1 year ago...

April 12, 2008 marked the VERY BEST day of my life! On that day, I married my soulmate ~ my best friend ~ the man God made especially for me! (and I could fit in a size 4 wedding dress! LOL)

It was no mistake my brother worked for the same company and introduced me to Billy and it was by way of a miracle that God chose to bring us together to communicate on April 12, 2007. I am sooo very blessed and honored to have Billy for my husband, and as we both pledged to each other last year and on our anniversary yesterday, we are IN THIS FOR THE LONG HAUL!

This has been the most fun year of our entire lives, and I just know the future holds many more great times for the two of us and our newest little family member :)

Happy B-day Billy Boy!

My hubby finally caught up to me yesterday when he turned 28!!! (mind you, this will only last for 19 days, hehe)

It was nice to be home with him all day, but unfortunately, he was feeling under the weather. I think the night before was probably the worst sleep either of us had gotten in a long time.

He got some great gifts in the mail from the B fam, and last night he actually got to use one of them :) His new TomTom will remind us what side of the street to drive on (if we should be in another country and forget), can update us on current gas prices at the stations we are near, and even MOO'S like a cow when he exceeds the posted speed limit!

It was great fun making it moo on our way home from the original Ninfa's where we celebrated with friends and fam! The food was good (as usual) and I made him a tres leches cake to share with everyone. Yum.

I thought it was the cutest thing ever when he had 4 homemade cards given to him at the table! His little buddies (and Rachel, lol) honed in their artistic skills to give him extra special bday cards, that all had very special and intricate details including leaf-less trees, Billy sitting as his computer with a sombrero, the preggo wifey and babe inside her belly (Courtney even managed to remember the baby has an umbulical cord) and a variety of other creative specialties. Check 'em out :)

Billy's "big gift" this year was a grill he's been eyeing for a while now. A couple of us went in together to get it for him. We decided to give it to him a day early, seeing how he would probably want to put it together himself (that's a present in itself to him). He's got it "locked and loaded" on the bistro patio, and I told him we'll probably really get to break it in when the baby's here and we've got a crowd to feed.

Happy Birthday Babe, I love you and hope you have an even more exciting year ahead of you (although, I don't know if you can top this past one)!

A Mighty Good Man

WARNING: IN THIS POST, YOU MAY EXPERIENCE SOME SLIGHT GUSHING :)

I was just sitting here thinking about how thankful I am to have Billy in my life and wanted to share :). He is the husband God had planned from the beginning, and I see it more and more all the time.

He has been such a trooper through this whole change of life called pregnancy, as he has watched his newlywed life change and his brand new wife EVOLVE into a rounder-figured, hearburn ridden, early nighter, poor housekeeper of a woman.

Last week I could have sworn it was my birthday or something! On Wednesday, a shopworker came barging in with a delivery of beautfiul live orchids! I was speechless. I thought, what are we celebrating? Turns out he didn't need any celebration to send them! It was my first "married AND preggo flowers" and the card nearly made me cry as Billy said he had admiration for the strength I've shown during this pregnancy. Wow! Strength? I didn't feel like I was being strong at all! I whine about not being able to bend over well, or having my random "one hiccup", or putting my shoes on and having to constantly be grunting, or falling asleep as soon as I lay down no matter what time it is, or getting leg cramps in the night and nerve pains in the day...but yet...he admires me??

The next day....he found out I wanted to go to a concert downtown with the Symphony and Peter Cetera (former Chicago lead singer), so he BOUGHT TICKETS! We had such a fun and crazy night, nearly missing the first half after I had to fly through rush hour Friday traffic, and get home to find out we didn't have enough time to really "go out" for dinner....so we settled for Taco Bell! LOL!!

We felt like highschoolers at a prom night or something....all dressed up and then fast food for dinner! He spilled his burrito on his tie and we had to wash it off as good as possible...but yet we still laughed for the rest of the ride like giddy schoolboys/girls....then we couldn't find the parking garage....and once we did, we had to park at the top. I decided to venture out and wear my heels that night *bad idea* and as we FINALLY approached the concert hall, Billy remembered he left HIS WALLET in the car, and our tickets were at will call *and we potentially needed his id to pick them up*.

Fortunately, they didn't need his ID so we were totally fine without the wallet, and we made it after just missing a few songs...

But seriously....it was funny. Some people would have been stressed to THE MAX after a night like that, and it's times like those I realize how much we really are MADE FOR EACH OTHER!

To top off my BIRTHDAY-LIKE WEEK TO REMEMBER...I decided to be frugal and make my own New Years cards this year. He didn't want me to smell the fumes of the adhesive, so he spent 3 very COLD nights in our garage watching King of the Hill & Kung fu Panda on a portable dvd player while he spray glued 300 cards for me!!!

All I can say is, my husband is MY HERO! He makes me laugh at normal little things, and reminds me to ease up when I get too serious about life. I know he's going to make such a great dad, because he already takes great care of his kids mom!

P.S. He told me to say he has big muscles too

Mucho fun times

Celebrating our 1st Christmas Together

Billy and I exchanged our array of Christmas gifts in a progressive fashion…


(the hellicopter’s BILLY’s Todd! Lol…) How fun and meaningful every single gift was! We loved every bit of it!
Larry and Suzanne gave us our first Nativity (going in our hope chest-wahoo) and we look forward to many additional pieces added in the future!..and some long johns and Amazing Grace, the movie. We had many thanks to both our families for all the special things they gave us….
Brian’s (his bro) wrapping was AMAZING! (the Aveda tea hit the spot) Brian (my bro), Aaron and Rachel were very thoughtful with their gifts…it touched Billy very much that they would send gifts with me for him. Todd got me the perfect house-boots! Love them!


