Joining the Smug Marrieds

Tuesday, January 06, 2009

I mentioned in conversation (I think with my parents) a little while ago that I was going to search for a stay-at-home-dads support group for Beau. He sometimes struggles with the SAHD thing, understandably. My encouragement about his Dadhood is not sufficient to sooth him at times. And the product of his hard work, Jesse, sometimes hinders any encouragement (as toddlers will do when they act like toddlers).

ME: I think Beau needs to connect with other Dads in his situation, to share their feelings and to encourage one another.

I think someone said something here, but then the lightbulb lit in my own head.

ME: What am I saying? Men don’t share feelings. They’d talk about sports and cars and whatever else men talk about.

At that Beau looked at me and said, “And I don’t talk about those things either, so I guess the support group idea is out.” Or words to that effect.

True enough - Beau would much rather talk about political philosophy or theology or the latest non-fiction book he read or something more deeply intellectual.

Why he married me is mystery at times since I’m all about pop culture and TV and would rather die a fiery death than read non-fiction. (Not really, but you know what I mean.)

Anyway, I just want to say to the interweb masses that Beau is a fantastic husband and father. He may not be doing what he is wired to do (be the full-time homemaker), but he’s doing it pretty well regardless. I’m well taken care of as his wife and know that I am deeply loved and Jesse is a happy, well-adjusted, sweetly natured, mostly obedient little boy (he is almost 2, after all) who loves to learn about everything around him. His Daddy so patiently takes every opportunity to teach - one example being from lunch today when Jesse held out his hands and said, “Mess!” I handed him a napkin to play with and left it at that. Beau then came over and patiently showed Jesse how to actually use the napkin to wipe his little hands clean. And do you know that Jesse would grab that napkin each time he felt he needed to wipe off the “mess” and did an increasingly great job at it?

Beau, you are a great father. Never doubt that. As I’ve told you countless times, when Mother’s Day comes and all of the Mom’s get accolades for their hard work at caring for and raising the children, you have to understand that you are in that group of loving parents. I love you and couldn’t ask for a better father for my precious children. God has blessed our little family with such a Godly, loving, and faithful Dad.

Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Happy anniversary, my love.

It has been an amazing and wonderful three years of marriage with you. I know our future years together will be as blessed.

I love you!

Tuesday, December 30, 2008

I wasn’t going to tell this tale on the blog at all because the whole thing was supposed to be a surprise for Beau and he reads the blog, of course. But then the surprise was ruined with a couple ill-timed phone calls, so here it is for your enjoyment. Or whatever…

It all started when Beau’s cousin, who is a talented artist, send out cards to the family after the reunion. She had painted a lovely piece that featured the family homestead and included images of Beau’s Dad and Dad’s brothers with their parents when they were young boys and meaningful texts to correspond. The card itself was really lovely, on textured paper, and I thought it would be a nice thing to frame for Beau. I casually mentioned the idea to him at the time that we received the card (in the late fall) and he seemed to like the idea.

Click the link for The Rest of The Story…

Monday, December 29, 2008

It was really hard to come back to work this morning. At least it is another short week. I’m thinking about taking Friday off to make another long weekend. More on that in a second.

My parents flew to London on Saturday. They were originally going to go to New York City for the weekend, but then realized that it would be about as much money to spend a full week in London. I’m totally jealous. And I miss them, which is sort of silly since I rarely see them during the week anyway. They get home on Friday.

It’s hard to believe our 3rd wedding anniversary is on Wednesday. We have no plans for that night, other than to hang at home. I may see about ordering in dinner rather than cooking. I guarantee that we’ll be dead asleep well before midnight. We’re such an exciting couple.

