14 years

Tyler and I have been married for 14 years today!

 In front of the new outdoor theater. We weren't able to see a show in this theater because we went to the Fall season. But we will next year. I love how much it reminds of the Old Globe in London.


We took our annual pilgrimage to Cedar City for the Shakespeare Festival. Friday afternoon we dropped Colin plus girls off to their favorite neighbors four doors down, the Smith's, until Samuel came home from school. Samuel has late start on Fridays and the girls have early out. Kind of annoying. Then around 6pm, Aunt Hannah came over. She made them spaghetti dinner, played a fun candy game and then they got to watch a movie. Then the girls got to sleep in the same bed with her. They were excited about that. Not sure how Hannah felt about Cecily kicking her all night, lol. Then, on Saturday, Hannah made them pumpkin pancakes while Samuel went to a young men/young women's service project. Hannah left after lunch. They went to the Smith's again until Micaela and her crew came and finished up the job. I always get anxious when we leave town, even for one night. Especially since we didn't leave a cell phone with Samuel who was in charge. But our friends and family helped out and we came back to happy and safe children! Yay! We are so grateful to these families and friends who helped us out!

We lucked out and got 4 free tickets this year to the festival!! Our friends won them on a radio show and couldn't use them so offered them to us! We saw Shakespeare's Julius Caesar and Neil Simon's The Odd Couple, a comedy. Both were excellent. We stayed at our usual location, however, the name was changed. It was Crystal Inn for the first 5 years and now it's a Ramada. We decided it's kinda ghetto and we're going to look at other options next year. The breakfast was fine. The property is more cleaned up but the beds and amenities kinda stink. One year we stayed at a B&B . Although I loved the proximity to the shows and walking distance to restaurants, we won't go that route again either.

We enjoyed delicious meals undistracted from our children. We went to our favorite Mexican hole in the wall place, La Casa Don Miguel. Then we went to Centro Pizza (sooo yummy) for lunch and The French Spot for dessert. It's this new little, street side hut type eatery, run by real French people. Tyler had a Creme brulee and I had chocolate mousse. Both were very delicious.

Saturday morning we attended a play seminar (each morning they offer a talk-back session on days previous shows) and an actor's seminar (when two actors come and we get to ask them questions!). I love to attend these, as I can relate to them and it brings me back to my college performance days. Sometimes I just really miss those times.

On our way we home we stopped at this Utah franchise restaurant called One Man Band Diner. I love diner's (and we had a coupon) so I was excited to finally try it. We pass it often when visiting my parents. Well, that location didn't honor our coupon so we continued north to the one in Lehi. I got my usual country fried steak and potatoes and they were delicious!  I hope one day I'll get to make my girls poodle skirts and be able to take them to places like that. I loved going to Gunther Toody's in Arvada as a girl.  I love the 1950's so I think that's why I love diner's, plus the food can just be so American. Love it.

So, that was our anniversary celebration! It was relaxing and memorable. I love that I still feel so comfortable with Tyler. We've certainly had our ups and downs, disagreements and moments of distress. But overall I feel blessed to be married to a good man.

Here are some previous blog posts with photos and videos that I've made over the years about Tyler or our anniversary!

http://stoehrs.blogspot.com/2009/10/feeling-itchy.html
http://stoehrs.blogspot.com/2008/11/feeling-better.html
http://stoehrs.blogspot.com/2010/09/labor-day-weekend.html
http://stoehrs.blogspot.com/2012/11/tyler.html with a video I made him for Father's day in 2012.
 (except the video I made has copyright issues--I used a song that I don't have legal access to use, drat. So somehow I'll have to upload it some other way. You can still watch it...just without sound.

Life

Photo courtesy of Leslie

Wow!! It's been nearly two months since I last blogged. I've been busy! I may or may not "catch up". You'll have to wait to find out. I know, I know, you're all dying with anticipation but you'll just have to be patient.

