Starts off bad, gets better

In my on going battle to get Chad to understand I am not useless, I failed the other night..or he did...or well we had ANOTHER moment. Its get better I promise. I dont know if lightening hit him, he read this blog or  he suddenly realized after 11 years he's kind of mean to me, but what but he said something last night to me he has never said before, and it was actually kind of nice....

BUT FIRST the juicy nasty part.

So I have signed up to be a billet family for a baseball player for the Fort McMurray Giants...long story short, I think It will be good, we get a little ball player here to keep alive for the summer, like a pet! And we get to go to all the home games this summer!

So Chad and I clearly discussed this prior and then while we were having dinner 2 nights ago I say, 

" oh I signed all the forms for the billet thing"

Chad, " oh...well are you sure? You would have to do extra things... like...cook real suppers and stuff, it might not be good...for you..."

I dont know if you all know my faces or not...or can fully understand to the extent that my eyes either shot lasers, or if he noticed that I was biting my tongue so hard it bled....but I think he might have taken notice...

I said " huh, Im sorry, what, like the food we eat every night magically comes from...??"  

As I speak my eyes get bigger, my voice pitcher, and the kids scuttle away as I clear the dishes...from the meal, that must have been delivered by elves. ( elves who cant cook, but nonetheless, I couldn't have made it, for it wasn't a " REAL" supper)

So then we clear the dishes in silence. I tidy up in silence. He leaves the room...comes back...leaves again...comes back...all the while I plot the ways I plan to leave. 

So we go about the next 24 hrs in relative silence and distance and coldness, because I am mad and dont want to talk about it for fear we fight about it, Chad and I really dont ever have out and out fights, just these frustrating Lucy and Desi type convos where he thinks I am foolish...

Then at the end of the next day we are laying in bed, and he says this,

" So I want you to tell me when I am begin negative to you. I want you to just have a code word or call me out on it or something"

Aleaha  " No, Its not my job to make you be nice, and I dont want to be a nag every time you speak your mind by saying something like 'the crows fly east'...or whatever this code will be."

Chad- " no really. I want you too. I really need you too. I am trying to be better, and I am trying to be a more positive person, at home and at work and I have been working so hard on different things but last night I realized that I say things to you that are not nice. I am really negative when I speak to you, and I know thats wrong. I'm really sorry. I dont ever mean to sound so nasty, and I dont ever want you to think that I dont value you because I do. I dont know why I always come across like that. So you need to help me...I just dont mean to be so mean, I really dont....Im going to try to say really nice and positive and good things to you.."

Aleaha - " oh please dont. I dont need praise or a cheerleader"

Chad " I know...and I mean, I guess I dont often give praise, or give credit or say good things because I feel like you just know that I think them, and that you just know...but if I dont say ANY good things, and all I ever do is point out the BAD things, thats not good...and I am sorry...I dont want to do that"

So it was a conversation, it was interesting and I want to be a little clear too...Chad is a fantastic person, he is so giving and so generous, and so smart and so caring about taking care of everyone and tries to be helpful. His helpful in the world of our kids is fantastic. They adore him. His being " helpful" in my world is to offer criticism of all the things that I dont do that he would like, or the things I dont do that dont meet his standards, so he's not MEAN per se, he's just...tough to please. 

So I have high hopes. On his days off I said Im not cooking a single supper and this weekend, he made us 3 very yummy dinners....I have hopes that he and I can work out this SUPER annoying passive aggressive conversation we have all the time and just get over it!

So thats that, I think it was good overall...and then, I might not be able to blog anymore since if Chad smartens up and he likes me, what will I write about?!  

;)

I am going to be a working woman! kind of....

Well Its been a year in the making with a lot of part time work  here and there and wherever I could squeeze it in but I was able to complete and then PASS all the necessary requirements to get my real-estate licence!!

I am giving myself a big pat on the back *PAT PAT*  and a big glass of wine * gulp gulp*

I know that there a TON ( a literal ton, do you know how many real estate agents exist, like, a LOT).....Aaaaaaaand now there are a tonne PLUS ONE.....