We were supposed to attend a wedding this Saturday. I asked Beau to call the parents of the bride to double check that they were OK with us bringing Jesse along. If so, we were planning to get a hotel room for that night and then go visit his former church on Sunday morning. If not, then he was going to the wedding alone (it’s in West Virginia). Turns out the groom broke things off on Christmas Eve. I’m so sad for the bride. But the bright side is that we’ll still head to West Virginia to go hang with Beau’s friends (the bride’s parents), whom we haven’t seen in more than a year. He’s going to call them to see if us coming down on Friday-Saturday will work for them. If so, then I’ll take Friday off. If not, then we’ll go for Saturday and come back that night.

Monday, October 27, 2008

We won’t be getting the house. I’m OK with that. And I believe that our house hunt is on hold indefinitely while we work to improve our financial situation. Beau may not agree with me on this, but I’m sure we’ll discuss it at length.

Mentally, emotionally, and physically I’m done with the hunt. I can’t do it anymore. I just can’t.

There are other things that I want and need to be doing with my weekends. There are other things that Beau can be doing with his time as well.

We are done.

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

and the Speaks’ couple is usually awake. I don’t know what’s going on, but one or the other of us wakes up at about 3am every night. This wakes up the other. It’s frustrating.

In other news…

Today is my parents’ wedding anniversary. They are a true model of a couple that have a great marriage - through the trials of my Dad’s Navy career, many moves across the country and to/from England, and dealing with two mostly obedient if headstrong daughters, they have stuck with each other with much love and a steady faith in the Lord whom they serve. Thanks for showing us your great example, Mom and Dad. I hope you enjoy your night out! Love you!!!

I had a terrible couple of days sans Zofran. Long story short, my Rx ran out and I couldn’t get a refill without my doc’s authorization. Monday being a holiday meant that didn’t happen until Tuesday. At least I didn’t get the pills until yesterday because when I called the pharmacy on Monday afternoon/evening to check the status they said it still wasn’t filled. So I spent Monday and yesterday in bed feeling as nauseous as when this all started. I’m still completely dependent on the Zofran to keep me feeling normal and functional. Also very frustrating.

That said, the rest of the weekend was enjoyable. Jesse was adorable with his new obsession with Goodnight Moon or as he calls it “MoMoMoom.” Beau showed him the real moon on Saturday night and now takes him outside to say goodnight to the moon before bedtime. So sweet.

Church was great. I finally had my rotation on worship team and it was so much fun to be singing again. It helped that the guest worship leader was awesome and put together a great set of songs. We were told by many people that they really felt led into true worship, which was our prayer all weekend.

FIOS is great, although the new channel line-up is still confusing me at times. I spent all day Monday watching the DIY Sweat Equity marathon. Love that show. I also watched a couple of episodes of Tim Gunn’s Guide to Style and I think I prefer it over What Not to Wear. He gives better advice on what is essential for a good wardrobe, although they don’t leave the person with much in the wardrobe since they don’t have a huge spending spree like on WNTW. And I love that while Gunn has that hoity-toity accent, he seems to genuinely like each person they makeover regardless of their social status. He’s not the snob you’d expect from listening to him.

In other TV news, I haven’t been watching this season of The Amazing Race. After the initial episode I’ve been meh about it. I watched Batman Begins for the 3rd time on Sunday night instead and probably had a more enjoyable time. I am loving this season of Dancing with the Stars, though.

OK, need to get back to work. Happy Wednesday, people.

Friday, June 27, 2008

The Pork Cook-Off: Mom bagged all of the tenderloins with marinade yesterday. She got 3 tenderloins into each gallon bag with 1 cup of marinade. With 8 bags to go she ran out of marinade. That’s 2 gallons of marinade. So I made a new batch of marinade for the rest of the meat and realized that I’m out of the red pepper flakes that are part of it, so Beau went to buy some for me. Then I’ll add the new marinade to the bags of pork still needing to soak - they’ll get cooked tomorrow so that they have the full day to soak up the flavors.

The cooking of the mass quantities of meat has begun. The first batch is done - 6 tenderloins took 1 full hour to get to temp. Since Mom has the majority of the meat to cook in her 3 ovens (jealous, aren’t you?), we’ll easily get them all done before church tomorrow night.

