’re from Jason.” I told her they couldn’t be. He wasn’t inter­ested in me any­more. I’d had my chance.

Later that night, I did get a call from Jason. He was at a Valentine’s Day sup­per at his church for col­lege stu­dents where the guys cooked sup­per for the women. We vis­ited a lit­tle on the phone, and I asked how his sup­per was going. Then, he told me that the roses were from him. Then, he said bye and that he’d see me at work.

Um, what??? Why would you send roses to some­one with no card, tell her they are from you, and then nothing?

I spent quite a bit of time pray­ing and think­ing and read­ing my bible. I knew that when we had first dated Jason had been very seri­ous about our rela­tion­ship and had had a very hard time with the breakup. I knew that if I was going to con­sider being in a rela­tion­ship with him again, I needed to also con­sider mar­riage. I know that sounds like a huge leap. I didn’t nec­es­sar­ily think that dat­ing equaled engage­ment, but I knew that in order for it to be fair to both of us, I had to be ready for it to go that way.

A few days later, I was leav­ing town for a wed­ding. I was sup­posed to be leav­ing on Thurs­day after­noon, but I ended up not feel­ing well. I stayed home and took a nap. At some point that day, our phone rang. It was Jason. He didn’t want to talk to me though. He was talk­ing to my room­mate and one of my best friends at the time. He was ask­ing her what I thought of him, if I was inter­ested, what he should do, etc. She was giv­ing me big wide eyes and mouthing “what do I say???” I just layed on the chair and lis­tened to her side of the con­ver­sa­tion instead of let­ting poor Jason know I was there. Poor guy. She ended up telling him that I was indeed inter­ested in him, and that if he wanted to pur­sue dat­ing, I was prob­a­bly interested.

The next week, Jason came over to my apart­ment. We talked about us and the rela­tion­ship and how we had already dated. We decided that we would really watch our time closely. We didn’t want to com­pro­mise our rela­tion­ships with friends, our classes, or our­selves by spend­ing all of our time together right away.

At that time, I Kissed Dat­ing Good­bye by Josh Har­ris was a pretty pop­u­lar book. I was read­ing at that time, and it was actu­ally that book (although I’m fuzzy on specif­i­cally what in the book) that helped me decide I was ready to start dat­ing Jason again.

At some point in all of this, Jason was offered the interim posi­tion he had already been doing and was asked to apply for the per­ma­nent posi­tion. This was a load off my mind because it meant he wouldn’t be mov­ing after all. How­ever, the uni­ver­sity and bureau­cracy being what they are, the posi­tion ended up not com­ing through.

We con­tin­ued dat­ing, and while we were exclu­sive and didn’t see any­one else, we weren’t extremely seri­ous. That sum­mer, I went back to the Bound­ary Waters in north­ern Min­nesota to coun­sel at the same camp for a sec­ond sum­mer. Being sep­a­rated was hard. For me, it was eas­ier because I was busy for about 18 hours a day with my campers. At the end of the sum­mer, I went back home, and it was a lit­tle weird for me. It was almost like start­ing over a lit­tle bit.

Also dur­ing the sum­mer, Jason had been offered and had taken a job with the state of North Dakota. He trained teach­ers to use tech­nol­ogy. This involved a lot of dri­ving and a fair amount of time away from home for train­ing and work trips. So, after being apart all sum­mer, we were now apart when I thought we would get to spend time together. Our rela­tion­ship sort of car­ried on as it had been in the spring.

Then, came Sep­tem­ber. I’m not sure what changed, and look­ing back, nei­ther is Jason. He went on a trip for work to Hous­ton, TX, and he was gone for 4 or 5 days. While he was gone, I decided (or finally real­ized) I was in love with him and wanted to get mar­ried. I could barely wait for him to get home from his trip! I think I man­aged to wait until the day after he got home, but as we were watch­ing tv and doing home­work, I said to him, “Where is this rela­tion­ship going?” Shocked (under­stand­ably), he said “what do you mean?” I told him that I was ready to be seri­ous and that if he was, I thought we should talk about that. If he wasn’t I didn’t know where we were going. Once he picked his jaw up off the floor (again, poor guy), he told me that I should prob­a­bly fig­ure out what kind of ring I wanted if we were to get engaged.

