Randomness (is that a word)

My girls at Gardner Village October 2009

So... I realized tonight that it has been well over a year since I have even come near my blog. I guess it isn't working quite as I thought that it would. Although if you read the first post you will see that I really didn't have a reason to create the blog. Well unless you count me being tired and not having anything better to do. (Mainly because sleeping was evading me.) Sleep still evades me and I wonder why I even take medication to help with Insomnia. It's obviously not working. But I digress...(or do I sense I named this Randomness?)

As an update it is now December of 2009 and we are almost to the end of birthday season. When I initially got pregnant with my first I remember thinking how great my due date was. February 2nd. It is still in winter (because summer is a horrible time to be hugely pregnant, as well as being a horrible season) and it is after Christmas. But then come to find out, my body apparently doesn't like the third trimester. It's either deliver the baby early or have a stroke. I choose to deliver the baby. I here I was thinking that I was going to have my baby come in February and now here she is on December 8th. 6 days after my husbands birthday. The same thing happened with the next two except now I know that they will come early. So in the end I planned on having one child born in February, and two born in January , but ended up having 2 in December and 1 in November. So now on Halloween (my birthday) we begin birthday season. My Baby Megan is November 16th (due January 1st), My husband on December 2nd, my oldest Elizabeth is December 8th (due February 2nd) then we wrap up birthday season with Grace (the middle one) on December 17 (due January 9th). Once all of that is done we can finally start wo worry about Christmas.

I am getting ready to have the big girls birthday party this saturday. Since their birthdays are 9 days apart they are forced (for now) to have a shared birthday party. I don't know if you can call this party a princess theme. But it's what I am calling it, even if there isn't much princess stuff involved. The organized former wanna be teacher in me thought that doing centers would be the best way to contain 10 little girls ranging from 4 - 8 yrs old in a small house. Their will be one center that will allow each girl to decorate her own cupcake. (yes I know it may be a disaster in the making.) Another center will be getting their nails done. The final one will have this game that I found where you get to try and shoot Gus-Gus into Cinderella's Coach. The girl who get's the most of her Gus-Guses into the carriage wins. Hopefully it will turn out OK.

While typing I realized that to me ths really isn't a blog in the typical sense. It almost seems more like a journal to me. Although thinking about it in that sense kinda makes me think, cause why on earth would I ever have a journal that was online. If we were to look back at the Journals that I kept back in high school, there is no way that I would want to have any of that information available to anyone. Which makes me wonder again where they are and if my husband has read them. I really hope not, cause the journal of a high school girl contains what you think it would contain. Every happy buzz that I had (mostly about boys), as well as the entries that tell about my saddest moments (mostly concerning boys once again). I started this blog thinking that I could get a good record of my husband and my story, but I think that I need to rethink this and consider this my story which includes him. Cause let's face it... he's never going to blog, I don't even think he knows that I have set this up.

I warned you that I was in a random thinking mode.

You know it's kinda funny looking back even as far as this small journal (it is no longer a blog to me) goes. Life goes on and you think that everything is changing so fast that you can't keep up, but then you realize that it all is pretty much the same. I still work in the same job that I was complaining about a year ago, I haven't gone anywhere and the stress is still just as high. I still can't sleep. I still lay awake at night wondering where my life is going and if I made the right choices. My husband drives me nuts, but I still love him more than anything. My kids are growing up everyday and I feel like I am missing everything. I still have all the same problems that I did when I originally started this. It seems like this year has been full of changes, but looking back, it hasn't changed at all.

Mike want me to come to bed, where I will attempt to sleep and most likely fail. So I am done rambling... I am not sure when I will return, but now that this is my journal I may think to come back more often.

Our Story (the condensed version)

We are the Stewarts, I am Ann and My Husband is Mike. I work at Continental Airlines, and Mike is going to school online and stays at home with our girls. We have been married for 6 ½ years, and have three beautiful girls. The story of our marriage is not exactly typical however. In fact I think we almost gave both of our parents a heart attack everyday for a month straight.

Mike and I met while working at Maceys in Provo. I worked in the bakery and Mike was the “cute meat department boy” as I described him to my friends. I had a crush on him for two months before our first date. Our dating relationship was a whirlwind, one of the reasons that we almost gave our parents a heart attack. On our forth date, only hours after holding hands for the first time. We were watching a movie together, and the spirit whispered to me “Tell him that you love him.” My first thought was “What?...I just met the guy, no way will I say that.” For the next half an hour I was told to tell him that I loved him, and was unwilling to say it. When I realized that it really was what I was supposed to do, I had to figure out how to say it without making Mike think that I was crazy. So I finally told him “I think that I may have fallen for you” He replied with “I think that I may have fallen for you too….In fact I think my search is over.” Before I even had a chance to think about what I was saying I replied, “Well I have known since Saturday,” which was the day of our first date. Mike’s response to that was, “So… do you want to get married?” “Sure” was al I said. We sat quietly for the next few minutes. Then I asked, “So does this mean we’re engaged?” “Yeah I think so.” And that is how my husband proposed to me.