Ok so due to the extreme butt load of agents you would think ( and by " you" I mean my husband )  this was an easy endeavour done over the weekend on some online course, a few dollars paid out,  a criminal record check and boom, go sell some houses! AND well you would be WRONG....I should go back and clarify how tricky this was for me due to some really bad past errors as a teenager on my part...ready for that long winded story? Ill be fast I swear....

So when I was Young, like 16 I decided it was a good idea to move away from home and live on my own. WHAT? I know. I have issues relating to stubbornness, unwillingness to reason and ideas of grand jour....I still have those but at 16 I was a total idiot.

So I left home, moved to Calgary, lived with my friend and her family for a summer while off from school... Her somewhat emotional and on occasion "unstable" mother kicked out my friend after a mother daughter argument...( my friend was 19 and got caught doing pot, we were religious and this was a no-no) So OUT my friend...and I trailed along like a lost foolish devoted 16 year old puppy....I was do dumb....HA! Id have been better to live with just her mom, which I am sure she would have allowed but that another story brought on by many years of counselling and reflecting...HA

So out on my own, in Calgary, at 16, with a pot smoking roomie, some poor decisions, a full time job, my own apartment, a pretty jerky boyfriend and 3 years later at 19 I had NOT graduated high school, but did manage to get my driver license, buy a car and get the heck away from said bad boyfriend.

MANY YEARS later....

After working in the insurance industry in a sweet little office job I thought about getting into real estate...but then I did the stable thing and after we got married, I had some babies, quit working (due to too many babies in too short of a time)  and choose to be a stay at home mom with my pretty supportive husband. He's  a pain but he's smart and successful and even if he rolls his eyes at me SO HARD sometimes, he tries to be supportive in his ways...9 years later I NEED OUT. hahaha.

I decided to pursue an old love of real estate but low and behold, surprise surprise one would actually need a high school diploma and PROOF of it to even be considered to allowed to enrol. WELL, I dont have that. Crap, now I have to get it. SO after another few months of Study I zip to Edmonton to take my GED. I did great, all A's on everything but math. Frick that frickity fricken math full of geometry and angles and crap. CRAP. So I actually failed math, by 1.5 percent.

cue tears. cue downward spiral into failure. cue wine. Why does math make me feel like such a failure at life?!?!

OK wahtever, I am grown women, pull yourself together Aleaha!! So I studied, paid more money, wrote that part of the exam AGAIN and passed. With a acceptable 70percent, LOL....I feel like the exam has less angles and degrees and more decimals and fractions which I am actually ok at. That said I still hate math.

I have my GED! SWEET!  Enoll in Real Estate course...be super pumped.....get MASSIVE MANUALS with a LOT of reading...and terms...and rules...and bla bla bla.....so they give you I think 18 months to finish, and I did this really part time so I know people have finished in like 3 months, but I took my time and have been doing it over the course of about 10 months....and I have been LOVING IT! Its so interesting thru all the terms and facts and horror stories called  " case studies" of when people dont pay attention and then get in BIG trouble.

So yesterday I wrote my very last exam to be able to have a licence in residential real estate. It was nerve racking since I am not great at test writing...I have anxiety and second guess myself and then am pretty sure I fail every time....well I never failed a single exam in this course, managed to get over 95 in more than one area and then passed my exam yesterday with a final mark of 85!!

A moment of celebration!  ( cue 90's dance music)

So there is still like 15% I guess I dont know ( and for the record why dont they show you or tell you the ones you get wrong so you can go back and really learn them, see because I thought I put the right answer now there is this 15% mystery that I guess I will find out about down the road, I hope!)

NOW monday morning I am walking into REMAX, signing some forms, forking over more money and then getting set up to start what I hope to be a very enriching career....in the worst real estate market in over a decade. HA.

I feel satisfied, and happy and itching to get started. I wish I would have done all these things years ago, but life happens, and I do think it happens for a reason and maybe 15 years ago I wouldnt of had the work ethic, the patience or understanding to be able to do this? NOW many years later, a husband and 5 kids later I feel like I have been tossed around enough in the world of thankless work that I should be able to be fully attacked by the real esate world and take it like a pro ;)

PEACE and some bad language...

