Celebrating Six Years!

Last night, Jay and I went out for our six-year anniversary to the steakhouse in the Choctaw Casino--it is so fancy and delicious! Great fun to get dressed up and then go to a great restaurant only 10 minutes from our house! My mom came to our house and kept the girls--we love Grandmom! By the way, see any resemblance between Jay and his namesake girl? Their baby pics look very much alike, and people have told us a lot that Anna favors her daddy.

Of course, I had to do something celebrating our relationship, even though six isn't really much of a milestone, and I wanted to prove to Jay that I'm not all about material gifts, so I wrote a poem! Don't think this was any kind of exercise in rhythm, scansion, or even rhyme--I wrote it as a spinoff of the poem that Jay wrote me to propose, back in 2002! Except this time, I made it a metaphor between the challenges and rewards of fishing and hunting, and the challenges and rewards of marriage (or I tried to anyway)! I clipped out phrases from Jay's Bassmasters and Outdoor Oklahoma magazines, and cut out pics, and made it a collage. It was so fun, and it was funny to compare the ways we were romantic as a dating couple to how it is as a married couple with two young kids.

Here are the words (the bolded ones are the ones I clipped from magazines):

June 12, 2010, with the Bassmaster who reeled me in
A night we've been flippin' and pitchin' since last night after we tucked the girls in.

Many times I've asked God why this crankbait comes in so late,
Then he blesses me with an unplanned family swim or a yummy breakfast date.

It can be tough, getting to church on time, or connecting at the dinner table,
But if we work as a team, we can tackle anything, I know we are able.

My favorite times are the ones we share together,
A Day on the Lake with my hubby is as good as a Collectible Bass Lure.

I made it through so many deer seasons and spring spawns,
I'll make it through many more, even though I hate when you're gone.

A lot has changed since you wrote me that sweet poem that changed my world,
You've bought tons of New Lures, but stuck with the same girl.

You're my Biggest Bass, the best lure in my Tacklebox,
Eight years after you saw that girl in red, I hope you can still say I knock of your socks!

My Oklahoma hunter takes aim at projects all over southern Oklahoma,
You work hard, and I get to take care of our beautiful girls and manage our home-a.

Fishing and huntin' are always a challenge--try different Lures and Reels, trees or arrows,
Our marriage is a challenge, too, but it's worth the trophy moments we share like pros.

Doggerel, I know, but from the heart! I also had us write down six things we love about each other, and two things for both of us to work on to make our relationship better. We wrote them on these little door-hanger things I scrapbooked, and hung them on our closet doors.

Five years of marriage today!

Five fun memories from Jay and my marriage (all numbered one b/c Blogger is weird):

1. Playing two-on-two volleyball on our honeymoon with a couple from Coleman, OK. (They had the same wedding day AND the same honeymoon package in Puerta Vallarta!) Jay and I usually make it a point to NOT play on the same team in sports or games, because we have different competitive spirits, shall we say. We're both competitive, but in sports, Jay thinks I'm not trying hard enough when I do badly, and I think the same of him in games. But in the past five years, we've learned to compete together, I think. This year, we actually played a game of Nertz as partners without getting mad and won a series of volleyball matches as a team.
   

1. My first Thanksgiving with the Maucks in Kansas: Jay shot a deer, but was the last one in the deerwoods, and this was at about oh, noon, when we're CARVING THE TURKEY! So his dad, cousin, and uncle wolfed down some food, drove out to meet him, and processed the deer so that Jay got back to his darling wife after I had been hanging with his family--some of whom I was meeting for the first time--for about six hours. We drove home with a deer head and an ice chest full of meat, along with all our Black Friday purchases of couse. Tight squeeze.

1. Jay and I got our first dog, a full-grown stray yellow lab that we named Beau. He was well-trained in fetch, sit, and come, so we wondered at first why he was a stray. Then he jumped our fence, repeatedly, and we figured it out. One neighbor told us he put him in his six-foot fence while he tried to get a hold of us, only for Beau to jump it. Someone else told us they saw him push the fence latch up with his nose. That dog knew come, but he did not know stay. So we gave him to another couple who loved him, but had to keep him in their house to keep him at home.
   

