Ma Na Ma Na

It's been a lackluster week. K. and I are both deep into our winter doldrums and won't be coming out until March 21. This calls for a music video!

Funny how setting your life to music makes it seem so much more vibrant than it actually is. That's why John Williams makes the big bucks.

Tag

Tags are going around like the winter flu, and we decided it was time to offer our contribution.  Here is our response to a tag from our friend Rosalyn:

K. first:

Where we met:  At a party at our friend Amy-I-don't-remember-her-last-name's house.  Though I probably have her name written down somewhere else (in the attic) if I wanted to dig out really old photos.  April of 1998.  The second answer to that question is, at a similar party our freshman year when our mutual friends tell us we must have met, but neither of us noticed.

How long we dated before we got hitched:  Five months.

How long have we been married:  Ten years, baby!!

What's my favorite feature about him:  Well, bizarrely enough I really enjoy his profile, either because it's quite nice or I'm getting bored on long car trips and sitting in church pews through many meetings with kids between us.   He's also got extra-great calves, I hope a few of our kids have them too, rather than mine.

What's my favorite quality about him:  He's so completely genuine.  He's real.

What's his nickname for me:  Usually Bright-Eyes.  Otherwise just a random smattering of endearments.

His favorite color:  Blue, I believe.

His favorite food:  Hmm.  Does pie count as a food?  If not, then maybe grub mountain.  For all you non-family, that's mashed potatoes piled high with peas and whatever else you might be able to find, gravy over all.  He also really enjoys the Hairy Mexican sushi at Mikimoto's, if you ever want to order him takeout.

His favorite sport:    Walking/hiking/exploring, if that's a sport.  Solitary, interesting, non-coordinated.  He most wishes he could play basketball.

Who said the L word first:  I'm sure it was him, but I don't actually remember when.

First kiss when and where:  At the mouth of Provo Canyon, sometime in July of 1998.

Favorite couple thing to do:  Watch TV series through Netflix months and months after everyone else.  Don't ruin any season enders for us please, we'll get to them next year...

How many kids:  Four.

His hidden talent:  Composing poetry and song lyrics.  His off-the-cuff lyrics are usually stunningly good.

His age: 32.

His favorite music:  Whatever the old 107.5 "The End" used to play in Provo.  I don't know what to call the style, since I only really know classical music.

What I admire most about him:  He wants to do what's right, and sticks with it, even though it's not really his basic nature.  Not that he's bad or anything, but he's more distractible than I am and yet consistently overcomes those distractions through sheer good desire.  I, on the other hand, mostly am a boring rule-follower and when I'm tempted to get out of line duty and guilt kick in.

His favorite pastimes:  Films.  Books by Elmore Leonard, Patrick O'Brian and Cormac McCarthy.  And films.  Did I say films?

(Though, he's grown up quite a bit and doesn't obsess like he used to at all.)

Will he read this:  Yes, but not until after he does his half.

OK, this is S. now:

Where we met: A pre-finals party--apparently we both came out of the same group of freshmen friendships but didn't meet until K. was on the verge of graduation.

How long we dated before we got hitched: About five and a half months.

How long have we been married: Ten years of profound contentment (give or take a few weeks of discontent).

What's my favorite feature about her:  K. smiles in such a bright way.  I never get tired of hearing her voice, either.  I'll stick with those two features and save us all some embarrassment.

What's my favorite quality about her:  I fell in love with K. early on, but what really clinched it was her sense of priorities.  During our first real heart-to-heart it became clear to me that K. was willing to forego lesser things in order to do right by God and her family, and that combination of a clear head and a good heart has done more for our long-term happiness than anything else I can think of.

What's her nickname for me:  We both call each other Good-Lookin', as in, "Hey, Good-Lookin', have you signed our tax return yet?"

Her favorite color:  Um . . . Green?  (She wears a lot of brown tones because it goes well with her coloring, but I wouldn't call Brown a favorite...)

Her favorite food:  Mexican is probably her favorite despite having worked at Taco Bell and seeing how the food is made.  Generally speaking, K. loves legumes more than anyone I know.

Her favorite sport: Neither of us are too sporty, but she did play on a church basketball team for a while.  Other than that, I would say bread-making is her contact sport of choice.

Who said the L word first: I did.  She had no idea nor any reciprocal feelings until I told her.

First kiss when and where:  I remember it being on a foggy summer morning, in the foothills of Y Mountain, just after some early morning bird-watching.

