I (big puffy) heart interviews with children and thus I completely loved the Father’s Day gifts the children brought home from school last week.

The answers are sweet and cute and hilarious! One of those “I should have thought of that” things! Loved it so much I had Emma do one, too. Here are their answers:

Jaiden

My daddy is 27 years old.

He weighs 10 lbs. and is 20 feet tall.

His hair is brown and his eyes are green.

My dad loves to relax by the chair and he likes to wear his softball shirt.

He loves to cook sausage, eggs and hamburgers.

His favorite household chore is to fold laundry.

His favorite TV show is baseball and his favorite song is “Superman.”

Daddy always tells me to clean up my room.

It makes him happy when I clean up my room.

When my dad shops, he loves to get drinks.

If he could go on a trip, he would go to Boston.

I really love it when my dad plays with me outside.

—

Jaylen

My daddy is 27 years old.

He weighs 13 lbs. and is 12 feet tall.

His hair is brown and his eyes are green.

My dad loves to relax by the chair and he likes to wear shorts.

He loves to cook sandwiches and ramen noodles.

His favorite household chore is to clean the floor.

His favorite TV show is baseball and his favorite song is “Howl at the Moon.”

Daddy always tells me I love you.

It makes him happy when I give him something.

When my dad shops, he loves to get candy.

If he could go on a trip, he would go to Texas.

I really love it when my dad lets me sit up front.

—

Emma

My daddy is 6 years old.

He weighs 6 lbs. and is 9 feet tall.

His hair is brown and his eyes are blue.

My dad loves to relax by sitting on the chair and he likes to wear his blue shirt and pink pants.

He loves to cook macaroni and cheese.

His favorite household chore is to do homework.

His favorite TV show is carnival and his favorite song is Michael Jackson.

Daddy always tells me a story.

It makes him happy when I clean my room.

When my dad shops, he loves to get apples.

If he could go on a trip, he would go see Miranda Cosgrove.

I really love it when my dad loves me.

—

Jenna

My daddy is 1 year old.

He weighs 12 lbs. and is 20 feet tall.

His hair is brown and his eyes are black.

My dad loves to relax by crying and he likes to wear shorts, socks and a shirt.

He loves to cook rolls and potato soup.

His favorite household chore is to clean up his room.

His favorite TV show is basketball, football and baseball and his favorite song is “Ba Ba Black Sheep.”

Daddy always tells me I am good.

It makes him happy when we are being good.

When my dad shops, he loves to get some food.

If he could go on a trip, he would go on a school bus.

I really love it when my dad hugs.

–

And just, you know, for the record, Darin just turned 29 on Friday (not six!). He’s about 195 lbs. and is 6’2″ tall; his hair is light brown and his eyes are blue. When he actually sits down and stays out of the poison ivy, he likes to relax by lying in bed and watching some kind of sport, any kind of sport. Wait, did I mention sports? He loves to cook anything easy – ramen noodles, sandwiches, soups and, yes, Sister Schubert rolls – and especially sausage and eggs for breakfast. I think his favorite household chore is mowing the grass, but he often blurs the stereotypical gender roles by folding laundry and cooking and cleaning the floors and picking up where I slack off (but I’m getting better at this).

The “relaxing by crying” comment made me laugh out loud! How funny! Also, he didn’t know who Miranda Cosgrove was; Emma’s obsessed with iCarly.

The kids had the store answers nailed. Quite often he drops by a gas station for food, candy and drinks. I nag him about this (he’s a diabetic and doesn’t make the best choices; I nag him because I want to keep him around for as long as possible). lol.

His favorite show is Ghost Hunters, anything that has to do with any kind of sport (except ice skating) and any kind of show like Cops or stupid criminals, etc. Jaiden was pretty close with guessing “Superman” as one of his favorite songs; he also loves Ozzy and various other alternative and classic rock things. He often goes on trips for business and has been to Boston once and Texas twice since October; he loves those places and those guesses were pretty close. He also loves national parks, California and one day hopes to go camping in the Alaskan nothingness, a la Into the Wild.

They were all correct with the “Daddy always tells me” and “It makes him happy when …” answers. Because Darin’s a great dad. And we love him for it! This interview was SUCH a great idea. I’m totally keeping these. We can display them when they get married or something. lol.