We had planned on a nice long engagement, but our wedding date kept changing. With the very sudden engagement, there was more than the usual drama associated with a wedding. We had made the decision that since we weren’t exactly the most active at the time, we would have a civil wedding then be sealed later when we were ready, which only caused more drama. We moved our wedding date from June to April, and were being told that the marriage shouldn’t happen almost on a daily basis. We were sick of it. One day as we were talking we decided that we should go and get our marriage license and that way we had to get married in the next 30 days. So we did. On our way back we were going over our schedule and thinking what day seemed logical to get married. We then decided, tonight is the only good night. So at 4:00 in the afternoon we started planning our wedding that would happen later that night. . Mike went into work, and asked if he could have the night off, just in case he happened to get married that night. We started by telling my mom and dad. My mom is a teacher and it happened to be parent teacher conference night at the school where she taught. So we went to the school and while she was waiting for the next set of parents we told her that we wanted to get married sooner. She asked when we thought sooner would be, and we said tonight after she was done would be good. You could see another almost heart attack in the works. She told us that it wouldn’t work because we had to get a marriage license and that they were closed by now. I don’t think she was too happy when we told her that we already had it. She reluctantly agreed to it. Our next step was to get my bishop to agree to marry us, and to figure out where we would get married. After talking to my sister in law and my bishop, it was agreed that we would get married at my brother’s house at 9:30 that night. Nobody was overly excited about it, except for us. But everyone who could come from our families were there. So we were married in February, one month and 7 days after our first date. Since we had essentially eloped we kept our reception date in April and were sealed in the temple on our one year anniversary. Mike also redeemed himself for his overly casual proposal, by giving me an anniversary ring. As he gave it to me, he whispered “Ann will you join me in eternity now?”

It seems that any big events in our lives happen with very short notice. Even the births of our children were not when we had planned. As it turns out my body really doesn’t like it when I am pregnant. I had morning sickness for the first 6 months of each pregnancy, and then when it finally went away I am put on bed rest for the remainder of the pregnancy with pre-eclampsia. Elizabeth, who is now 5, was born 8 weeks early, and spent her first 5 weeks in the Newborn ICU. She was our smallest at 3lbs 1oz. It’s hard to believe that our little peanut has grown so much and is about to start kindergarten this week. Grace, who is now 3, was only 4 weeks early and was able to come home with us, since she was over 5lbs. Bubbles as we called her, is by far my silliest she always wants to make you laugh. And Megan, who is 9 months, was born 7 weeks early and spent 5 weeks and two days in the NICU. My little Caboose-a-moose, since she is our final child, is the chunkiest baby we have had, and is currently getting into everything.

Can't Sleep

Well here it is a month and a half later and once again it is 1 am and I can't sleep. I had the opportunity to give a talk in church two weeks ago and since it was about love, I took that chance to tell our story, although in a condensed version and now the urge has left me. Although I will copy and past that portion of the talk into a post so if anyone actually reads this they can see part of the story until I get the urge and time to talk about it again.
I often wonder why it is that I come home absolutely exhausted from working a 10 hour shift, can't wait to get into bed, and then lay here for hours trying to sleep. Maybe worrying about not sleeping is keeping me up? If only that was my only problem. My thought process progresses, and it seems like I can't stop it. Tonight it has gone something like this:
Can't sleep, want to sleep, but can't. I have a busy day tomorrow, I wonder if I will have to stay late again. If I don't fall asleep soon I will be so tired that I can't concentrate tomorrow and then I will definitely have to stay late. I wish I got paid more. I work way too hard for the little amount that I get paid. They say that I am amazing and they don't know what to do when I am out of the office, but I get paid less than the people that I run reports on. In fact I was getting paid less now than I was when I was taking the phone calls. I should look for a new job. No I can't, the insurance is too good. I hate being sick all the time. Why isn't my Ambien working? I wish I wasn't so tired all the time so I would have energy to play with my kids more. Hopefully this last surgery will help. I feel like my chest is about to fall out. (I just had my gallbladder removed last week and I had a hysterectomy in May) I wish I could sleep.
So after having this conversation with myself going on for the last couple of hours and having it repeat itself a few times I decided that I needed a distraction for a little while. So here I am.
On another note my kids keep getting bigger and smarter everyday. Elizabeth started Kindergarten last week. Grace just amazes me everyday with how sweet she is and how she can make you smile even when you are in the worst of moods. And Megan who is almost 10 months is standing on her own, and will be walking any day now.
My life is pretty boring though. I work for an airline and have done for two years now and I have gone on one weekend trip the whole time I have worked there. I am just hoping that I can have the patience to hold out working there until Mike finishes school. That way I can work part time and only work for the benefits.
Mike is going to school online and has finally chosen a major that I think he will stick with this time, IT security. He has changed his major so many times that his schooling hasn't gotten too far. But hopefully he will stick to this one and we can finally have some stability once he finishes school.
Anyway I digress, but like I said before I can't sleep and my thought process just progresses form one thing to another even if it doesn't make sense. I have now been writing for about 20 minutes and hopefully it is enough to get my mind to calm down and finally go to sleep.
Oh yeah I forgot to mention that Mike is snoring. I love him to death, but wow can he snore up a storm.

Who kows why

To be honest I have no idea why I started this. I was always the skeptic that was opposed to putting anything personal on the internet. But for some reason I am compelled to start a blog. I don't know if it is the fact that I am still awake at 1:00 am and can't sleep or the fact that I have been thinking of all of my plans of writing in my journal, but haven't in almost 7 years. Either way here I am and I want to tell an amazing story. I love my husband Mike very much and I want my kids to know the story, but I really don't want them to know it for a very long time. The reason being is that I think I would have a nervous breakdown if any one of my girls did what I did. I have no idea how my mom handled it.
Before I do that I think that I want to try to sleep on it and get my thoughts strait so I can tell the story in a rational way instead of jumping around. If you knew me when I met my husband you would be surprised at my actions. Very few people know the real story, but you soon will. I hope that you enjoy.