Favorite couple thing to do: Giving each other knowing/loving/rueful looks when one of the kids has done something funny/adorable/exasperating.  We used to read more books aloud, but I think it's my turn to pick and I can never make up my mind.

How many kids: 1 boy followed by 3 girls.

Her hidden talent:  K. is a quick study when it comes to dancing.  Also, she's a crack-up, though I think I may be the only one who gets to see that side of her...

Her age: A year younger than me. 

Her favorite music: Classical.

What I admire most about her:  K. is a doer--she enjoys working something out intellectually but doesn't let that stand in the way of actually getting things done.  She inspires me daily to make something better of myself.

Her favorite pastimes: K. loves making lists, playing the piano, crunching numbers, cooking good food and reading books.

Will she read this:  Guaranteed.  We don't have any secrets anymore :)

Whew!  That was probably more of a tag than anyone wanted to read, but we've never been tagged before and there was a lot of self-indulgence that had to come out.  Thanks to Rosalyn for giving us the excuse.  We tag: Dave, Christie, Tiff, Jessica and Jean (and no need for both spouses to participate--ours just got a little out of hand...).

Bright Christmas

At long last, here's a few photos from our Christmas trip to Sacramento.  My whole side of the family was there, and it felt like a real vacation to see everyone.
Sage, Lucy and their cousin Ellie had a lot of shared TV-watching to catch up on.
This being our first visit to my parents' new house, we were sure to take advantage of the lake in their backyard.  The weather was cool--low 50s and foggy for most of the trip, but warm enough for chilly East Coasters like us.  (And by the way, thank you Grandma Clawson for all the wonderful, flannel pajamas.  I can't remember when I've had such warm pajamas--you put store brands to shame.)
During the two weeks we were there, I think just about every single family member took charge of one meal or another.  As always, Aunt Christie tried to duck the paparazzi, but you can't hide forever, Coosh.
All our photos from Christmas morning have a blurry, ebullient sense of motion.  Not surprising, considering there were 17 of us in my parents' living room.  That night we enacted the Christmas pageant with a full cast.
Uncle "Moneybags" Bob was very thoughtful in giving our family a Nintendo DS, which was a boon on the plane ride home.  As the picture shows, the DS has somehow managed to become a unifying rather than divisive force among our kids.  Thanks, Bob.  It's good to have an uncle like you.
The day after Christmas we played with Aunt Tiffany and cousins Ellie and Eric at playground in a nearby gated community.  The entire area, my parents' neighborhood included, was nothing but one gated community after another.  In other news, Lucy found Boxing Day to be a great disappointment.
A day trip to Lake Tahoe satisfied my hankering both for snow and for the landscape of the West.  Good thing, because I think I was starting to pine.
The path to the overlook point was closed, so we weren't able to test the claim about being able to see 100-feet down into the lake, but it was clear and blue and beautiful.  It was so zen that K. and I even tried a little meditation (which K. is very good at and and I am very not).
You couldn't ask for a more picturesque backdrop than the Sierra Nevadas.  Later we went snowmobiling on a golf course surrounded by sunlit, craggy peaks.  Not bad for a three-hour round trip.
On New Year's Day (Mom's birthday) Dad drove us to Sutter's Mill to see where the Gold Rush began.  Mish and Kyle filled their heads with knowledge.
Dad explained and expounded.  Ian and I panned for gold in the frigid waters by the mill, but sadly I think that I will still have to pay for his college education.
Here's most of the fam celebrating Mom's 39th birthday.  Doesn't Mom look young? (and don't we look like a happy family?)
A day or so later Mom and Dad showed us Old Sacramento and the California State Railroad Museum.  Here it was discovered that Lucy's spirit animal is the locomotive.

Of course I'm leaving all sorts of good memories out.  My brother-in-law Joe brought the family together by hauling his Guitar Hero equipment (including drum set) all the way from Hawaii so that "Carry On My Wayward Son" could get stuck in our collective unconscious.  Bob got out his DDR mats so that we could all be entertained by synchronized hopping.  Dad, Christie, Bryce, Tiff, Mish, Kyle, K. and I sang "This is the Christ" in four part harmony for my parent's congregation, and then spent Sunday afternoon singing through all the hymn arrangements my Dad has composed over the years.  Then there were all the moments just sitting around and talking with Mom and Dad, brothers and sisters, spouses, nieces and nephews.  We so rarely get to see everyone anymore, but by any measure this was a wonderful trip.  Faith, fun, and family.  That's what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown. 