I have a moment of peace today, WA HOO!! Kids are in school, I had zero appointments or errands to run and most of the busy-ness will come towards the end of the day so what the heck am I doing?!  Uh, NOTHING. well kind of.

I cleaned the kitchen, put laundry in, vacuumed, ran upstairs returned some emails, decided to go for a quick jog and then I needed to come write because I have been thinking of something for a while and I just wanted to jot it down quick....its about self talk...

Oh but totally off topic first, kind of off topic but kind of not,  the other night, (because its fun for me to vent about Chad, and truly you can only complain about the ones you love the most because you love them the most, and they drive you the most crazy so its totally ok) the other night we had annoying discussions again....

Chad and I were discussing the end of spring break and I was breathlessly lamenting how I loved not having to be somewhere out the door with al the kids at 7:30 every morning...no lunches to be made at 6:30 am, if the kids wanted to wear the same dirty shirt 2 days in a row, who will judge, not I ! Means less laundry for me....so back to school means a wee bit of freedom for mom ( for exactly 1 hr and 45 mites every morning while Yvette is gone ) but it also means a lot more structured work which is honestly such a pain...waaah

Chad says " oh I feel so bad for you, I get up at 4:00 am every day and am gone for 14 hrs.."

To clarify its 4 days a week....you actually get 3 days off every week where you have no where to be and no one to take care of, just for clarity.

So next I say, well yes that sucks I could never do it and if I was the bread winner I would NOT be choosing that job let me tell you, Id rather stroll the streets at 1 am looking for....ok wait never mind, ....but thats another convo....

So I say that I dont know how he does it, I really couldn't...but at least he gets up at 4am and just has himself to deal with, kind of like the injured arm thing, sucks to get dressed me he's just dressing himself... To get up at 6am and then have to wake up and ready and "excite" 5 little -ish ones for the day to begin is a huge pain in the ass and not nearly as much fun as it sounds ;)  This little joy he has never really had to do....

He and I have talked a LOT in many convos about how I am a horrible stay at home mom ( in some regards I really am, I hate to cook I do it but I suck, in some regards I KICK ASS)  and I REALLY wish that I had any kind of skill set or income or heck even a sugar daddy to fall back on so that Chad could be the " mom" and I could be the money gal. Well I think  this is all fine and good and for me to say I kind of suck is ok because I feel like I am still ok at this mom thing, 90 percent of the time I am a pretty big fail but the kids are turning out well despite my issues and so that makes me feel happy and like I am doing a few things alright.

Then Chad says this little gem on a sunday night while he eats nachos and I wash dishes and sort our the recycle bins...

Chad-  " well, not to belittle what you do, but I am pretty sure I could do it better, no offence I just think we are built different I could handle your stresses a lot better than you do."

WHAT IS WRONG WITH MEN AND HUSBANDS! WHY DO THEY SAY SHIT LIKE THIS.

I swear to god like twice a week I want to either kill Chad or totally leave him for 6 months so he can be better at all the crap I suck at.

The other day we had friends over and her Husband says about her, my friend, his wife( they have one small child as well so he gets the kids stuff kind of)  He says,

" She's amazing, I couldn't do what she does and she makes our life so much easier"

Then my husband says he could do what I do only better.

FUCK THAT FUCKER.

Then I cry on the drive in to school monday morning. Bet people dont know that. Jokes about being a crappy mom from your husband make you feel like a crappy mom and then you cry on the way into school while blasting your free Carly Rae jepsen CD from Ellen, song number 4 " gimmie love" somebody love me....le sigh :(


Ok, I love him so much but why would say that? I know he loves me but what in his make up makes him say that!? He says stupid shit like that ALL THE TIME.

He also said that maybe I could do his job better, so I will give him that, he does think that I can be good at some things and  YEAH I COULD....if I knew the slightest bit about oil, and electricity, and how to BS with men, and viscosity levels and whatever else he does I have no idea...

So THIS story leads me back to my thing about self talk. WOW, that was a big loop around to get back here....

