Happy Anniversary to Us!

Seven years ago today, I said "I do" to the man of my dreams. There are a lot of cheesy things I could say about him and about us...

... and about our little family.

But mostly, I would just like to say: I love you, Dan. And I still can't quite believe how much I lucked out when you got down on one knee in the snow and asked me to be your wife. I have absolutely adored spending the first seven years of the rest of my life with you, and if I had it to do all over again, I'd marry you again in a heartbeat.

Photo credit: Jenni Grace Photography

Things I said...

...when I wasn't saying things here.

If you click this, I will say more things. But in the interest of full disclosure, I should probably tell you that I will definitely say more things even if you don't click this.

Stuff on my walls

I would love to live in a home where every wall had something fabulous on it. The hard part is that I have to be the one to find all of those things to hang on my walls, and that's a lot of work! Especially because the majority of my artistic taste is just me knowing which things I don't want to hang on my walls... which isn't terribly helpful.

Anyway, I like when other people post pictures of things they've put on their walls with tips (or links) so that I can copy their look and then pretend I came up with the idea all by myself if anyone ever asks. (Haha! Just kidding. I'm that annoying person who has to give you some long back-story if you ever compliment anything in my home.) So while my walls are (and probably always will be) a work in progress, here are some things hanging on my walls that I really, really like. (Complete with back-stories. Obviously.) Feel free to borrow any of these ideas, provided that you include a plaque under it that says "I got this idea from Bethany. She's fabulous." underneath it. (Ok, fine. Don't get the plaque.) So without further ado, here's some stuff on my walls. (Non-disclaimer: Nobody paid me to show you any of this, and none of it was given to me for free. Unless Dan gave it to me as a gift, which is ok, because he's my husband, and I'll say nice things about him even if he doesn't give me stuff.)

"Our House is a Mess" poem (aka "Song for a Fifth Child")

"So quiet down cobwebs, dust go to sleep. I'm rocking my baby, and babies don't keep."

When Lucas was a a few months old (see? I told you everything would have a back-story), I was talking to my dad about the fact that I never got any housework done, and he showed me the poem "Song for a Fifth Child" by Ruth Hulburt Hamilton. I loved it so much that I decided I wanted to hang it on my wall. I found an etsy seller who designs various "stuff" for your wall and asked her if she would make this poem pretty for me, so she did! You can buy your own copy of it here. She'll also customize the colors for you. This is hanging by my front door so that people know right off the bat that my house is a disaster...

Pictures of Our Fairytale

These are on  two different walls across from each other. In case you can't tell that.

In the last two places we lived, I had four of our wedding pictures hanging under a wood sign that says "and they lived happily ever after" (which I think I bought on ebay six years ago, so I can't link to where I got it.) After Lucas was born, he became a big part of our "happily ever after" (and a HUGE part of our "living with a lot less sleep," but that phrase doesn't look quite as cute on the wall), so I bought the "Once Upon a Time..." sign (from this ebay store) to hang above the wedding pictures. These pictures are in our home's entryway. I haven't decided yet how many more frames I'll add to the "happily ever after" wall. I guess it depends on how happy we are (so far, very)... or how often I get around to putting more pictures in frames.

An Awesome Caricature of My Husband... Who is Awesome

I should probably point out that he is wearing that shirt because I bought it for him to wear at his graduation party,
and not because he likes to walk around advertising that he's a doctor.

No joke, I found this medical school graduation gift idea for my husband at least a year and a half before he actually graduated from medical school. It's the farthest in advance that I've ever planned a gift. Giveacaricature.com actually charged me extra because I insisted that they add so many extra details (as if it's MY fault that my husband is a water-skiing pilot/doctor/cop who worked out of emergency helicopters,) but I thought the result was worth it. This is hanging in Dan's office in our house.

Pregnant Me

"For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb."

A good friend of mine took some fantastic maternity photos when I was six months pregnant with Lucas (yes, that's what I looked like at six months pregnant. At nine months pregnant, I looked like Lucas was standing on end with his feet on my spine and his head on my belly button. I was a torpedo.) I used Picasa (which was called Picnik back in those days) to put the verses on it. It's hanging in Lucas's bedroom.

Wall Art for Forgetful People

A list of the birthdays we forget.

Dan and I used forget our family members' birthdays all the time. And then I saw an awesome idea on Pinterest for a birthday calendar and found this etsy shop that makes really cute ones in any colors you want. I asked Dan for one for my birthday (after telling him the exact colors I wanted and listing everyone's birthdays, obviously) and now it's hanging in our kitchen. To be honest, we still forget everyone's birthday, but we no longer have an excuse. And we have something cute in our kitchen now, so it's still an improvement I guess.

Ok, so those are some of my favorite things hanging on the walls of our home. If you've written any posts with pictures of things on the walls in your house, please give me the link in the comments so I can steal your ideas. Thanks!