"Love is What You Go Through Together" (His and Hers, Part Two)

Where does the time go?  I thought I'd get an early start on a post about hitting our ten-year anniversary milestone, and liked the idea of breaking our marriage down into its raw data, but somehow I could never muster the energy to tally all the numbers and make all those charts.  That was over two months ago.  With our anniversary deadline making a nifty whooshing sound as it passed by, I finally reached a point where I had to finish this post in order to address the rest of our blog backlog (Christmas, etc.).  Now that I look at the finished graphs, however, I'm glad that I finally took the time to compile them--they make it easier to believe that the past ten years really happened and that K. and I really shared them.  Now, the next time one of us stops and wonders what happened to the prime of our lives, we can look at these charts and remember that we hit the ground running.  

K and I were talking marriage about a week after becoming an item, and got engaged about a month after that.  Fortunately, we both agreed that we wanted to be young parents and took it on faith that we'd find a way to start a family before getting settled materially.  Now, when I think about the depth of my feeling for this family, I realize that the most meaningful part of my life--the part when I began to feel most fully myself--began with that early leap of faith.  Happy anniversary, sweetheart.  I'll say this much about us--we don't waste time.

His and Hers, Part One

Each of us has so many thoughts about our decade of life together, that we'll have to split up the blog posts. In Part One, K will focus on our recent anniversary trip to New York City...

Since it's impossible to see all of New York in just over 48 hours, we decided the focus of our trip would be culture.  Art, music, theater, all the grown-up stuff that we could really enjoy without the kids.  We'll have to do food, historical sites, ethnic enclaves and parks another time.  Maybe in 5 years the kids won't be cranky standing in lines?

So, we arrived Thursday afternoon and spent the whole afternoon wandering gloriously in the Met.  Incredible Greek, Roman and Asian sculptures.  (K. really likes sculptures.)  We had to find food eventually, in the basement cafeteria, which tasted very marvelous and reminded us of the rare time or two we ate at the Museum Cafe as BYU students.  

That evening, we dressed up for Carnegie Hall and heard the Boston Symphony Orchestra perform the Rite of Spring.  It almost wouldn't have mattered what they played, we would have enjoyed being in that beautiful concert hall and hearing live music together.  We've only gone to one other concert in our marriage, and that was years and years ago when K. worked at a classical radio station and happened to get some free tickets, so this was really an occasion.   

Friday we slept in a little and then spent the day doing all things modern -- modern art, that is.  We pulled off both the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and the Guggenheim and enjoyed, among other greats, an all-you-can-see buffet of van Gogh's paintings, which was K.'s special favorite part of the whole trip.  It's amazing and wonderful how moving some oil on a canvas can be in person.

We also found time to wander around a little, to see Times Square and the Rockefeller Center's giant tree both in daylight and lit up at night.  We took a look inside Saks Fifth Avenue that day too, and bought a little reindeer bell ornament to commemorate our anniversary.  As an added bonus, it's nice and indestructable.  We had looked at ornaments at the Met store and loved some pretty glass ones, but they were much too expensive and breakable.  A $4 brass Rudolph was a much better fit.

Friday we also stood in the half-price TKTS line and got tickets to a show for that night, The 39 Steps.  K. voted the play her second favorite thing about the whole trip, after the van Gogh.  It only had a cast of 4, with two of the actors playing dozens of characters, sometimes nearly simultaneously, which was hilarious.  It has been described as Hitchcock meets Monty Python, a spy novel cum comedy.  Very fun.  Noir and comic at the same time was just the right style for our taste.

Saturday was our last few hours in New York, and we headed up to the top of the Empire State Building to see the city in the clear early-morning air.  Then we walked through Macy's to pick up some Christmas cheer from the crowds and lights.  In fact, around lunchtime all of a sudden we saw hundreds of people dressed in Santa suits out on the streets.  They appeared to be about college-age (both genders, the girls in short red skirts) and spoiling for a party.  It was memorable, and a fun indication of what S. liked best about the trip, which was just being in the city and knowing that there was always something going on.  

A special shout goes out to K.'s dad, who was the unsung hero in this adventure.  He drove all the way out from Michigan to stay with the kids so that we could kick up our heels without them.  And K.'s mom, who could spare him at this busy time of year and managed to very gracefully swallow her jealousy at not being a direct part of the anniversary event.  Thank you, thank you!  And we've tried to spare you too much mushiness and bragging -- or at least postpone it until Part Two is published -- but wow, what a wonderful 10 years with the best marriage on earth!  We wouldn't trade it for anything.