Jaylen was so cute – he colored Darin a Father’s Day picture at school and he FRAMED IT when he got home. lol! I love that precious boy.

We spent Father’s Day at my parents’ house with my brother and his family, Dara and Isaac and my in-laws. We ate a ton of food, swam for most of the afternoon and brought home leftovers and sunburns.

Life is good.

WHEW. We made it 365 days without killing one another. Let’s party!

One year ago today, Darin and I met in a garden with our children, our family, our friends and left a married couple. Getting to that stone path was a bit stressful, especially that last few days leading up to the wedding, but we made it.

We said our vows, cried our tears, snapped a ton of photos, then had cake and danced for the first time as husband and wife (and, well, the first time ever and only time so far, unless you count impromptu dances in the kitchen).

And then? A completely awesome trip to the Outer Banks. We had the best time calling each other “Mr./Mrs. Day” and “Husband/Wife” like those are our actual first names. Ah, puppy love. So sweet.

This past year has been difficult. Marriage isn’t easy and it’s not supposed to be. We’ve learned many lessons, argued way too much, gone to bed angry at times, lost our shit way too often, said a lot of things we didn’t mean and, I’m sure, fantasized about punching each other in the face more times than we can count. But we’ve also had some great times as a couple and as a family, we’ve grown and we’re open to working on our issues.

I’m still not at all loving the fact that all he watches is sports (and Ghost Hunters, but right now he’s flipping back and forth between NBA Finals and a baseball game) or that he gets really mad if you leave the light on and you’re not in the room or that he never rinses his dishes. Of course, here’s where he’d said all I do is sit on the computer, I want to always keep the lights on and run up the electric bill and never do laundry. But today I tried to be a good wife and fold clothes without complaining (so long as I got to watch the Law & Order:SVU marathon on his new TV) and he commended it, so we’re moving in the right direction. I haven’t wanted to punch him in the face for days, so we’re progressing (I kid, I kid!).

To celebrate our anniversary, we spent the night at The Peabody in Memphis and had dinner at the Rendezvous. When we checked out this morning, we stopped by Old Navy for a pair of jeans (because every pair I own that I like has holes in really awful places) and also found a cute little sundress too. Then we came home and enjoyed (ha) doing laundry and other chores sans children.

We didn’t save the top layer of our cake, but I think The Mister is baking cookies while I finish blogging about how awesome he is (his words, I promise). Sweet.

June 6 came back around so quickly, it seems. When I look back at the pictures, it seems like just yesterday. I wish we were still on the beach in the Outer Banks, enjoying being newlyweds again. It was, hands down, the most fun we’ve had together, the longest we’ve had as just Mr. and Mrs. Day (without children) and the best trip ever.

Today I was thinking about all of the reasons I love him, how comfortable I feel in my own skin I am with him and how he fit what I want in a partner. A year later, I would choose him again.

I love you very much, Mr. Day. Especially all of your teeth and what you’ve got going on with your hair. (Now get in that kitchen and get me some cookies, por favor.)

Taking a break today from all of the questions (but keep sending them in – I’m enjoying answering them!) and so I thought I would pull something out of my archives. This can be fun, but also annoying because I was extremely bubbly at 21 when I started this blog. Oy.

On Nov. 15, 2002, I published my criteria for Mr. Right. Basically, it was a list of the things I’d change about the man who is now my ex-husband and I wrote it the week after we had broken up, before we were ever married.

Seven years later, I will tell you that I later dated a couple of guys who met a lot of the criteria. One of them was pretty spot-on with everything I was looking for, but it just wasn’t the right timing. I thought it was the end of the world, but oh how I have lived, loved and enjoyed myself in the years since my last heartbreak.

Here’s the list, and here’s how my real Mr. Right matches up with the expectations I set at age 21: (more…)

I was browsing photos and found one of my sweet littlest girls from an air show we all attended.

It doesn’t seem so, but this was two years ago already (on Sept. 23). This was back when we were interested in one another, but neither was ready to begin nor commit to a relationship. We were interested in being friends and this was the beginning of the friendship we forged, only to fall in love and commit to being a family.