I will say this - they smell delicious.

The Supreme Court: One really good decision in the midst of some really bad decisions this session. They showed us just how important this presidential election is for determining the course of our country’s legal future. I fear the justices that a President Obama would appoint. I fear the justices a President McCain, too, sadly. We don’t need another Breyer, thank you.

The House: Two things about the house - we are working on a clear division of household chores in order to get things back the way they should be in terms of clutter and cleanliness. We both reached a point of disgust that I hope means we’ll get our butts in gear.

In other house news, I had Beau check on the leak bucket in the attic this morning. Good thing, too. As he headed up the steps, I asked if he needed a flashlight. He said, “No, I’ve got daylight!” What the?

Turns out that during the last thunderstorm that involved significant wind, the flashing thingy that covers the peak of the roof came off. We’ve got an open section of roof right at the peak that’s about 6 feet long and a few inches wide. Landlord/homeowner can’t come look at it until tomorrow AM at the earliest, so Beau is out buying a tarp and weights to cover the hole since we’re expecting thunderstorms this afternoon and through the weekend.

Jesse: Jesse has a mouth full of teeth now. All of the rest of his teeth came in over the past week or so. Poor kid. It means it’s time to make the first dentist appointment for him, too.

With the California trip coming, I was looking for a child-wearing carrier similar to the Ergo we borrowed from the Sleepys since they need the Ergo back for their own travels next month. I love the Ergo, but it’s out of our price range. I found this, which I’m hoping will work well enough with Jesse and then any future babies we may have. (No, I’m not pregnant.)

Sunday, May 04, 2008

There are things that we’re praying about and considering for our future. It’s funny how God presents things, opportunities, ideas and then we need to figure out which of them to pursue or leave behind. It’s weird to line them all up to see how to prioritize them and to realize that we really don’t know what to do, which direction to turn, which fork in the road to take. It’s why we, humanity, get so frustrated with God at times - because he gives us the map, but seemingly without directions. So here’s what we are thinking and praying about now.

1. Beau’s career options. Should he continue the hunt for a full time job or be a stay at home dad for a bit? Should he look for a part time job to bring in a bit of extra money if he does decide to be at home with Jesse?

He has put in for a couple of government jobs, one of which would involve an eventual move to the Dallas area, probably in the fall/winter. But there’s no telling if/when we’ll hear anything on either of them. So we wait.

2. My career options. There is a promotion opportunity opening up in my office. It’s the next grade up and it’s a significant pay increase if I get it. The thing is that 3 other admins in our office are qualified to compete for the job, too, although one of them is Useless One #2 and if management is wise she will never be considered. Because if she is? There will be three loud and legal complaints from the other three candidates. I have a leg up on the other 2 since I have a college degree and neither of them do, but that’s no guarantee that I would get the job. But I’ll put in for it regardless.

My boss is making retirement noises, so that is another possible promotion opportunity, but my chances for that slot are slim to none because of the two folks I know will put in for it and would be considered before I would. And the timing would be such that the new President could determine how things shake out with however he decides to appoint a new Marshal to the district.

3. Our home options. We rent and while our rent is lower than the average for this neighborhood, it is still pretty high. And our neighborhood is in an interesting area. We’ve noticed a lot of realty signs go up in the past several months, including at the home next door. Beau sees them all when he takes Jesse for walks every day. We figured that some of them might be foreclosures, but then the thought occurred that maybe some of the abandoned houses are the result of the new crackdown law on illegals in our county. So this morning, he picked up one of the realty brochures at one of the houses on our street and called to find out the listing price. It is ridiculously cheap. I’m talking prices from about 15 years ago in this part of Northern Virginia - well below $200K - these houses sold for over $350 just a couple of years ago.

I did a search on realtor.com and found more than 350 houses listed for less than $175K in our town. Astounding. Of course, many are in parts of town that aren’t that great. But there are several in very nice neighborhoods, clearly bank owned, and for sale “as is.”

