Good Intentions

I don't like to do the laundry very often - maybe once a month - but Joel would like it done twice a week, so usually he ends up doing the laundry. This seems to stress him out a lot since we have to do laundry in the laundry facility in our apartment. So last night, while he was gone teaching, I decided to do the laundry so that he wouldn't be stressed out. I knew he would be happy and surprised. I started at about 8:00pm and I thought I would be done before 10, which is when I expected Joel to be home. As it turns out, I put one of our loads of laundry in the "slow" one without knowing it. But there was a nice, talkative woman in the laundry room as well, so I was just doing the laundry and waiting for it while talking to her. Then before I knew it Joel comes in and he is like "I can't believe you are here, I came home and couldn't find you and you are always home when I come home so I thought the worst. I thought you had gotten hurt and went to the hospital by ambulance. I didn't know what to do and where to go." He said, "When I saw you weren't there, my thoughts didn't go to a normal conclusion, like maybe she is washing clothes, but instead they went to the morgue!" Poor Joel!! I was trying to do his laundry to save him time and not stress him, because I knew he has a lot of papers to grade tonight and applications to fill out and as it turns out I ended up scaring him for a while anyways! But after it was all over, as we were going to sleep he said that he is really happy that I did the laundry because it does help him out. So it wasn't for nothing. Next time, I will leave him a note, even if I think that I will be back before him. (I think it's nice how overly concerned he is especially now that I am pregnant, although I do feel bad that it scared him)

Leave Your Father and Mother and Cling to Your Husband

At various times I think about the idea of leaving your mother and father and clinging to your husband. I think this is an area where our age difference comes into play. I found it almost impossible at the thought of not being with my family at Christmas since I have never missed a year. But this is a problem because that would mean I am never willing to go to Joel's family's house at Christmas. And I sometimes leave Joel since he has to stay home due to work, to go to visit my family since they are only 2 hours away. But more and more I am realizing that I am married now and that it does mean that things are changing now. My older sister Steph is realizing this now as well since she lives 12 hours away and has a baby. This was the first year that she was unable to make it home for Christmas. I think it is a sad time for all of us since we are a close family to go through this because it is definitely a transitioning time. Lindsay is about to graduate college this May, and so everyone is going through big changes. It makes it a little harder since we have a 12 year old sister Tori who is home and wanting us to be able to visit and be home like normal. More and more I am understanding that things do change, and that this is part of growing up. And how fast the time went! I think in general, I will always see members of my family often since we are so close and really want to stay in contact. But there will definitely be changes over the next years to come too. I saw how it was for Joel to miss out on visiting his family this Christmas, and it made me realize that we will definitely see his family on some Christmases too. It is not always easy to leave your family and make your own family, but it is part of life. Luckily we both love both of our families very much and we want to be able to see them often and have them be able to get to meet the new members of our family every time we have children. We will just have to take things one holiday at a time and it will all get worked out.

Wedding Ring

For months now Joel has been without his wedding ring because he lost it somewhere in the house. I found it today while going through a stack of receipts that we had put in a box to go through later! I had been meaning to post something here recently, but since Joel finally gets to wear his wedding ring now, I figured I should finally get to updating this blog again too!! I am not sure if I am going to keep up this blog after the baby is born, we will see. But for now, things are going great with us. We are both excited because Joel's church is having a retreat for married couples at the end of May. We really had such a great time at the Engaged Encounter retreat that we attended before we got married, so we are looking forward to having a similar experience. I am also glad for the retreat because it gives us a few days to focus on our marriage and each other. We are also excited at the though that I will be very pregnant at the time as well! (the retreat center is only a few exits down the highway from our house, on the way to the birthing center, so it won't be like going out of town or anything) I think it will give us some help in remembering each other when the baby is born. They offer these marriage retreats every year, so if we have another good time, then we want to try to go every year. But that is a few months away, so I am going to try to post on here more often in order to keep reflecting on our relationship in the mean time.