Nothing terribly great has happened, just the busyness of life. I'm not pregnant. Tyler hasn't graduated. No children have broken any bones. We haven't moved. We just enjoyed Summer and tried not to just "endure" it. As a result, I didn't get much blogging, or etsying done. Instead, I was able to enjoy my children as much as possible (which during certain moment of the day, is not possible).

We tried doing something special each day....that didn't work out quite as I expected. We completed over half of the activities on our list but we also added a few things. We made it to Seven Peaks enough times to pay for our Pass of all Passes. We took a trip to Colorado to visit cousins (my sister Jennie and BIL Grant and their two boys) and grandparents. We went to Lake Powell. We took swim lessons. We gardened. We managed not to kill each other :) I worried about spoiling the kids with too many special things and it died down a bit. And while we "played" Tyler worked. And it all culminated over Labor Day weekend where we were able to relax a bit for our pre-anniversary trip (more on that later).

Tyler did an internship with a medium sized firm in Salt Lake City. The first two weeks were rough and he was not looking forward to the rest of the summer. But things improved and he really enjoyed his experience there. He's met some great people one of whom, completely coincidentally, happens to be my fairly close cousin (someone twice removed?) The commute, 2 hours a day, was not ideal but we managed. We went to a few firm parties and it was nice to meet and mingle with other real life lawyers and their families. After Lake Powell we awaited an offer. It took a couple of weeks and I started to panic a little. If this offer didn't come through then we would be at point zero again...I had visions of living in my in-laws basement again out of desperation (not that I don't like my in-laws or living with your in-laws is bad....we've just done it for two short rounds and I'd rather not have to do it again). But after about 2 1/2 weeks, he received an offer and he accepted! It is confirmed that we are headed to SLC after graduation. I was hoping we could buy a home soon after but we've been advised to wait it out and rent. See what the market does and how much we'll really be making. Once he takes the bar next July (after a 3 grueling months of studying) he'll continue to work for the firm and then take a break to do a clerkship for the Utah Supreme Court for a year.

That's probably more than you wanted to know but it's an important part of our lives. Tyler will be done with school next spring after having gone our whole 9 years of marriage!! That is huge! Wahoo!

So things are going well. The first week of school was for both Samuel and Tyler. I hope to reference that in a later post. The first week is always a rough adjustment for me. I'm not exactly sure why but I think it's because of the schedule changes and getting used to more paper work, homework, etc. This year Samuel was off to particularly rough start, dealing with behavioral issues at school. We're still working on that. It's been a great trial of faith and love.

So thanks for listening. I hope you're still there!

Tyler

Tyler is pretty talented. A renaissance many, really. That's why I married him, after all. We went to a dinner w/one his professors and she and her husband listened to our "credentials" like all of his foreign languages studied, and the Humanities/fine arts studied b/w the two of us, they realized we should have lived at least 150 years ago. It's true, I think we would have done well living back then. But which time period would I choose? That would be hard.

Anyway, pretty much anything Tyler does, he's good at. It makes me jealous sometimes. Other times it just wants me to work harder at my "skillz". So I don't look like a total bimbo next to him. But I refuse to ever be a "trophy wife." No siree Bob, I do not aspire to that title.

He started playing flag football last year as a law student and has done so every semester since. The kids love to go his games and finally he had one before bedtime so we all bundled up, brought our traditional mug of hot chocolate and tried keeping Samuel off the actual field, thereby being tackled or trampled over.

Happy 8 years!

We both sort of took it easy today, ie, Tyler forgot and I did not wake him up with breakfast in bed or anything like that. Mainly because we celebrated (see post here) over a month ago.

Here are some nice little pics we took as part of a little family shoot a few weeks ago.

Love you babe, snookums, pumpkin pie, sweetie, honey, mon petit chou, and anything that is sickeningly sweetly silly and/or edible that people call each other. No offense if you are one of those peeps, it's just not us. ( Wendy, help me out, are those the right genders on those French words?)

Happy 8 years!