Sneak peak at my man, also my baby girl is four!

Okay, there might be moments when I want to spit in his eye, but this morning before he left for work wasn’t one of them.

I took this picture super sneaky like and am posting it with the hope that he will fail to check my blog this week. Frankly, he lives in fear that I’m going to write about him and avoids this place like the plague so I’m feeling pretty safe. And yes, it’s probably stupid of me to post this picture because someone could do something to us. I don’t know what that something might be so I’ve decided to take my chances.

He can’t help being hot and I can’t help documenting it.

Also I posted it super small to throw off the terrorists.

In other monumental news, June turned four yesterday. She has been at least 79% (okay, maybe 72%) wonderful lately and I’m loving my darling daughter. She’s so much like me sometimes it’s frightening.

The girl is an absolute fashionista. I’ll be honest, I have to edit her outfits on a daily basis but even so, I’m amazed at her style sense. Sometimes she hits it right on the head. Here’s one she put together on the cruise that was so cute I had to catch a picture.

Fashion is important to June. I have no idea where she gets it. When she was first starting to have an opinion about what she wore (three years ago) I kept a tight grip on the key to her closet. Heaven forbid she show up at a function in something less than totally put together, it was bad enough that her hair was constantly escaping and her face was routinely sticky.

But one day my girlfriend Tricia carefully stepped in and gave me a little advice. She’s got three girls and somewhere along the way decided that they needed to have a little wardrobe agency.

Take her middle daughter for example. When Molly was June’s age her outfits were extremely interesting. They had accessories and layers and enough color to please both Barnum and Bailey.

But instead of cutting her out of the dressing process, Tricia simply edited her. Yes you can wear that polka dot skirt. No you cannot wear the plaid tights with Cinderella slippers under it.

The thing is, four years later Molly not only has fantastic style sense but she’s got her own fantastic style sense. It wasn’t something her mother imposed on her. The kid has a quiet confidence that I absolutely love. She knows who she is.

I want my daughters to grow up trusting their judgement and the only way to make that happen is to let them have a say in how they present themselves to the world. Yes, it’s only clothing, and sure, I’m probably fostering vanity, but I’m also encouraging June to make good, modest choices in her dress. She’s only four but already she understands the difference between modest and appropriate and immodest and trashy.

Okay, mostly she understands the trashy bit but there are definitely days when I wonder.

So happy birthday my darling girl. Even if you do like to wear enough barrettes in your hair to rival a Russian gymnast, I still love your style and can’t wait to see who you shape up to be someday.

As long as you do it from the clearance racks, I’m game.

Please honey, feel free to sweep it under the rug.

I woke up yesterday morning and went down to the kitchen. The kids were already busy devouring a healthy breakfast of leftover brownies from the night before. By the time the children were safely off to school and I was left alone with my morning chores, it looked like a herd of buffalo had tracked potting soil all over the kitchen.

And thus begun the day’s first of many attempts to keep my floors clean.

Here’s the thing about these awesome German houses: they don’t usually come with carpet. There is a reason wall-to-wall carpet has been such a big hit with Americans over the past four decades, and that’s because it’s flat out genius. You wonder why people covered up all those “beautiful” hardwood floors back in the sixties? Yeah, they’re called dust bunnies (not to mention bruised baby knees). No matter how hard I try, these floors refuse to stay clean for more than nineteen seconds at a time.

Until all my lovely rugs get here (right along with all our other mythical household goods) I’m stuck in nine hundred thousand square meters of tile. I am hating me some tile.

I usually sweep the kitchen/dining room/living area about five times a day, give or take a spill. Yes, I have a sweeper vac but it seems that at this stage of the game, we’re still dealing in scraps of half eaten plastic and paper trimmings, in addition to half of every snack making it’s way to the pool of spilled water on the floor. Soggy sweeping, what fun.

So the other night after we put the kids to bed, I shut off the downstairs lights and looked over in the kitchen. There was the remaining dinner evidence, smeared and dropped and tossed about the floor, and there was my nice, kind husband sweeping up the mess. I thought to myself, what a darling, angelic man out to serve his wife at the end of another thankless day.

“Honey,” I said, “Just leave it. I’ll sweep it up in the morning.”

And then my sweetheart gave me one of those slightly judgmental and overly patronizing looks that only spouses who spend their days at the office can properly pull off and said, “You know, you really should sweep this floor every day.”

It wasn’t about helping me out (which he routinely does, bless his heart), it was about “teaching by example.” Sweet little pupil, thinking the master doesn’t have any idea how to clean the floor.

And just before I verbally decapitated him I realized it: there is no way for someone who spends their days in a neat and tidy office to comprehend just how much debris children can come up with in a 16 hour period. No way but one, and I don’t have the energy or the patience to keep and collect all the well swept evidence just to prove to him that I’m not the lazy slob around here, they are.

Some things just aren’t worth the proof. I decided that in the future I will gladly sit back and watch any time he decides to give me a lesson on housekeeping. After all, it’s the respectful thing to do.

Love letters are so gross.

Jace,

Today is our anniversary. Since love letters are so overrated, I’m going to offer you a reality check, because I know that you consider yourself a “realist”, and therefore will appreciate the lack of sentimental goo that usually spews out of my keyboard on occasions such as this.

(In keeping with the theme, I should point out that you are, in some circles, considered to be a “pessimist”. Hey, we both know you didn’t think BYU had a chance against Oklahoma.)

Here’s the reality. Ten years ago, on this day, I thought you were getting a pretty stinking hot deal. I mean, come on. I was young, vibrant, energetic–how lucky were you? Funny how in the course of a simple “yes”, those traits turned into immature, manic, and impulsive. Hey, I was a pretty good person until I got married.

In the past few years I’ve realized that I was dead wrong in my assessment of our vows (well, mostly wrong. I wasn’t a total wash). Don’t ask me how you turned out to be so level-headed with just the right touch of spontaneity, or responsible without being in any way anal, or quiet but still able to talk to me for hours and hours and hours. Every trait I lack you posses, including, and not limited to, your fantastic buns. Man you’re hot.

And hey, I’m not sugar coating anything here, them’s the facts. You’re downright wonderful. You totally deserved me.

I was on my way home from Costco yesterday afternoon and heard Madonna singing “Crazy for You” and couldn’t figure out why my eyes were leaking (to Madonna!), then “Still the One” came on and I hit full blown hiccoughs. Apparently the reality is simple: I’m Crazy for You and you’re Still the One.

So baby mine, happy 10 years. I’m mad about you. I’ll hitch my dreams to your star any day, thank you for trying so hard to believe in me (even though sometimes it goes against your better judgment).

Pick me up at four, I’ll get the sitter.

To infinity and beyond,

annie