So in the last year I put on some weight about 10 lbs that haven't budged and I have been running again since about 3 months after my surgery and it was a bit hard. It was a LOT hard. So for literally 12 months I have been having a hard time getting back into it, and I would run and yell at myself in my head, I would work out or go to a class or watch myself in the mirror and literally just all the worst things you could say to yourself I said over and over again, thinking that maybe I would just shock myself in to doing it better...or I was just so mad at myself for not " trying harder" but then about 8 weeks ago I had another revelation, that I have known all along but its really hard to remember when you tell yourself for so long that you suck...

WHAT YOU SAY ACTUALLY COMES TRUE.

If you say for so long,  " I cant" or  " I suck"  or  " maybe I will just never get there"  guess what,  that will actually happen.

8 weeks ago I pulled our some old journals from when I was working out and feeling good and like the best version of myself. I loved myself. When I would run on the treadmill I would stare at myself in the mirror and list all the things I loved, its SO cheesy and SO vain but it made me a GRET runner...I would say nonsense like,

" your SO fast...look at you!"
" look how you dont even look like a hot sweaty mess, your a hot piece of you know what on a treadmill"
" you keep getting better and better at this, running is the BEST"

I would post my runs, I would gloat a little and even on my bad days my inner voice will still mostly so positive and I came out great for it! I had such little negative self talk and my confidence was at a high....

then I got stuck after my surgery and I started that easy spiral to  negativeity and then I would verbalize it to Chad and to whomever... and then I feel like you really do become what you say you are. So I became chubbier and felt like I could never get to where I was.

So maybe Chad says these REALLY ANNOYING things about me because I say them about myself? Maybe he doesn't really think that I suck but maybe I have said it so long that he just agrees with me and he thinks I suck because I say I do? Now he's not off the hook he can be totally emotionless and mean and not even realize it so he needs to learn to be nice to me, but I should be nice to me too..

Ok so there is so much more and I am feeling a lot better these days, the last 8 weeks my running has improved, my eating has improved, I feel like I am starting to look and feel like my old self again because I have made a VERY big effort to talk myself up in front of that awful mirror on the treadmill downstairs...haha...only good words, no bad ones, and 8 weeks later I am feeling better...Its working....

So talk nice to the ones you love, that means yourself too...it makes such a big difference. It means monday moorings on the drive to school you should be blasting Carley Raes " call me maybe" and not " gimmie love"

ha!

Annoying my husband, and flipping my shit.

So I don't really think I wrote any social media or announced to the world recently but Chad was playing hockey this weekend and he was tripped, hit the boards and hurt his shoulder. He had to go to Emergency to get two rounds of X-rays and discovered he has a pretty badly separated shoulder. BOO.

Well, that sucks for all of us, especially him. He is grumpy he cant play hockey right now and more so that he cant run! He has been training so hard and running so much and he has just been killing it, so that's really disappointing! I think he is going to try the stationary bike until he can run again but injuries suck and they ruin your routine. I feel badly for him, I really do...THEN I messed up in one little sentence...

So I said the other day in bed, after a particularly busy day " well, thank goodness its you and not me!"  I got the woman eyes from the man I love. He stared at me like I had two heads, both of which he hated. He said

" well thanks" turned his head to the other side of his pillow ( because he cant rollover and put his back to me, hehe)

I tried to explain what I meant but it was late and he didn't get it so we just said goodnight and went to bed.

Last night we discussed the new Federal government budget, I KNOW we are VERY interesting people. That aside and back to government budgets, Chad said something like,

" well I dont know, but I think its foolish to spend a billion dollars on women's equality issues or whatever" ...

I said

" well, I dont know about the money but I think it is an issue.  Women arnt viewed as equal, Men you included, always think your smarter, better,  faster or whatever and I dont really know if that will change but whatever It doesn't really bug me"

Chad gave me that look again. He said this

" So what your saying is you think Women are better than men than?"

" NO, I think they aren't equals. Different."

Chad says
" Like the other night when you said your glad your not hurt, because I am so useless that it doesn't matter if I am hurt, well you would notice how useless I am when no money is coming in"

AND ALEAHA FLIPS HER SHIT AND TRIES NOT TO JUMP ACCROSS THE ISLAND AND STRANGLE HER HUSBAND  FRONT OF THIER SMALL CHILDREN.