I found the listing for the three on our current street and all are priced low. All are vacant and have been for at least a couple of months. But I’m most interested in the one next door. First, because it’s next door - no truck would be needed for the move. Second, it’s an end unit townhouse. Third, the online listing included extra photos and it looks to be in good shape and it’s the same size and basic layout as the one we’re in, including the basement configuration.

So we’re thinking we should buy a house this summer - as soon as possible really, in order to get in before the military transplants come to town looking for houses and buy up the one(s) we may want. But we have nothing for a down payment and we’d have to try to get a mortgage on my meager salary. As low as the listing price is, I’m not sure we can get a mortgage for it.

I’ve got a nervous knot in my belly just thinking about it.

And then if Beau gets the job in Dallas and we just bought a house here, then what do we do?

It’s too much to think about right now. So we pray. Pray. Pray. Pray.

Oy vey.

Monday, April 21, 2008

Remember the noise in the middle of the night that woke us up last week?

We think it was our living room window treatments.

I noticed that they were not hanging in the window as they should be on Saturday.

See, my Mom and I jerry-rigged our treatments in order to have lovely curtains for Thanksgiving. But the set-up finally gave out. We have sheers on one of those shower curtain tension rods. Then resting on top of that rod was a 1x3 with the valance stapled to the top. It covered the rod beautifully, but I guess it was a matter of time when the weight would cause it all to crash.

The metallic clanging noise we heard? It must have been the wood hitting the silver tea set on the dresser in the window. Interestingly, not a piece of that tea set was disturbed or out of place.

So we put the sheers back in place and we think we’re going to use drywall screws to attach the valance to the upper part of the window opening.

Wow, it’s Monday again?

Friday night we decided to go out for dinner. We went to Panera and since it was across from Wal-Mart, we went there, too. There is a reason why we don’t shop together, although we laughed that what we spent probably covers what we would spend independently, too.

Saturday dawned early, as usual. Honestly, I can’t remember what I did on Saturday, although I did finish a special order item for a customer. Beau washed and detailed my car, just in time for yesterday’s torrential rains. But my car is lovely clean inside. The only downer is that he inadvertently hit the eject button of the CD player, so the CD did eject. I have no clue where I was on that CD of the book I’m listening to. And four days later (last time listened to was Thursday PM - next time listened to will be Tuesday AM), I’ll have a hard time finding my place. Oh well.

We went to church Saturday night as usual and my parents good friends S & A from Georgia were in town. I wasn’t sure if they’d arrive in time for church, but they did. And Uncle Bill was there, too! The service was good and then we had dinner at my parents’ home, which was fun.

Sunday dawned super early - 4:45am with Annie barking. Beau got up to try to let me sleep later, but I was fully awake and when he came back at 5:30am I gave up the battle and got up. I turned off the baby monitor so that Beau could sleep even after Jesse woke up. I spent a quiet morning drinking fresh coffee and fast forwarding through Survivor and Battlestar Galactica on the DVR. The rest of our dreary and rainy Sunday was spent lazing about. Jesse woke up at about 7:30am - I dressed and fed him and then we played for a bit before I put him in the playyard. Beau woke up later and took Jesse so that I could catnap. Then I spent the afternoon working on jewelry before we watched I Am Legend. After dinner with watched the final episode of John Adams - such a good miniseries. Really well done.

Today, Annie woke up again at 4:45am. I got up and made a fresh pot of coffee, then went down to laze in the recliner while I woke up more. Then I started to work at about 6:30am. And I goofed off perusing the Disney World website - Moms Forum - to find answers to my questions about taking a toddler under 3 to the parks. Turns out it’s easy-peasy.