Mom and Dad got him a special “Texas” gift (Chuy's University of Tex-Mex shirt)....that he wore asap and the Cabellas’s cards were nearly stolen at least 10 times (by his dad, hehe)

I think our favorite gift of all, however, was our

RIGHT HAND RINGS.

We had picked them out together in Sacramento (last trip), but waited to give them for Christmas. We wanted our Right-Hand ring to represent God’s promise to us, as our Left-Hand ring will represent our promise to each other.

We chose a pattern that also symbolized the crossing of our paths!
We know it was by way of a miracle that God chose to take us off our individual paths, and join one another on OUR path…..

It was a wonderful New Years in California! We played in the snow, and Snow-shoed (hard stuff!) on an active volcano (Mt. Lassen)!

Celebrating our 1st New Years Together

We were pooped that night, but managed to get up and keep our tradition of banging pots and pans to ring in the new year!!

Billy said, "so it’s a new year…what do you want to change
for 2008?"

I said, "MY NAME!"

THENNNNNNNNN since he bought me some

official SNOW CLOTHES....

Billy taught me how to ski for the very first time on Mt. Shasta!! It was soooo fun and his patience really paid off! I only fell one time- on a practice-lift- lol- but that’s it! I never fell on the slopes! I was totally surprised at myself, and honestly I think I shocked him too! We had tons of fun, and now, we can go back and ski longer next time!

Making the most of it :)

So, this was the first Christmas I've ever spent over a webcam!

Christmas Day 2007

As soon as I took this picture, he said "I didn't blink!!!"...lol...

We set the laptop up in our living room, and I'll have to admit it tranformed a potentially sad day away from Billy, into a very funny moment we will never forget!

Our entire fam wore their festive hats, and yelled happy Christmas greetings over the speakerphone of my cell, while waving and laughing at the webcam. My brother Brian and Suzanne (Billy's mom) exchanged a virtual handshake and hug as they were introduced for the first time, and grandma kept talking to Billy's face on my screen, instead of the camera, accidentally stepping out of view many times.

Billy and his parents sat on the other side, laughing, showing us their presents, waving and greeting us back. I have a feeling this will be our new tradition with fam every year!

My crazy man kept me laughing with his goofy faces...

It was certainly a Christmas Day to remember! Oh, and for those who have asked, we haven't exchanged our presents yet...we'll do that when I go there Friday night!

Homesick

Today I had a flashback. Several years ago I was ministering in the Ellis 1 Prison Unit. It was a Christmas service, and I prepared several tracks to sing, including, “I’ll be home for Christmas”. I looked out at the in-mates faces, midway through the song, and saw tears streaming down many of their faces! I felt horrible! Here I was in a locked-down situation with men who have been away from their families for years, and some even decades.

I was singing them a song that most likely would not come true for a long time, if ever.

“I’ll be home for Christmas”...that song never impacted me so much, as it has this Christmas. People ask me how it feels to be in a long-distance relationship. I say, I feel HOMESICK. I can’t explain it any other way. This year, I am the most homesick I’ve ever been during the holidays. My home is not here, my home is in the form of a man many states away.

It’s unbelievable how different my life is now without him around. You never know what you’re missing out on, until you have it and it has to go away (even if only for a little while). The difference between the prisoner's sadness, and my own is that we have a promise from God that we will, in fact, be able to spend forever together, not apart. I know this time apart is God’s plan for us. He is preparing us for what is ahead, and for that I will be grateful and shut up (most of the time) about how sad I am. There are those few times, especially now during the “most wonderful time of the year” however, when I can’t help but be honest about my sadness away from my Love.

I look forward to many, many, many Holiday Seasons with you Billy-boy, and I may not be home for Christmas, but I’ll be there for New Years!

Tweener Trip

Billy flew me out for a quick "kidnapping in Cali" (basically meaning I dropped everything-Rainbows, events, work, etc) and the trip lasted a total of about 3 1/2 days, but it was WELL WORTH IT!! I got off the plane, rushed to the escalator, to find my man waiting at the bottom with a huge grin on. I walked down the steps as fast as possible, and felt this huge burden just lift as I was able to finally embrace this man I have fallen in love with. It was sweet relief, to say the least. I told him, "I just want to hug you"...(smile). We hadn't even realized how much more at ease, and peaceful our lives are when we're together. We live our life's separately in "autopilot" sometimes it seems, only to find moments like these as gentle reminders of why we both really are "better together".

We tried to spend a good portion of our time with his parents, and younger brother Todd. It was wonderful- no matter how short it seemed, it was really great. I am very blessed to be sharing my future with this family of God fearing, kind, as they say "good people".

The best biscuits and gravy I think I've ever had! Look how huge that thing is!

Billy reached around our necks to "cuddle" for the pic, and "accidentally" jabbed Todd's eye! He looks super happy about it huh?

They made us a delicious French Toast breakfast and we had a pajama party:) (I would show you pics of us in pajamas but we look SOOOO dead tired it would scare your eyes!)

Awwww, brother-lovin'.

*Trees with Fall colors? What are those?* :)

*The beautiful Mount Shasta in all her glory*

Sum Fav's

All we're missin' is an old fashioned milkshake!

We hadn't roller skated for years!

He calls this our "Ministry Pic". One day you'll see it on a brochure...lol.

Check out our sweet skills :)

Taking our best

shot at dancing! :)

"and....spin..."

If he's the Cali Cowboy...can I be the Indian?