The Story of Us, part four

(To catch up:  The Story of Us, part one, The Story of Us, part two,  and The Story of Us, part three)

We were now a family of six.  Life just kept moving along:  Sweet Pea was in kindergarten, Daisy Mae was in preschool, Handsome Dude was naughty busy, and Little Dude was chill.

Fun Fact:  “Chill” is what cool people say when they are referring to someone who is relaxed and/or easy going.

Consider yourselves informed.

I became worried about Little Dude during his first year of life.  He simply would not smile.

Ever.

I would jump all around, sing silly songs, clap, hop, skip, fall down . . . and he would just stare at me.

Around his first birthday, I heard this strange sound coming from him . . .

He was laughing!  I had never heard it before!

Turns out he was feeding his breakfast to our dog, Mabel.

And from that day on, he would giggle and smile along with all the other kids.

Mabel had made her place in our family.  She was getting older and had calmed down quite a bit.  The kids loved to read books to her, sit on her, and take her on camping trips with us.

She was definitely part of the family.

The kids were growing up quickly.  I started to notice that Little Dude didn’t look quite the same as the other kids.  Little Dude takes after my dad’s side of the family, where the other kids look a bit more like David.

(Don’t mind Little Dude’s shaved head.  It was all David’s fault.)

I started to become a bit paranoid about Little Dude not looking like the others when complete strangers began to make comments like:

“Oh!  Is that one adopted?”

“Do they all have the same dad?”

“Are you sure they are all yours?”

Yes.  Good times.

I even had an encounter with the world’s rudest dermatologist who insisted I was confused and Little Dude was not from the same dad.

I would like to take this moment to assure all of you that Little Dude is, in fact, mine, and he is, in fact, David’s.  Even though David does like to give me a hard time about it.  (This post has a funny story about that towards the end)

In December of 2008, my dearheart friend Bimlissa, tried to convince me to start a blog. 

First of all, let us discuss Bimlissa.  Bimlissa is really Melissa.  Daisy Mae called her Bimlissa for a time because Daisy Mae went through a phase where she put the word bim in from of everything:

computer=bimputer

capris=bimpris

Melissa=Bimlissa

Melissa and I went to high school together.  She was too cool for school and I don’t remember ever talking to her.  And, I can assure you, that I most certainly did not have a very clique-y group of friends and I definitely did my best to socialize with people outside of my clique.

Or something like that.

Anyways, years later, David and I started going to this new church and I reconnected with Melissa through working in children’s ministry together. 

We became fast friends on account of my winning personality and ability to overlook her past snootiness.

ha!  Oh, darn, she’s going to be bim-mad with me.

Anyways, Bimlissa started a blog.  And she wanted me to read it.  And I did not understand why, to be honest with you.  We saw each other often.  She would email me pictures.  We were on The Facebook. 

Did we really need another way to connect?

So, she talked me into starting a blog.  And I did.  And I never posted in it. 

It sat there for about 5 or 6 months.

Then I decided that maybe my Auntie Datenutloaf in California or Sister Meagan would perhaps enjoy looking at pictures of the children and seeing what we were doing.

So, I decided to give posting a try.  And I wrote the world’s lamest post. 

And Bimlissa never even commented on it.  But I’m not bitter.

Soon, I discovered that blogging was a fun outlet for me.  If I had a really crazy day, I would just write about it.  Then I would laugh because of how awful it was.  I would publish the post, cry/laugh some more, and then eat a brownie and go to sleep.

It was like therapy for me.

I was going through a hard transition then.  I wrote this post on how difficult the years were with young kids and it was comforting to know I wasn’t alone.

Now, I write in it for therapeutic purposes and also to record our daily lives.  I hope it will help David and I remember these years.

I went through blog identity issues.  At first, my blog had our last name in the title.  But then I decided I wasn’t comfortable with our last name being shared, so I had to come up with a new name.

Bimlissa, her sister, her mom, and her sister’s husband’s cousinwere the only people reading my blog at the time and we thought that the title The Lumberjack’s Wife was uber funny, seeing as how my husband feigned to be one. 

Hence, the name The Lumberjack’s Wife.

Then I had a creepy commenter, so I decided to switch to the children to the code names that you know and love today.

And that is why I am so sneaky-sneaky.  I like to think that you don’t know their real names or our location.

I also hope you think my last name is really Maliblahblah.

***

Alright, back to our lives.  In early 2010, we decided to start looking at a house with land. 

Never mind our current house was not yet finished.

Still.

When David saw the Ruralville house, he asked if we could go look at it.  When I heard it was in Ruralville, I said, “I will never, ever, ever live there.”

And you all know what happens when I put my foot down.

The house was a short sale and was a horrible process.  We put an offer down and didn’t know for four months if we would get it.

In the meantime, David and I went to Cancun to celebrate our 10 year anniversary!  I wrote all about it in about 7 posts if you want to go back and read it.

After we got back from our trip, David got to work finishing up our house in case we wanted to sell it. 

As you all know, we did end up buying the Ruralville house and David finally finished working on our house the same week.

He did a great job.

After 7 long years, the house was finally finished.  Do you remember when David first found that dump of a house and told me,

“This house will make us money.”

He was right.

It now rents out as a vacation rental and pays for itself.

Perhaps he does know what he is doing after all?

So,we moved to Ruralville.  Because of the location, I decided to homeschool.  This past year has been a hard transition for me, but I am adjusting.

Mabel became sick and died in September.  She was ten years old.

We decided that we would like to get another dog . . .

So we welcomed Lucy.

Lucy is naughty. 

Sometimes we call her Lucy-Fur.

Get it?

***

And lastly, I wanted to give you a bit of a who’s who of the people that are mentioned in this blog.

Of course, my husband and children are located on the right sidebar if you ever need to put a face with a name.

My Family.

My parents:

Grant and Connie.

You will oft see them in a Goober Parent Update, such as this one.

There is Brother Danny and his wife, Tonya. 

They have two children.

Sister Meagan.

Here she is with my pa.

Meagan is responsible for me saying things such as “uber, totes, and holla!”

David’s Family.

I refer to them often, my crazy-kin inlaws.

From left to right:

Back row:  Jason, Lisa, David, Alex

Front row:  His parents:  Paul and Jackie

Lisa is married to Jack and they have two little girls.

(They are huckleberry picking, an activity that I loathe)

Jason is getting married to Amy (in 2 days!).

 

Alex and Holly got married 2 weeks ago.

Lastly, I wanted to give you the background on a few pictures you might see a lot around here:

Here is my favorite Alex picture:

(For the story behind it, click here)

When I was writing my posts about our trip to Cancun, I included this one of David and I:

And it reminded me of this hilarious picture of Jason:

So you will oft see this picture of Jason, simply because I find it humorous.

And of course, there is my dad:

This is him trying to listen to ITunes.

***

Did you read that entire post?

That was crazy-insane long.  Sorry about that. 

Take heart!

I am all done.

Thank you for reading this rubbish.

Have a Happy Friday!