* Deep breath*

OK, first I didn't say he was useless, I said in clearly twisted words and poorly articulated conversation that I have a a lot of physically demanding, really annoying things to do in a day that sadly require me to uses BOTH hands. Just a small example, (and of course for the sake of argument I will clearly overvalue my role here and under play chads work role, but you will get the just of it.)

In our everyday life, not on holidays, and even on weekends when Chad has 3 days off who does all of this??:

1. Making 5 kids breakfast, 
2. " " 5 kids lunch
3. Helping get them dressed in snow gear, or do up laces, or put on gloves
4. Vaccum
5. Buy, load and unload groceries
6. Clean toliets
7. Do and then FOLD laundry
8. give kids baths and wash their hair ( boys and girls included)
9. Braid the girls hair
10. Cook supper
11. load a dishwaser
12. Wash all the remaining dishes that i cant CRAM in the dishwasher in the sink
13. Vaccum again
14. Tie up and take out the garbage

Generally ALL of the household duties form taking recycle out to maintaining kids and house and "life" fall on me and require the absolute use of TWO WORKING HANDS

Chad said " ok I'm useless then"

wtf.

I feel like he works very hard and provides a really fantastic life for us and we really wouldn't be able to FINANCIALLY be capable to things like buying groceries and paying for water to bath ourselves without him. I KNOW that, the facet doesn't escape me that I am a " stay at home mom" and I just take take take all your money and then make you feel useless. I don't mean to do that but clearly I do.

So he says

" ok, well I do nothing and you do it all and I guess I didn't realize you felt that way"

NOT WHAT I MEANT.

I meant, Chad has to take care of Chad. He has to dress himself, drive to work, sit in an office and have meetings all day Important meetings that mostly require his brain and not his hands.

What I  meant was how could I do ALL of those things that I have to do, in which small people RELY on me for on a non stop basis if I had no use of one arm. Would I just leave it all up to him while I laid in bed and mended myself? If he recalls I had a pretty big surgery about a year ago and even then no one " allowed" me to lay in bed and mend, no one even helped me make lunches, give bath or braid hair and I'm still pissed about that.

" Well that was your decision, you decided to DO a surgery. I'm hurt by accident"

You can see how this conversation was going, it wash pretty so we both just decided right there to stop talking. I did say lastly that I appreciate all he does, I do. When we are on holidays he really steps ups and does a lot of my " duties" in the cooking department.  When I asked him if he has ever vacuumed in the year we have lived in this new house he said " no"
have you ever done a load of laundry? " no"
Have you ever scrubbed a gross toilet soiled by 3 gross boys?  " no"
ever packed a kids lunch on your Friday off work when they have school? no.
well try doing all that with ONE arm is all I meant.

So we still love each other and conversations like this are pretty normal in the realm of people being together for 14 years but they are still annoying and I still need to vent about them.

In the end, Men no matter what they say don't appreciate the "job" of a stay at home mom. Not even mine who sees me and our life everyday understands it. I feel that what I do carries very little value in the eyes of a lot of men that I know, or the man that I know very well. So that's my rant.

Now If you will excuse me I am about to hop on a plane and get the heck out of here so Chad can see what its like to do it all. I will be back in 6 months. A weekend girls trip is no indicator of the everyday crap we have to do that they clearly don't even realize.

Its been long break

I always have great intentions when it comes to writhing and mean to write all the time, anyone who really knows me knows I have  A LOT to say... ha...but to find the time?! Where do people find the time...

My goals for the new year are going well and I am only mildly disappointed in myself for random reasons!  My two main goals right now ( aside from the kids and the " getting thru every day of our life with my sanity in tact" goal)  are this:

1. DO what I LOVE in the real world:

 I am on the verge of my real estate licence and ( two more weeks to go!) and I had a call from a realtor for my first ever realtor requested home staging job and it was AMAZING and fun. SO to be able to grow my " business" to do what I really like to do is a big goal. Real Estate and Home Staging. 