From that point, things moved pretty quickly. We had “the talk” in the mid­dle of Sep­tem­ber. We got engaged in the mid­dle of Octo­ber, and we were mar­ried in June of 2002. Some of my fam­ily was shocked. At our pre­vi­ous fam­ily gath­er­ing (the wed­ding in Feb), I hadn’t men­tioned any­one. Then, at Christ­mas, I was engaged.
I guess you just can’t plan those things.

Through all of our dat­ing, I always knew that Jason had seri­ous feel­ings for me and that he was very sure of our rela­tion­ship. I only found out dur­ing our engage­ment how sure he was of our rela­tion­ship. He told me that the night we met, he had been sit­ting across the room from me, looked at me, and he knew at that moment that we were going to get married.

*sigh* What more could a girl hope for?

Sat­ur­day night, I was out­side shov­el­ing our dri­ve­way. While I was out there, I had plenty of time to think and let my mind wan­der. At one point, I started think­ing about col­lege, about Christ­mas break, about my years in school. Then, I real­ized it had been ten years (almost to the day) that I met my husband.

Ten years ago, I was a fresh­man in col­lege. Dur­ing my first semes­ter of my fresh­man year, I attended the university’s Cam­pus Cru­sade for Christ meet­ings. At the end of that semes­ter, I decided to go to their Christ­mas Con­fer­ence in Min­neapo­lis. That is where I met Jason. At the time, I didn’t have any idea that he and I would get mar­ried and live hap­pily ever after. He did though.

It’s a lit­tle late now, so I’ll save the next part of this story for tomor­row or the next day. It’s a great story and worth the wait!

We are! Mem­bers of Min­nesota Pub­lic Radio that is. When our TV took a turn for the worse last month, we found that there was sig­nif­i­cantly more time to lis­ten to the radio. Nei­ther Jason nor I are hooked on one type of music. We both have pretty eclec­tic tastes. Because of that, we find it hard to find a sta­tion that sat­is­fies all of our tastes. We end up using iTunes or our iPods for get­ting our fix of music. When we’re lis­ten­ing to the radio though, we are usu­ally lis­ten­ing to MPR.

Jason started lis­ten­ing to MPR a while back. I resisted, because at the time I was hard-cord Repub­li­can, and I felt like there was too much lefty lib­eral stuff on there. I’m not sure if that was true or if I just heard what I wanted to hear. I’m guess­ing it was more likely the lat­ter. As time went on, I noticed that I was more and more inter­ested in what I heard while he was lis­ten­ing to MPR, and I noticed that less and less of what I heard was polit­i­cal. It was just inter­est­ing stuff.

Off the top of my head, I can think of sev­eral pro­grams that we reg­u­larly lis­ten to. Instead of TiVo’ing the lat­est TV shows, we are often down­load­ing the lat­est pod­casts of our favorite pro­grams. My favorites are Mid­morn­ing with Kerry Miller, Mid­day with Gary Eichten, Speak­ing of Faith with Krista Tip­pett, and the Sun­day Morn­ing Puz­zler. Some of Jason’s favorites are Sci­ence Fri­day and Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me!

One of the things that I like about lis­ten­ing to MPR is how I feel after I’ve lis­tened to it. I feel like I used my time wisely. I feel smarter. I feel more inter­est­ing myself. I like the fact the vari­ety of top­ics and per­spec­tives I get. It took me a while to believe Jason when he told me about it, but now that I’m lis­ten­ing reg­u­larly, I’m hooked! Lots of other kids can sing the lyrics of songs they hear on the radio in the car, what will my kids take away from our time in the car? I can only imag­ine!

For a while after my last post about run­ning, I was get­ting that ques­tion pretty fre­quently. Lately, not as many peo­ple have been ask­ing. I was glad, because I have taken a run­ning hia­tus unfor­tu­nately. My last run was with Jason when we stayed at the in-laws’ house on Octo­ber 25th.

