But there are always silver in the cloudy days! If last week was the low, Sunday kicked off the climbing back to the high with a most incredibly fun and most perfect Sunday dinner. The food was delicious, everyone ate most of it without complaint, and we started telling stories about life BC- Before Children- that took us on the funniest trip down memory lane.
Our kids, like every kid, have selective hearing at times, but they were all ears around the dinner table as we told them story after story of our life before they were born.
The time a dozen moths came shooting out of my car vents while I was driving down the highway.
The time Jason thought he could kill a moth with a pillow and ended up shattering a light fixture instead.
The time Jason got stung by a bee in his bare bottom.
The time Jason's dad shot him in the bottom with a blow dart.
The time Jason had to get 10 immunizations in preparation for his mission to Bolivia and ended up with one in the bottom.... there were a lot of bottom stories mixed in there!
The conversation started with talk of mansions and big houses, and we told them our cautionary tale of the first apartment we looked at before we got married. It was really nice, and really expensive, and instead of deciding to stretch ourselves financially to afford it, we challenged ourselves to find the cheapest livable space that we could find instead.
Which led us to reminiscing all about our first and second apartments, including the nasty carpet, old paint, brown cupboards, mustard yellow countertops, soft bathroom floors, shower windows, radiant heating, faulty water heaters and MOLD growing behind a dresser.
We talked about how much we wanted to live in a super fancy apartment that we quickly realized we didn't want to afford, and how we found a much more reasonably priced apartment instead.
We talked about the laundry mat that we used to take our laundry to, and how we would play card games while we waited for our clothes to be done.
And about the luxury that was our second apartment because there was a washer and dryer onsite. I used to load up the laundry in the basket then plop baby Leah on top of it all and we would make our trek down the stairs to the washer and dryer. Such a luxury to not have to drive or bike over to the laundry mat.
We tried to explain our mobile dishwasher that had to be wheeled across the kitchen floor and hooked up to the sink every night in order to wash a load of dishes. That was an upgrade from our first apartment, where we had no dishwasher and washed dishes by hand.
We didn't have central air in either place, but the window unit we bought (used) for our first place worked great and the monster of a unit in our second place were both good enough for us!
We told them about the woodpecker that used to wake us up every morning all summer long as it pecked it's way through a nearby telephone pole.
And about the work we did in our first apartment to knock $40 off our rent by mowing the tiny lawn in the summer and shoveling away snow and ice in the winter.
We told them about climbing up to the roof to watch the 4th of July fireworks that were going off at Lavell Edwards Stadium at BYU while baby Leah was sleeping.
And the shower window that I had to climb down into more than once in our first place because we locked ourselves out.
We laughed about the time Jason rode his bike into a parked car, and how we saved up for those new bikes, and the yummy Provo Bakery that we used to walk to on Saturday mornings to purchase two orange rolls with a fistful of coins.
We tried to describe the layout of our first apartment, with the one bedroom that had storage bins, a snowboard, a tiny desk, and bikes all crammed in around us, and our second apartment, with the two bedrooms, one huge and one tiny that we set up to have some storage space amidst the crib and, right before we moved, a bassinet for baby Adam.
We challenged them to not strive for luxury when they first leave home, but instead to only live the life they can reasonably afford. We could have been much deeper in debt or much further down a completely different life's path had we set our sights on that fancy new apartment that we decided we couldn't afford. And then what might our stories sound like?
At one point Emma said, "I'm really glad you never broke up!"
When they asked how long we have been married- almost 14 years- they said, "Wow! That's a really long time." We said, "When you commit to be with someone for the rest of your life and all of eternity, it doesn't seem like very long at all."
And they asked about the times we've fought or argued with each other. We told them about our first two fights- one about who should get the most closet space and one about when we should pay our tithing- and how we resolved them. And we reflected on how nice it is to be married to someone that you don't want or need to argue with about every little thing with, because marriage is hard enough without constant contention.
Adam said, "I've only been in this family for 8 years and we have fights all of the time!"
Not really, but there are definitely moments when we all do things to bug each other. So that should have given them all a clue about how important it is to learn to be a peacemaker, and to surround themselves with people they get along with!
It was a wonderful dinner indeed. And the great start to a good new week (even if the sun is still refusing to shine).