2. Get my fat ass back in shape!!

Another one is to make the time for fitness, running, yoga and personal space again. I had an interesting year and I was sidetracked from my happiness in the run/sweat of it all and I gained just over 10lbs and its going NOWHERE fast. Chad has been killing it and it is inspiring ( if not HORRIBLY ANNOYING) to see how far he has come and how great he looks. He's pretty hot. I cant deny it.  ;)  So every Monday I have been booking my fitness times again and my run times on the calendar so I get them done no matter. 

3. Do more in the Arts as much as I can without taking away from my family too much. 

I had the HUGE pleasure to be in a dinner theatre this year that was in support of Way Points ( formerly the Fort McMurray family crisis society) called Fanny and Manny tie the knot and every time I get to be around these artsy fartsty types, (hehe,) I am just in awe, and inspired, and overwhelmed and THRILLED to be in their presence...the community theatre actors I have met here are hands down some of the most fun, creative, smart, loving, caring, hilarious people I have met in my whole crazy life and I want to soak them up as much as I can! 

4. Write again. 

I need to blog. It makes me happy. I found the cue cards of the outline of my first screenplay that I wrote two years ago during a very turbulent time in my life. It was funny to read, sad to read but I remember what I great story it was and It deserves to be told. If only just to me, and I am going back to work on it. Its about love and hate and forgiveness and sex and lies and truth and being honest with who we are, and what our life is and what is isn't. I love it. Its my baby. 

OK, so that was a lot. I need to go run because my calendar says at 9am its RUN TIME! Its 8:54 and I still need to lace up!

A little break a lot of perspective

I keep wanting to write about a LOT of things...and then I keep stopping myself for some reason...typically I am SUCH an over-sharer that I literally make people, ( and by " people" I men my husband) cringe. So I have been trying to limit myself and up my filter for the sake of not being a source of frustration to the ones I love.... but its honestly hard. To be truthful it then makes me secretly resentful of the ones I love. In the last few years a lot has been going on in my little old personal life and I have learned that resentment is a bitter, bitter word to carry in your mouth, your heart and your life and its just toxic. I dont want to resent anything these days and I want to be authentic and happy.

Trying to be "better" for the ones I love I found myself stopping every time I wanted to share something, good bad, anything...THEN you know what...I kind of stop BEING myself then because for better or worse, I'm a chtter...a talker, a writer and a girl with a small-ish filter and you know what, it hasnt served me that badly as I have a pretty good life... and to be honest I like myself so why am I second guessing my natural instincts, I have good ones darnit! haha...SO I am going to write again and write whatever I feel like and maybe use a little more discretion but then again, maybe not!

On that note I will be right back...I have to go take my kids to day camp round 2~ hahahahaha!! THis whold day camp thing a few times a week has been AMAZING and I will write about that later, lol!

:)

Wedded Bliss

Its the Eve of my 10 year wedding anniversary. 

Whoa.

I feel a lot of mixed emotions when I say that. I feel happy, happy that we made it here. Sad that it has gone by honestly quite fast. Nervous that maybe I took some of those years for granted. Heart broken at some of our very low lows,  Hopeful that the next 10 will be full of happiness and love and learning. 

I have all these old journals and was reading the one from the night before my wedding. My friend Rhianna had come down for the wedding. She was staying with me and I was so happy to have here around! It was one of the last nights in my own apartment ( we didn't live together until we got married...haha how old school of us ;)  So it was my last girly sleep over in that time in my life. We even slept in the same bed! She was a great help the next day when after my hair appointment some bridal hair not pinned well began to fall out! I have videos of her fixing it....this was SUCH a LONG time ago that iPhones didn't exist, and we actually used a video camera to record the day, LOL! Its on a CD somewhere and I intend to find it today....

The day was SO hectic. We had rented a hall and a crap ton of decorations to make said hall look less like a hall, haha....Chad and his groomsmen were busy getting all the booze for the wedding, Chads parents were busy helping set up decor and being generally really useful...My parents were getting my grandparents, who flew up from Oregon, settled in the hotel...my bridesmaids were busy getting pedicures and picking out matching jewellery ;)  

I was bust running around like a chicken with her head cut off going to michaels to get more things for table decor, changing my mind last minute about how I wanted the hall to look ( it turned out well I believe)  THEN after running all over and working hard I had to get my own nails done...I ended up having to squeeze in a moment, (no appointment made ahead as Im not a nail girl and didn't even think of it until I heard my bridesmaids were off getting theirs done...) SO I went alone to a mall shop and a tiny Asian did my nails then convinced me to tint my eyebrows. What a disaster THAT was....why did I say yes?? I then spent the next two hours looking for ways to make my normally light brown eyebrows, now black, look normal again. *was a very bad tearful moment for me...