Since then, I’ve been sick. Ugh. It started out as a ter­ri­ble sore throat. I couldn’t swal­low. I couldn’t sleep. I didn’t want to eat. It hurt so bad. Then, my sore throat turned to a cough. For those of you who know me, you know that this isn’t a rare thing for me. I have a ten­dency to get sick pretty fre­quently, and nearly every cold or ill­ness I get turns into a cough. For years, at least the past 20 years, I’ve attrib­uted the fact that I get sick so often to a poor immune sys­tem. Lately, though, I’ve been won­der­ing if it’s some­thing else. Aller­gies? Asthma? Some­thing else all together? I don’t know.

I had an appoint­ment with my doc­tor last Mon­day. At that appoint­ment, I talked with her about this cough. She agreed that it wasn’t nor­mal, and it was some­thing we should try to fig­ure out. Last Wednes­day, I went to the hos­pi­tal and had a pul­monary func­tion test done. If you are like me, and you don’t know what a PFT is, I’ll tell you. Basi­cally, I sat in a lit­tle glass box. First, I had to breathe into a mouth­piece. Then, the tech­ni­cian pumped some sort of gas into the lit­tle box. I did some more breath­ing. Then, she opened the door, and I did a few more breath­ing exer­cises. Each time, she got a chart and some num­bers on her com­puter. I’m still wait­ing for the results of the test, but from what she said at the appoint­ment, I’m guess­ing the results will be incon­clu­sive. If that’s the case, I’m going to end up going back to the hos­pi­tal for another test that is specif­i­cally to diag­nose asthma.

So, to bring this back to the orig­i­nal topic of run­ning, I don’t know what’s going to hap­pen there. I was up to 2.5ish miles before I got sick. Most 10K and half marathon plans start around 3 miles. I would still really like to be able to run in the 2009 half marathon, but at this point, I’m not going to push it. I am hop­ing that fig­ur­ing out what is caus­ing this cough will also help my run­ning. I had got­ten to run­ning about 2.5 miles, but my sta­mina was pretty spotty. Some days, I could make it. Some days I felt like I was going to die after 15 min­utes. I wasn’t ever phys­i­cally tired enough that I felt like I needed to stop run­ning, but I some­times felt like I couldn’t get enough air. I’d really like to be able to say that I ran a half marathon, and I’d like to do it with Jason, but at this point I just want to fig­ure out what is caus­ing my cough.

I’ve writ­ten a lit­tle about my hus­band, Jason, and how he’s very ded­i­cated to his run­ning. In fact, I am jeal­ous. I’m not really jeal­ous of the time he spends run­ning (although catch me on a crabby day and that might be true, too), but I’m more jeal­ous of the fact that he really sticks to things. He says he’s going to achieve a goal, and he does. There’s really no ques­tion about if. We just wait to see when it will hap­pen. In May of this year, he ran the 5K at the Fargo Marathon. He decided next year that he’d like to run the half marathon. Yikes! So, in a step along the way, he is reg­is­tered to run the 10K at our University’s home­com­ing cel­e­bra­tion this week­end. Yay, Jason!

This leads me to a lit­tle bit of an admis­sion. I have actu­ally been run­ning also for a while. We have a tread­mill, and I started doing the Couch to 5K plan in June. I didn’t tell any­one though. I didn’t want to have any pres­sure put on me if I didn’t like it or if I decided to stop. Then, I real­ized some­thing. I real­ized that if I really wanted to keep up with run­ning I needed a goal. I also needed to tell peo­ple so they could put pres­sure on me and keep me account­able! So, I’m going to do it. I’m mak­ing a goal (gulp) and telling peo­ple about it. My goal is to run the half marathon in Fargo in May of 2009 with Jason. (My heart is beat­ing faster as I’m typ­ing this…not a good sign for my phys­i­cal fit­ness.) I’m cur­rently run­ning 2.5 miles at a time with a goal of run­ning 3 times a week.

Since I have a Nike+iPod Sport Kit, I can track my progress pretty closely. AND, since you now know that this is my goal, I guess I’m going to be telling you about how my run­ning is going every week.