Statistics show that most people who click this are talented and ridiculously good looking.

The one in which I am bad at emergencies but great at smelling.

A "fun" fact about me is that I'm fairly awful under pressure. If you ever have an emergency, I will be happy to sympathize with you after the fact, but you really, really shouldn't call me for help during the emergency unless you're prepared to give me very detailed step-by-step instructions on what to do. I don't even freak out, necessarily; I just become completely immobile because I literally have no idea what I should do. It's like my brain sees an emergency and decides to take a time-out until the emergency is over. Fortunately, I am married to someone who has chosen "being good at emergencies" as a career THREE times. He worked as an EMT while attending police academy, then he worked as a police officer while attending medical school, and now he works as an emergency physician. So he is professionally good at emergencies, and I am a disaster at them. I have often maintained that Dan is proof that God takes care of me. I know of only one police officer/ER doctor in the world, and I'm married to him.

Anyway, this morning when I woke up, I came out into our living room and smelled a very, very faint smell of natural gas. (Dan hadn't smelled anything when he left for work, but he always tells me I have the nose of a bloodhound, so it's not unusual for me to smell something that he can't.) Since I just told you how bad I am at dealing with emergencies, I will now give you a multiple choice quiz to test your reading comprehension skills.

Question: When I smelled gas in my house this morning, what did I do?
     
     A - Called the gas company.
     B - Called 911.
     C - Ran around screaming.
     D - Stood there sniffing for a while, made a cup of coffee, opened a window, drank a few sips of coffee, sent text messages to various people that said "I just woke up, and I think our house kind of smells like natural gas! What should I do?" And then when my professionally good-at-emergencies husband responded with, "Call the gas company and get out of the house," I promptly forgot the name of our gas company and then was unable to figure out how I could find their phone number, so he had to text it to me. And then I put on eyeliner before I called them. 

Um. The answer is D. D, people! I put on eyeliner before I called the gas company.

The fact that I'm writing this is obviously an indication that I'm not dead, so that's good. The gas company sent someone out, and she walked around with some sort of meter that checked for gas in our house, and she found nothing. And then she went outside and checked our line and our meter, and still found nothing. So of course I felt like an idiot. But at least I was wearing eyeliner.

She left, and I took Lucas upstairs and put him in the pack and play so that I could take a shower now that I had been assured that we weren't going to die, and I sent follow-up texts to the people I had texted initially (and by the way, out of the three people I texted, all three knew to call the gas company before putting on eyeliner...) letting them know that I was just crazy and there was no gas. And then I heard a knocking at the door and then someone open the door and yell, "Hello? Hello?"

It turns out that the gas company sprays something on your gas meter to check for leaks, and at first she hadn't seen anything, but then when she went to rinse it off before she left, there were tons of bubbles all over it, which meant there was a leak in our gas meter. Outside. Far away from where I had smelled the gas. And all of the windows were closed. At least three times, she said "There is no way you could've smelled that from inside." Except that I did. And when I texted Dan to tell him, he responded with "Ha!!! That's because you are a bloodhound."

It was a simple fix, and we weren't ever actually in danger, which is nice, but this is probably an indication that Dan should conduct mandatory disaster drills in our home on a weekly basis so that I don't drown because a water pipe bursts and I spend hours sitting under it while wondering what I should do.

In the meantime, if you can think of a good name for a super hero whose super power is an incredible sense of smell but whose main weakness is an inability to do anything when there's an emergency, please let me know.

Father's Day Finger Painting

This is Dan's second Father's Day as a daddy. (Third if you count the fact that I was six weeks pregnant for Father's Day 2011.) I thought that it would be really nice if Lucas could make him something, which is kind of difficult when you consider that Lucas is 16 months old and the only thing he knows how to make is messes. But I didn't let that deter me. Along with everyone else on Pinterest, I had seen the idea of "writing" your child's name with painter's or masking tape on a piece of paper, allowing them to finger paint over top of it, and then peeling off the tape to reveal a one-of-a-kind masterpiece. I figured that would be something a 16 month old could do, and it would have the added bonus of keeping him occupied for a little while. I had a pack of three canvases that I bought at least four years ago with the intentions of making some sort of awesome craft project that never actually got made (shocking,) so I took one of those and put the words "World's Best Daddy" on it with painter's tape. (Pro Tip - if you're going to do this, try to find a phrase that doesn't use a capital "B" in it. That one letter alone took me 10 minutes.)