1. Going fishing with Jay the first few times: He comes to the understanding that I will NOT participate in his usual four-hour fishing excursions unless I get a padded seat and a book. To him, if you can't go for at least four hours, it's not worth going. To me, if I have to sit on a metal seat for four hours with no entertainment besides casting and reeling, I'd rather jump in the lake. Jay gives me the "pity reel," when he gets a fish on, doesn't tell me, and then asks me to hold his rod for a second, watching my delight when I realize I caught a fish.
   

1. And of course, the birth of our first child, Claire! That same year, Jay and Preston bought a restaurant and I began my short stint as a high school teacher, so it was so busy! But Claire was the uniting blessing through it all: she never fails to make us laugh and smile and work together.
   

Happy belated birthday, Kerrigan and Molly!

My cousin Dani Rose had a healthy baby girl, Molly Rose Spencer, yesterday! And Kerrigan Mauck had her first birthday! Happy birthday, girls! That's two birthdays that have fallen on mine and Jay's anniversary. It's been four years! We had a lovely date at Olive Garden last night while Claire spent some QT with Ma-maw, Pa-paw, and cousins Zach and Abby, and Uncle Brian and Aunt Jen, the last two being fresh back (well, maybe not so fresh) from a European vacation.

Nuh-Nuh!

Here's an example of Claire pushing boundaries:

Claire pulls a pack of gum out of my purse, something she knows she is not allowed to play with. I see her from the couch, where I'm reading as usual, and say in my warning voice, "Claire..." She turns quickly and says, "Nuh-Nuh." Sometimes she makes it into a game, sticking something in her mouth, grinning and watching me, and saying "Nuh-Nuh!"

I'm working on weaning her, and have fairly successfully replaced the afternoon nursing that I had been doing when I got home from school with a sippy cup of cow's milk. At first, she just let it run out of her mouth and gave me this look like, "What are you trying to feed me, woman?" So like the slavishly devoted, yet also cunning, mother I am, I tried warming it, adding honey, spooning it in her mouth, and then pouring it into a cup, which seemed to sufficiently trick her. Now she drinks it cold just fine.

She just finished up her week of mornings with Nana and Grandad, which seemed to go pretty well, except at the beginning of the week, she was pretty cranky and a little feverish. She's getting two teeth at once right now.

Jay and I will begin our fourth anniversary extravaganza this weekend, when we go to the Sand Bass festival in Madill, the site of our first unofficial date. We'll introduce Claire to the joys of mullet-counting! We won't really have much of an anniversary celebration, if you couldn't detect my sarcasm. We're going to Destin with my family at the end of the month, and we don't really want to leave Claire for a night yet (pumping tends to extinguish the romance, I've found).

Happy (belated) Valentine's Day!

Hooray for love! Jay and I had a wonderful Valentine's Day: First, I had my first teacher job interview, which I think went pretty well. When I got home, I frosted and decorated sugar cookies for Hubby and I, put the chocolates I made in these cute lil heart boxes, and set up a little Valentine's sweet feast for us.

Then we got to get dressed up to go to a cute little downtown antique shop/tea house for a sweetheart dinner, provided by Jay's thoughtful parents, Paul and Diane. The food was great (especially the chocolate lava cake!), and the atmosphere was different and special. Next we went to church, where after Bible study and devo, we hung out at the Valentine's Reception, which Diane did a great job organizing. It was so neat--lots of people brought their wedding pictures and set them on a table, and then we all tried to guess who these happy, handsome people were in the black-and-white pictures. Everything from 1950s prom pic to 1980s white tux! However, the sight of more cookies about made me sick! Our faithful song leader, Virgil, decided we should all sing "Let Me Call You Sweetheart" while holding hands with our sweethearts, which was the cheesiest, but sweetest, thing I've ever seen! Who knew Virge was so sentimental? That's what V-day can do to a guy, I guess.