He does. He is a great hus­band. He’s an amaz­ing dad. He’s a smart, funny, intel­li­gent, good look­ing, car­ing, lov­ing per­son. I’m guess­ing you get the picture.

At the con­ven­tion I attended over the week­end, there was a resource fair with tons of ven­dors. There were pub­lish­ers, music artists, and many other booths. I did a lit­tle bit of shop­ping at the fair and a lit­tle bit of brows­ing. I came across a booth that sold t-shirts, and I knew I wanted one. I’m cur­rently try­ing to cut back on my stash of t-shirts, but these were dif­fer­ent. I wanted one. Heck, I wanted them all! The t-shirts are made by a com­pany called From­Me­Tees. The two women work­ing at the booth were wear­ing shirts that said, “my hus­band rocks.”

Any­one who knows me in real life knows that I can’t stop talk­ing about Jason and every­thing he does that rocks. He does every­thing! He does laun­dry. He does dishes. He stays home with the boys when I go to Texas for a week­end. He sits on the couch with me and watches Veron­ica Mars. Let me count the ways.. I decided that instead of con­tin­u­ing to talk about him all the time and how great he is, I would just wear a shirt that could do the talk­ing for me. Instead of get­ting the one that said “my hus­band rocks,” I decided on “For­ever His Bride.” I wore the shirt for about half of today, and I have to say I love it! It just puts me in a pos­i­tive frame of mind when I think about Jason. It reminds me how much I love him and how much he loves me. It also helps me to keep things in per­spec­tive if I ever start to get a lit­tle frus­trated with him. When I first bought the shirt, I thought it was just a cute shirt. Now, after wear­ing it a cou­ple times, it is def­i­nitely still a very cute shirt, but it’s also more.

5MinutesForMom is hav­ing a sleep­ing angel con­test. They are giv­ing away a South Shore Children’s Bed­room Set from Home & Bed­room Fur­ni­ture. They are ask­ing peo­ple to post pic­tures of their sleep­ing babies, and the win­ner will have their choice of either the Lily Rose or the Sum­mer Breeze set. I would def­i­nitely choose Sum­mer Breeze if I were to win.

So, here is the pic­ture. It’s adorable, and it’s one of my favorites. We were at Jason’s par­ents’ house one day this sum­mer. I ran a few errands, and when I came back, I walked in the front door and saw this…

My Sleep­ing Angels

I have been say­ing this for a while now, and I’m wait­ing for evo­lu­tion to start work­ing on this for me, but I think it’s prob­a­bly not going to hap­pen in my life­time. I sup­pose instead of wait­ing for my extra set of arms, I could look for other solu­tions to my prob­lems. Right now, the biggest rea­son I need (a.k.a. want) that extra set of arms is because A is want­ing to be held a LOT, and I’m try­ing to plan a birth­day party for Jason for this Saturday!

Last night, we were at Tar­get, and I had quite a few things to get. Just as we were in the pop aisle (as I write this, I’m cring­ing think­ing about all the high fruc­tose corn syrup sit­ting in my base­ment!), A decided that he was done with the cart. So, I am push­ing the huge orangey-red dou­ble cart from Tar­get, hold­ing A on one hip, try­ing to con­vince K not to take his seat­belt off and to stay in the cart, and try­ing to find the side of the 12-pack that has the han­dle on it. Why, Mr. Coke Man, do you put it on the shelf with the han­dle side down or to the side? I would love to see the han­dles on the TOP! Anyway…

So, as I’m doing that, i’m break­ing out in a sweat, and my heart is start­ing to pound. I’m hop­ing that I don’t drop either A or the 12-pack of Diet Coke with Lime that I man­aged to palm since I couldn’t find the han­dle. A decides that he’s done being held, and he flips his body down toward the ground. I threw the pop on my cart, and I grabbed him securely. Then, I thought, why am I not wear­ing him???