These little girls are now bigger girls (they remind us every single day!) and even sweeter. Our family is the same way: bigger and sweeter.

Unfortunately we can’t say the same of the air show they cancelled this year. (What were you expecting, a sweet sentiment coupled with jet noise?)

We never imagined then that we would marry and become one large, boisterous but perfect family (okay, I’m just kidding about the boisterous part!) and I hope in 10, 15, 20 years we can look back with wonder and say, “Look at all we never imagined,” and reminisce over a wonderful life.

To the next 20 years …

I realized today that I haven’t given my readers – if there are any left, aside from my grandmother and aunt – a real blog post in quite some time. There have been meal plans and pictures and meal plans with pictures, there have been birthday wishes and recaps of busy weekends, but there hasn’t been anything with heart and soul in it in a long, long time.

Next month marks the eighth year since I began blogging with this domain. Before that, I was blogging through HTML updates at free sites, so technically I’ve already hit the eight year mark. Eight years is a long time. (more…)

Yesterday marked 50 days since Darin and I got married. (The sweet tea anniversary, my high school friend Ivey said.) And what a 50 days it has been.

Sometimes it feels like 50 years. Other times, 50 minutes.

People still comment on our recent nuptials, even in board meetings (like tonight) and with the governor. I can’t count how many times I’ve been asked, “So, how’s married life?” and I definitely can’t count the number of times I’ve dreaded being asked that question. (In a nutshell, it’s going just fine, thank you.)

It’s not like we didn’t already live together for seven months prior to being married, which was good because at least we didn’t have the stress of blending a family and moving in together and finding out all of these secrets (like that your husband’s anal about how he folds t-shirts and doesn’t rinse his glasses out after he’s had some milk late at night) on top of everything else. In that respect, I’m glad we did things the order in which we did them because it has definitely made the transition, so to speak, easier.

That said, it’s not been easy.

Sure, the first few weeks were all sunshine and roses. We didn’t fight, had little to stress over and just enjoyed being married. We were giddy and called each other husband and wife. We began the couples’ devotional Night Light and learned more about each other. We gazed at each other and smiled, remembering that we were now Mr. and Mrs. It was the pure definition of bliss.

By Day 50, reality had set in.

The truth is, life is not always blissful, newlyweds or otherwise. There are times when you don’t want to like your spouse, not to mention love them. There are times when you’re so angry you want to pack up and go back to where you came from. And there are times when you stop and realize you ‘can’t do this forever’ (whatever your ‘this’ happens to be) and it’s time to make changes.

It’s hard. As much as I thought my first husband and I had a few strikes against us, I feel like Darin and I have more. Having already been divorced, we’re already statistics. We have a blended family, which can (and IS!) a very difficult thing to manage smoothly. We have exes and emotional baggage and a few wounds we’re realizing were not completely healed. There are also chronic illnesses and permanent disabilities in our case, and with those also come other illnesses like depression and anxiety.

The husband also does a bit of business traveling, which makes things more difficult. Not only are our schedules interrupted, but I am a single parent again temporarily (and it’s hard to switch back, let me tell you). I feel lonely without him here. His schedule is different from ours, so when we’re eating lunch he’s eating breakfast and when we’re going to bed, he’s eating dinner. We both get frustrated with less than satisfactory cell phone signals in the house (and right now our house phone isn’t working, I think the line was messed up in a storm). He’s a private person who hates talking on the phone, so we don’t do much connecting while he’s away. Instead, we do a lot of arguing and we don’t fight fair. It’s all so very frustrating.

And still being labeled a newlywed, of course I hate to admit that we fight. People expect to still see stars in our eyes. They’re still there, they just need to be polished. And it’s hard work to keep them polished.

Marriage is nothing but hard work. It’s all about loving your spouse, even when you don’t like them, because love is a verb and a choice we make every single day. It’s about staying when you want to go. And it’s about changing when you need to.

Then there are the days when you both decide to surprise each other – one with flowers, the other with erasable pens, straight from Miss Juanita Rodriguez’s third grade class (but only once you mastered penmanship). Those are the days that make all of the hard work and frustration worth it because they polish the stars and bring back the sunshine and roses.