MONDAY MUSINGS...HAPPY ANNIVERSARY!

Hope you all had a wonderful week-end! We sure did. Friday night found us playing our weekly card game with my parents. How we all enjoy that time together, and it is SUCH good therapy for my mom that it just puts the icing on the cake. And the best part? We DID win (though barely)...YAY mom!! And that puts us up two to one for the new year....On Sat. Jeff and I just spent a lazy day. Long chat in the morning over coffee and tea, and then lunch out, a movie (nothing great, haha) and a long drive afterwards. Sun. we had my oldest son and his family and my youngest son's wife and family (Sun. is a LONG work day for James) over for Cody's second birthday. How I enjoyed all my little grandkids playing together. They don't get a whole lot of opportunities and their excitement is contagious. They had a GIANT fort going in the living room at one point. Remember how fun a fort was??  Leah made her delicious spaghetti and meat balls, and a wonderful salad and garlic bread finished it off. I actually did quite well with the meal and I am feeling soo good now that I did. Nothing tastes as good going down, as eating right feels!! I carefully followed Jenny Craig for breakfast and lunch, and then at dinner covered 3/4 of my plate in salad, and the rest in spaghetti, having no bread and only two tiny meatballs. Soo yummy, and it was just right. I did manage to have no cupcakes either, and my grandkids made quick work of them so there weren't any leftovers, haha. I am soo glad we were able to have this day. Joe brought his new guitar and it was good to "see" him as he played, haha.

This is how these two like to do movies....as close to Grandpa as they can get..We watched Toy Story 3 yesterday, soo cute!

Waiting for their mama's to fix their plates

Cody with his new Thomas the trains from Grandpa & Grandma

She enjoyed this...or can't ya tell?

Cody enjoyed his as well...

Lindsey too...she is gettting to be such a big girl!

My book has arrived!! I am actually quite happy with it with one small exception....the pictures are not very big...I have them extra large here on my blog (thus the "stretch" template) so that you can see them better, but they did not come off that way in the book. They are actually quite small. Which when you are my age and have my eyesight, is a definite issue. BUT!! I was happy enough with the rest of it that I will continue to do this in the future. My kids definitely enjoyed looking through it yesterday. Maybe in the future they will do it with bigger pics. In the meantime, it is good enough that you get the idea.

I couldn't get a real good pic as there was a glare on the glossy cover, but you get the idea.  This pic was taken of Jeff & I last yr. on our anniversary and is one of my fav's of us...it goes with the "feel" of that year I am thinking..

They give you a page for a dedication...you also get a table of contents

One post follows another in order of dates

It is a pretty big book..I am really glad I did this..

Tomorrow will mark my 36th wedding anniversary!! 36 years is a LONG time...I have spent 16 whole years of my life longer as a "Class" instead of a "Merrick", haha...In fact, it might as well have been several lifetimes ago that I was a Merrick. I was thinking that this might be a good opportunity to write out a few of our first few dates and our impressions of each other to have as a record for my kids and grandkids to read someday, so guess you will have to bear with me. = )

I was only 19 years old when I met Jeff but felt like I was A LOT older. I had been through soo much for as young as I was for one thing, and was the mother already to a 17 month old ACTIVE little boy. I was both going to Jr. college and working part time. I was still (thankfully) living at home, but my parents were in the midst of a divorce, which made the rest of my life quite difficult as well. When my girlfriend Sue told me she had someone she wanted me to meet, honestly I wasn't really very interested. This guy was just here to spend the summer in California and would be heading back to Sioux Falls, SD in the Fall. He had just finished school at Nebraska where he had played football on a full scholarship and wrestled, and I felt like he was probably used to being "fawned over" and was just looking for some summer fun. I was definitely not interested in that, haha...I ended up getting talked into going a blind date thinking to myself, "a single date is no big deal, I just won't let myself let my feelings get involved", which when you had been hurt as much as I had by that point in my life I had become an expert at doing. I had just recently given my heart to the Lord, and my first prayer as a new Christian had been that the Lord might bring a man into my life that would both love me and my son, and SURELY this guy from Nebraska couldn't be him. But I couldn't have been more wrong! I found out a few dates later that he too had just recently given his heart to the Lord and had prayed a very similar prayer, but I am getting ahead of myself, haha. That first date really didn't go so well, haha. He was VERY nice and friendly, super outgoing, funny, and much better looking than Sue had lead to me believe. However, all of these things made me feel very unsure of myself which resulted in my being kind of quiet. Now he tells the story that I got into the car and immediately brought up this guy I had been dating who was on the radio as a DJ for the first time that night (he was and I was soo excited but guess it was kind of dumb to go on about) and he figured right off that this is obviously NOT the girl the Lord had in mind since she was obviously still hung up on someone else, haha. The truth was my relationship with this other guy was definitely over and we had been nothing but friends for a while. The rest of the night went OK, but I think my guard was up, and he figured I wasn't interested. However as he walked me to the door that night and we had a few minutes to chat by ourselves I wondered if I had been too hasty. He was SUCH a nice guy. He gave me just a little tiny kiss at the door, and I felt my heart quicken, (which kind of surprised me) and I thought to myself, "You fool, you probably blew this chance" lol...But as it turned out we quickly fell in love that summer, and the rest is history. 36 years is a lifetime that is for sure. We have seen so much of life together that it is hard to remember a time when it wasn't the two of us. He quickly adopted my son and together we have raised four wonderful kids and have 8 glorious grandchildren together so far. We have been through soo many good times and I'll be forever grateful for them all, and have somehow managed to travel the bad times as well. And trust me in 36 years you see them both. He is my forever best friend, and I have felt many times in the course of our marriage that I didn't really deserve him. I can be quite high maintence I guess is a nice way to put it, haha. But I have leaned on him soo heavily in this last year, what with the breast cancer and the move and everything else, I can honestly say I don't know what I would have ever done without him. The Lord answered that first prayer for me in such an overwhelming way. I look forward to growing old with this man, (and the process has definitely begun, haha) and thank God for him every day. My prayer for each one of my children and grandchildren would be that they would know the love of a good marriage, and be as blessed as I was with their own.