Last thing - we all needed a haircut so we decided to all go to Cartoon Cuts since they cater well to kids. Jesse went first and was incredibly traumatized, but the stylist was great to keep going even when Jesse was screaming-crying and wiggling to get away. He’s got a cute haircut (pictures to be taken later - he’s napping) and looks more like a little boy. I went next since he wanted to be held by Daddy as he recovered from the trauma. By the time I was done, he was giggling and happy again, and then Beau got his hair cut. There followed a lunch at Chik-Fil-A and then back home.

And about now I’m so ready for a nap. *yawn*

Sunday, February 10, 2008

After two years of marriage, Beau and I have finally merged our finances (in a sense - via Quicken). We have a better idea of our monthly income and expenses. We still need to work on an actual budget, but we’re taking baby steps. Included in the baby steps was increasing our tithe to the full 10%. We’ve been tithing, but we knew we weren’t quite at 10% (although we were closer than I thought). So we’re trusting God to provide for our needs and to help us be more frugal and wise in our spending as we give what we ought back to Him first, especially since Beau only has the equivalent of one small class this semester. So far we’re doing well.

We’re also trying to use cash only for our regular expenses. We got into the bad habit of using a credit card after Jesse was born, but we just can’t continue doing that, so we’re cutting way back and I’ve already done a few things to reduce our monthly expenses.

I’ve also committed to stop putting our money into my business like I did last year. It turns out that I recouped that money at the end of the year in good sales, but it probably didn’t help us throughout the year as we used the credit card instead of the cash we would have had otherwise. So if I don’t have the money in the business account for the spending I want to do, then the spending will have to wait until I have a sale or two to pay for it. Fortunately, I have plenty of supplies on hand with which to make new things. The only thing I must buy is butane for my torch so that I can make the findings that I do need.

Related to this ... I spent a long couple of days of sorting through my business accounting to get the Schedule C form completed (last night!). Then it took me all morning, but our taxes have been e-filed and we will be getting a nice refund (much nicer that I expected, actually) from the feds and state. We’re grateful since we need the cash for our Disney trip. If I had taken a loss on the business, then our refund would have been better, but that’s OK. I’m happy for the profitable business year.

Add the extra rebate we will be getting from Uncle and both of our vacations are well paid for. *phew*

Thanks, Lord, for the immediate blessing.

Tuesday, February 05, 2008

Beau caught something last week. We have no clue how since he was pretty much at home all week except for small group and PHC classes and then a trip to Wegmans after classes on Friday. He started feeling sick early on Friday, so he caught something before then. No one in small group is sick ... yet. It’s a complete mystery.

He was full on sniffling and sneezing and miserable on Sunday. I felt the first indications of it late last night, just before going to bed. This morning I’ve got the full on sniffling and sneezing and misery. We think Jesse has it, too, but he may be a little behind me in his development of symptoms.

It sux.

I have a busy day, but I’m going to try to get things organized to work at home tomorrow so as not to infect my coworkers. That way I can be at home in my misery, but still get some work done (yay for telework) without having to take a full day of leave. I’ll probably call the sitter tonight to cancel for tomorrow night - no sense in getting her infected, too. Marmie’s day with Jesse has been cancelled as well.

*sigh*

Wednesday, January 09, 2008

We have a potential babysitter for Jesse. Have I mentioned this before? I can’t remember.

Anyway, I initially called her a couple of weeks before Christmas and we played some phone tag. Then Christmas and our colds came and I forgot about following up to see if she would work and all that entails.

Our small group meetings resume tonight and I just realized that I never arranged for our babysitter. So I called and left a voicemail to follow up on that and I’m planning to stay home with Jesse tonight.

The cool thing is that this kid (she’s 15) has infant CPR training and is a certified American Red Cross (I think) babysitter. She doesn’t drive, of course, but I think she lives on my commute home, so I can pick her up on the way and her mother assured me they would be happy to pick her up.

It’ll be nice to have a regular sitter for Jesse. Then maybe we can start to go out on the occasional date, too.

Tuesday, January 01, 2008

We had a really full weekend.

