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?

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!

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!

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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!