I cur­rently own two baby car­ri­ers. One is a Kozy Car­rier that I bought when K was about 7 months old. The other car­rier we own is an Ergo Car­rier. If you’re not a baby wear­ing, baby car­rier buy­ing per­son, you might won­der just how many car­ri­ers a mom might need. Well, for me, the answer is at least one more. The Kozy is great. I really like it, but I lent it to my cousin’s wife in June, and I’m hop­ing she’s get­ting a lot of use out of it. (Hmmm, maybe need to check on her and see how it’s going) So, I have my Ergo in my car with me most of the time. A really doesn’t like to be worn in back car­ries. I think he likes to see my face and feel closer to me. He also is pretty tall, so he’s not as easy to wear in the front car­ries as he used to be. That leaves me hip car­ries. The Kozy is a good hip car­rier, but right now mine’s not here. The Ergo, how­ever, doesn’t lend itself eas­ily to a hip carry. You have to unclip the straps and rearrange them. So, I think that instead of wait­ing on evo­lu­tion to give me my sec­ond set of arms, I should buy another car­rier!

Right now, I’m really inter­ested in the Etc. Sling. A friend of mine makes these, and they are very comfy and very rea­son­ably priced. The town where I live is not a huge baby­wear­ing hub, but in gen­eral, if you see a mom (or dad) wear­ing a child, there’s prob­a­bly a 60% chance they are using the Etc. Sling that Erin made. Maybe in a week or two, I will have a new post rav­ing about my new sling! I’m hop­ing.

A while ago, I wrote about our new com­post bin that Jason and his dad had made. I was a lit­tle skep­ti­cal that we would be able to fill it all up. Who throws that much food? Well, it’s pretty much full. We have some of our lawn clip­pings in there and some food with it, too. Jason goes out once in a while, and he moves it around and turns it. I guess he waters it, too.

When we first started the project, I thought it was just some­thing fun to do. I also thought it would be nice to even­tu­ally have the com­post for our gar­den. I didn’t real­ize until today when I was read­ing on 5 Min­utes for Going Green (a fab­u­lous blog, by the way), that com­post­ing has another ben­e­fit. Food that is thrown away is the largest com­po­nent of land­fill waste. When food is thrown away, it does not become com­post. The con­di­tions in the land­fill are anaer­o­bic (oxygen-free), and instead of becom­ing fab­u­lous fer­til­izer, it breaks down to become methane gas. Methane gas is a green­house gas, and it is three times more potent than car­bon diox­ide. In an era where global warm­ing has become an every­day con­ver­sa­tion, it seems like com­post­ing is one small thing that the aver­age per­son can do with lit­tle extra effort and expense.

It’s always nice for us when the 4th of July falls near the begin­ning or end of the week. We don’t have any fam­ily in town, so if it is near a week­end, either we or they can make a 3 day week­end out of it and take a trip. This week­end, Jason’s mom and dad came to visit us.

They drove up yes­ter­day, and brought A a sand­box as a gift for his first birth­day. It is very nice. They even bought sand that feels like beach sand! WOW! I want to go play in there once the kids are in bed. K seems to have made more use of it than A has so far. A sat in it yes­ter­day for a while and then started eat­ing the sand. Once he got tired of that, he was tired of the sand­box. K, how­ever, was happy to play in there all after­noon and again this morn­ing for almost the entire morning.

Part of the rea­son that they stayed overnight is that we are still try­ing to do a few odds and ends jobs around our house, and some­times those jobs are eas­ier with a sec­ond set of hands. This morn­ing, Jason and his dad worked on installing a fan in our main bath­room. This after­noon, they worked on build­ing a com­post bin. Jason found the plans for the bin on Lowe’s web­site, and I have to say it is much big­ger, nicer, and stur­dier than I antic­i­pated. We will have to do some seri­ous com­post­ing though with this thing.

Jason and his dad were only able to fin­ish about half of the com­post bin project. It said that it was a five hour project on the plans, but I think if I were help­ing, I could eas­ily help them turn it into a ten or twenty hour project. Just think of the fam­ily togeth­er­ness that could result from that help! So, now the bin is in our garage with the rest of the lum­ber wait­ing to be fin­ished. In fact, those things are right next to and on the cement pavers that we will be using in our next big project of re-landscaping the front of the house. That project may have to wait for our next long weekend…Labor Day!

Happy 4th of July!