Oh, January!

Pictures: #1-Jeff Smith, circa 1989. Credits to Stephanie Wallace, who lured all the cute punk kids to her house for youth group. (What a baby face!) #2 Grace and me took dozens of pictures like this. We're just sharin' the love! #3 Emma with one of her best friends, Olivia, who turned one on January 9th!

Lots of important dates this month...

Tomorrow is my anniversary. Jeff and I got married 13 years ago! I can hardly believe it. Even more random...I met him as a junior in high school in January, 1989, which was 19 years ago. (He was new to my school.) My classes got switched at semester, and I was put into Jeff's history class. He sat in front of me and I had the hugest crush on him with his long bangs, partially dyed black hair, and ratty t-shirts. I hung out with him until that summer, and he moved away. For the longest time I thought about him, wrote poems about him, and missed him, although I didn't really know why. (We just hung out a lot and kissed a couple of times. Why did his image stick with me?... I wondered.) Now I see it clearly...my future husband was sitting there with his black converse and skater bangs! Our girls were probably humming through the air like pixie dust around us in that stuffy history classroom. The story had a happy ending...although we didn't "find each other" again until 1993 when that boy finally got it right and called/found me. :)

On the 24th, Miss Emma and Miss Grace turn 7! Yowzas! After Jeff and I got married, I was ready to have kids any time. It took us years, 3 or 4 REALLY stressful ones (doctor's visits, adoption plans...yikes.) And it seemed like once they arrived, that first year was just HARD. We were exhausted. Now...those ladies just crack me up every day. Grace tells me she wants to drive a car with "a convertible top with flowers all over it" and that her middle name is "Adorable." If I crack a joke, she says, "Good one, Mama!" Emma, tells me she is going to live next store to me until she's old, looks at me with her serious eyebrows furrowed, asks me about things she's seen on Animal Planet, and tells me she's "not as creative as Grace." :)

I used to despise January. The comfort and coziness of Christmas packed away, the harsh reality of returning to school in Bishop in the dead of winter, when they MADE you go out to recess even if it were FREEZING, and I used to go into the bathroom stall and my legs would be shaking and goosebumpy! The endless second semester. In high school, I was always in trouble in January, grounded from my car, made to stay home.

Now, January is marked with celebration. I feel melancholy, hopeful, and ambitious. Mostly, I feel excited for the two dates that commemorate my favorite people in this life...Jeff and my girls.