Friday: Got home from work, had dinner, watched a movie with Beau. Normal Friday, actually. We watched Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. I fell asleep halfway through, which means it can’t have been that good. 2 stars out of 5.

Saturday: I can’t remember what we did early in the day. In the afternoon/evening we had our family gathering with my Dad’s side of the extended family. It was a lot of fun, as always. Jesse did well with all of the new people. We had a lovely dinner and opened gifts. Soon after we left since Jesse was pretty much done with all of the excitement at that point. We draw names for the gift giving since there are so many of us. My cousin bought me the coolest gift, which I love, love, love (and which is much more expensive that I expected - yowzah!).

Sunday: We hit the road in the morning to make it for the service at Beau’s former church in Harrisonburg. It was great to see folks that we hadn’t seen in two years. And they all enjoyed seeing Beau and Jesse. After the morning service, we went to S/L’s house for lunch and to hang out until the evening service. They were lovely hosts, lunch was delicious, and we appreciated their hospitality. Jesse did well, playing in his Pack-n-Play while we ate and then taking a good nap. We watched the first half of the Redskins-Cowboys game until it was time to leave for church. The service that evening was their hymn sing followed by a potluck dinner. Fun times and Jesse, again, did really well with meeting so many new people. He is definitely a people person. We got home at about 10:30pm and hit the hay.

Monday: As I posted yesterday, it was our 2nd anniversary. We had a lazy day, although Beau did spend some time reorganizing a storage closet for today’s cleaning spree. He also went for a long overdue haircut and then got inspired to cut Jesse’s hair, which was in need as well. So Jesse got his first haircut in our kitchen, with much screaming and crying because he was scared of the clippers we used. Poor little guy. His cut isn’t quite as polished as it would be if a pro had done it, but I defy any pro to cut a wriggling baby’s hair straight. I’ll take pictures for posting later - he looks pretty good, we think.

Then we took him to my parents, who watched him while Beau and I enjoyed a date night. We went for an early dinner at one of our favorite places - Uncle Julio’s Rio Grande Cafe - great fajitas! Their special for last night was the Cadillac Platter (lobster tail with fajitas) and Beau suggested I get it, so I did. It was absolutely delicious. He got beef fajitas.

After dinner we walked over to the movie theater to see National Treasure: Book of Secrets. We both enjoyed this fun movie. I cracked up at the cameo from Frank Herzog, a local sports journalist, who for years was part of the radio broadcast team for Redskins games with Sam Huff and Sonny Jurgensen. We don’t think this sequel is as good as the first movie, but it was still fun and went to some cool places in the hunt. 3.5 stars out of 5.

We picked up Jesse, spent a bit of time chatting with my folks, and got home at about 10:30pm. Sadly, we did not ring in the new year at midnight. We went to bed and fell asleep pretty quickly since we were pretty tired. But it was a great day spent with my sweetie and baby.

Today: Clean up day. We’re de-Christmasing and cleaning the whole house. Fun times. I have pork chops cooking in the crock pot for dinner (and plenty of leftovers this week). It’s a great looking recipe from a crock pot cookbook Mom gave to me for Christmas. I did tweak it slightly to make it my own, so if it worked I’ll be sure to post the recipe.

Hope your New Year’s holiday is a good one. Happy new year!

Monday, December 31, 2007

For our first anniversary last year, Beau and I spent a romantic night in Labor and Delivery at the hospital after I had another bleeding event with my pregnancy. It was definitely memorable.

For our second anniversary, today, Beau and I plan a lazy day at home and then we’ll take Jesse to my parents who will babysit while we enjoy an evening out together for dinner and a movie.

It seems like more than two years since our magical New Year’s Eve wedding (and I mean that in the best sense). But I can remember that evening like it was yesterday, too. I’d do it all over again, except for a slightly longer reception so that we could actually enjoy some of it with our guests.

I love you, Beau. Happy Anniversary, love of my life.