I went to bed late and was restless. I woke up early and me my BFF Teri at a fancy hair salon on Whyte Ave owned at the time by a very good friend Debbie! The day was flying by...I had to get a card for Chad and ended up a shoppers drug mart with full hair and Veil on looking at cards and got stared at...beleive it or not back then I didn't like the attention and hated people staring at me...

There were of course more than a few hiccups that day...Ross was "lost" ( funny story ended up ok) Chad may of had to sleep in his car the night before...Flowers were a little mixed up...then our flower girl bouquets was forgot at my apartment...My Dad got lost on the way to the ceremony driving all us girls and we ended up almost 30 minutes late for my own wedding. Rhianna got lost and I struggled to track her down and wait for her so she didn't miss the wedding! ( She barley made it...)

The co-ordinator for the Provincial Museum where we were married was not impressed we were: 

a) late

b) wanting to wait for my friend

c) needed a flower girl bouquet

that said...we got married. My friend Laura plated the guitar and sang as we all walked down the aisle. A family friend Margo took pictures for us...a Justice of the Peace married us under the tress in the grass and our friends and family cheered us on as we walked down back down the Aisle.

That feels like a whole other life ago. It feels like its as so long ago but then these years went so fast. I feel like I was so young. I was 23 and Chad was almost 26. We dated for 3 years before we said "I do" and well...hey here is a picture!

I guess I don't want to really talk all about that day but a general summary of the days and months and years that have followed since that picture...

Life has been nothing short of amazing for us in so many ways, on paper in stories in thinking back and talking about our life. It also threw us a lot of curve balls. I learned a lot about myself and did a lot of things I didn't think I would. NEVER did I think we would have 5 kids, twins, live in Fort McMurray for 10 years...and so much more. 

We had a rough patch a while ago. I think we were both growing as people, I was making a lot of mistakes, but we both were. I was so confused and our life made no sense and I was so unhappy. Chad was unhappy and we were struggling to be in the same room with each other. 

Never did I think on that day those emotions would bubble up. Never did I think that I would be so in love and so mad at the person I promised my life to. I'm sure never did he think he would love and hate me all at the same time too. 

In those moments I learned the most about the man I married. I learned that the things I valued most about him were all still there...all still true and that maybe in my own struggles I forgot who he was as well as who I was. I forgot we really did like each other. I forgot life wasn't always so hectic and hard. I remembered that when I'm old, or if and when I get sick, or if I need a hand or a shoulder or help, someone to cry or lean on, he was the most dependable of all that have come into my life. 

I took him for granted. He took me for granted. 

Its a work in progress this is for sure. I posted this today...

" A perfect marriage is just two imperfect people who refuse to give up on each other"

So maybe some of the things we have been through have been the highest of all highs. Some of the things we have been through have been the lowest of lows. what I have learned is that we do love each other, very much. We are stubborn. We are not perfect. We are also not quitters. ( Sadly I am less perfect than he is but he never reads these posts so don't tell him ;)

In reflecting back on 10 years there are many more good memories than bad, all that I am trying to say is that life really is always changing and evolving and so are we. I never would have written our story the way it has played or for us if I was writing it today 10 years ago as a 23 year old young woman, but all that has commenced since May 28th 2005 has added to the richness of our life and the uniqueness of our story. 

We are going to Edmonton tomorrow. We are leaving the kids with family and spending a few days alone together. We haven't had a night alone together in 18 months. We are going back to the city where we fell in love, back to the place we said I do and back to some of those moments in time where we can remember why we wanted this life together so bad. Why we try so hard every day even when is REALLY hard, and why in another 10 years we will still be hand in hand trying to do the best, do it the way WE want to do it and love every moment of it.