Catching Up
A while ago, my husband suggested that I blog everything I do. While that seemed a little outrageous and time consuming to me, I am going to share this email I just typed to a long lost friend from high school. I got an email from her the other day out of the blue saying that she had just gotten married, so I sent her back congratulations and a brief summary about my life for the last 12 years. I got a reply from her and found out she’s still in school (poor thing – we’re 30!). I typed back such a long response that I thought it might as well be a post on my blog as well – 2 birds with one stone, so they say… Now you don’t have to hack into my email to read my personal stuff! That’s a thinly veiled reference to my last post about the dueling newscasters, one who was hacking into the other’s email. Here’s the email I sent to my friend – in case you’re wondering why it gets random in places, those are answers to questions she asked me.
Great to hear back from you! So are you going to be a lawyer when you’re done with school? Where are you guys living? We are living in a little town in Ohio – I think it just might be the most perfect place to live, for us anyway, we hated Illinois and city living. It’s very rural out here. Everyone knows each other; they’re all very friendly. It’s small, not even 9,000 people, and it’s surrounded by farms. But we love it; we still have Walmart, restaurants, a movie theater – all the modern conveniences. It’s so nice to send the kids to school and not worry about them like I would at schools in the Chicago area.
So you are planning to have kids then? I wouldn’t say I’m ahead of you – maybe in the insanity department, it gets pretty loud and crazy around here! But seriously, being pregnant is actually kinda fun, especially when you can feel the baby moving. I had pretty good pregnancies; though I had gestational diabetes with 2 of them, and I had to take shots of insulin. Of course that wasn’t fun, but it’s pretty easy to do things when you know it’s for the good of the baby. I can’t say much about the deliveries. My first one was really long, my second one was awful, my third one was very easy, and my fourth one was horrible. If I have any more, I’ll probably have to have another c-section, but at least then I don’t have to go through labor. It’s different for everyone. I have a friend who has 5 kids and she never needed any drugs with any of her deliveries. Her longest delivery was 2 hours from start to finish, shortest was 20 minutes. Not only that, but all her kids starting sleeping through the night before they were a month old! She makes me jealous! But anyway, it’s all worth it in the end. My last delivery was so horrible, yet I’m already back to wanting more kids… if only they’d let us sleep… And it’s so neat to see how different the kids’ personalities are. My second oldest, Sammie, was so crazy in the womb it felt like she was kicking my organs around. She is still crazy and is our most challenging kid. Disney was a really easy delivery, and she’s our sweetest kid – so happy, friendly, and cuddly.
Our marriage is going great! My only regret is not marrying him sooner – we had a long engagement, otherwise we would have celebrated our tenth anniversary last year or the year before! He is still perfect – he helps around the house (understatement) and takes care of the kids… we definitely have a 50-50 household. Lots of husbands don’t do anything but work, so I consider myself very lucky. He works from home, has his own business, which can be challenging because I have to keep the kids away from him while he’s working. He is very good with computers and has lots of great ideas, so he supports us while my work is taking care of the kids. And I’m never bored – there is always plenty to do with 4 kids to take care of. I think about going back to work sometimes, but only when I get sick of watching Barney and talking to a 2-year old all day. I don’t think I’d like to go out and work outside the home though, unless it was at a zoo, and the zoo is an hour away. Who knows what I’ll do when all the kids grow up and go to school all day. The blog I’m doing that I sent you the link to makes a little bit of money, and I’m happy doing that in my spare time when I can get it. We also do lots of volunteer work in the community. We hold a few board positions for various community organizations, and we do lots for the local community theater group – Chris likes to be in plays. He’s a great actor and singer, and he’s also written several plays. I like to do behind-the-scenes stuff; we’ve directed shows together, and I like to produce and stage manage also. I’m too shy to get on stage myself, and I’m starting to realize that my feelings on that will probably never change.
So what’s your new last name, did you change it? Did you go to our 10 year high school reunion? I didn’t because I was pregnant with Disney – she was born 10 days after the reunion! I don’t have many fond memories of high school anyway; I didn’t really know a lot of people, compared to how big our class was. Aside from you, Kristen, Kelly, and Sarah, the people I hung out with most of the time went to Glenbard West.
Did you have a big wedding? Where was it, in IL? Where are you going to school? Do you still talk to Kristen or anyone else from high school?
It’s been fun catching up with you – send me some pictures of your wedding! I will send you some more pictures of my family. Our last family picture was taken probably over a year ago, but we will be due for another one soon so Christopher can be in it. I’ll probably want one for Christmas cards. When I get one, I will send it. Take care!