Using a finger paint recipe that I found here, I mixed up some paint. (If you're too lazy to click the link, the recipe is 3 Tablespoons sugar, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1/2 cup corn starch, 2 cups water. Mix them together in a pan, then heat and stir on the stove until it thickens. Let it cool, then spoon it into containers and add food coloring. Add more food coloring than you think you need, because it will look lighter than you expected when painted onto paper/canvas.) For the record, this paint came off of our skin really easily, and it also washed out of my clothes with no stains left behind, even though I didn't put the clothes in the wash until the next day. But don't wear your favorite outfit or anything. I can't guarantee that you'll have the same experience. It probably depends on the food coloring you use. Please don't sue me.

While I was making the paint, Lucas occupied himself by doing this:

I took the paint, canvas, Lucas, and a whole roll of paper towels; stuck them all in a giant box on my back deck; then climbed in myself. (It was a really big box.) At this point, I expected it to be like every picture I've ever seen of a child finger painting, ever. My child would be elbow-deep in paint, gleefully coating the canvas, box, and himself with all of the paint he could get his hands on. Instead, Lucas confirmed something that I was starting to suspect - he hates getting dirty. He tentatively stuck his fingers into the paint, immediately regretted his decision, tried to wipe his hand off on his shirt, realized too late that I had removed his shirt and that he was wiping paint on his chest, then just stared in dismay at his messy hand and torso.

I eventually got him to do a little bit of painting by doing it myself while making ridiculously over-excited noises to show how fun it was. The rest of the "painting" was from Lucas sitting on the canvas while playing with paper towels, walking across (and occasionally falling onto) the canvas while trying to escape the box, and halfheartedly wiggling his legs across the the bottom of the canvas.

However, we ended up with a gift for Dan that he can hang in his office until we can replace it with a piece of art that Lucas makes willingly (instead of one that his mean mommy forced him to make.)

See the big red splotch next to the letter B? That's where I tried to put Lucas's footprint onto the canvas. He screamed like I was trying to chop his foot off.

When it was dry, I peeled off the tape and then sprayed it with a clear acrylic coating to hopefully help preserve it. (I have no idea whether that last step was actually necessary.)

Lucas proudly gave his present to Dan (ok, he actually looked at it like he'd never seen it before), and Dan really likes it, so we'll classify this as a success.

Hope everyone had a wonderful Father's Day (and that no one else's gift made their children quite as angry as this gift did.)

In Honor of My Husband

I love my husband. I've never made a secret of that. I'm very much a "wear your heart on your sleeve" kind of girl. So if sappy stuff makes you gag, you might want to skip this post. Because I'm going to tell you why I'm thankful for my husband today.

Today I am thankful for my husband because he spent 20 minutes vacuuming the floor. Not because it needed to be vacuumed, but because our little man has a fever of 102.6, and the vacuum is his favorite thing ever. So Dan ran the vacuum to help L feel better.

This child loves vacuums.

Today I am thankful for my husband because last night he worked until 1 am and then came home and assembled a kitchen chair.

Today I am thankful for my husband because he gave me a back massage this morning while L was napping without me even having to beg. (Ok, I may have begged a little.)

As of this month, we have been "together" for nine years (married for six), and I'm still finding new reasons to be thankful for him. So this post is for Danny, who will only read it if I make him. Thanks, baby!

Who are you thankful for today?

"Married to Medicine"

Many of you saw this post on my Facebook page about a month ago:

Well after I got over the fact that Bravo shunned me, I decided that I could still capitalize on the reality show material that is my life. After all, I'm almost exactly as glamorous as the women on the show. Take Friday for example - I started off the day with an oatmeal hair mask designed to make my hair silky and shiny for my next social event. I mean, if you want to get technical about it, it wasn't so much an "oatmeal hair mask" as it was Gerber oatmeal spit out by my son. And my next social event involved a play date for two one-year-old boys. But still. Toe-may-toe, toe-mah-toe. 

In case you want to see the trailer, you can see it here. But really, you don't need to watch the trailer, because you can get a sneak peek into the life of a real doctor's wife right here on this very blog! Sure, I spend more time reading "How Loud is a Lion?" than sipping champagne while wearing diamonds and a fur coat. And yes, I typically wear yoga pants and slippers instead of an evening gown and stilettos. But the point is that we doctors' wives are a glamorous bunch. And as evidenced on the show's trailer, it's our style to use the phrase "doctor's wife" at least once every three sentences. Otherwise, how would anyone ever know how glamorous and sophisticated we truly are? I'm so glad that someone finally made a show about doctor's wives so that they could perpetuate the idea that doctors are raking money in hand over fist and don't owe a quarter of a million dollars in medical school loans.*

In conclusion, I would just like to say - "doctor's wife."

*When Dan was applying to medical schools, a financial representative at one of the schools said, "We prefer to call it '$250,000 in debt' instead of 'a quarter of a million in debt' because it sounds better." And he's right, when you put it that way, it gives you the warm, fuzzy feeling that you'll be paying off debt for the rest of your natural life.