That has been our life for the past few months. I almost wish that I could say I haven't posted because I've been slacking, but in reality, I haven't posted because I haven't had time to breathe. If you're bored and have nothing to do for the next, oh, hour?...then keep right on reading because this is one LONG blog post.
Here goes...
In October, after about 7 1/2 years together, Mike and I finally had our real wedding. Of course, we were married on July 23, 2011, but it was a courthouse wedding with a really crappy story. Seriously. Mike and I decided that we wanted to just tie the knot at the courthouse and then have a real wedding a bit later when Aidan was older. We picked the hottest effing day ever to get married. We get into the courthouse only to find out that the courthouse doesn't do weddings on weekends. Seriously? This is Raleigh, not some podunk little town. How is a courthouse closed on weekends? Anyways, it was closed...so we had to get married in the jail office thing. We get into the booking room to get married and I realize I forgot to grab my license. So Mike, being the wonderful man that is, runs 4 blocks in the 100 degree heat, long khakis and a thick polo shirt to get my license. He gets back and is literally dripping with sweat. But, I love hm, sweat and all! We give my license to the judge to marry us and the judge, still sitting behind bullet proof glass, pops his cigar into his mouth, and pulls out a yellowed, wrinkled piece of paper to read our vows. Not strange enough for you? What's that? Oh yes, there was also a convicted felon in an orange jumpsuit, sitting behind bulletproof glass, watching us get married. Oh yes, folks, we got married in a jail, by a balding judge who was smoking a cigar while and sitting behind bulletproof glass while a convicted felon looked on. Romantic, right?
Regardless, I married the man of my dreams and it was still one of the best days of my life.
Wow. Offtrack. Anyways, the point was that we did actually get married in July of 2011. We decided to have a big wedding with all of our friends and family in October of 2012. Mike have been together for a very, very long time and I've been waiting for this day since the first time I met him. I know it's cliche, but I truly knew I would marry him the second I met him **swoon!**. Let me say here that a lot of my family is very old-fashioned and I grew up in an area where it wasn't exactly praised to get married after you've already had a baby. To those people, I stick out my tongue and blow raspberries! I couldn't have imagined our wedding without Aidan. Not only was he the highlight of the wedding, but he instantly calmed my obsessive, controlling personality down when he was born. Planning our wedding was so much fun for me! I was never stressed out and I had the mindset that something WILL go wrong on that day, but how we roll with it will determine if it even effects us. And of course, things did go wrong. We were missing a boutonniere and a bouquet, Aidan refused to let us sit him down and cried the entire trip down the aisle and I hadn't exactly lost as much weight as I had wanted to before I slipped into my dress. To all of that, I say, "who cares!" Aidan made the wedding. He cried the entire wagon ride up the aisle and probably stopped quite a few tears from my family while they waited for me to walk down the aisle. When I did get down the aisle, the little stinker threw all of our pumpkin aisle decorations at our feet. There wasn't a single person that could hold in the laughter, including our preacher! And when Mike and I had to hold him during our first dance because he was afraid of so many people, all I could think was, "can one person feel more loved than I do right now, with the love of my life, and the little man who has become my life?" My answer was no. There is not a thing that I would have changed about our wedding. It was absolutely perfect. The food was AMAZING (Floyd's in Morehead City), our photographer was picture perfect and has been a friend since we were 8 (Cynthia Rose Photography), our wedding planner could not have been better (Chelsea with the Islander), it was just amazing. All of it. I may not have been as skinny as I wanted to be, our best man and maid of honor might not have had flowers, and Mike and I may not have had our time together, but between the man who stood beside me the entire wedding and our amazing little man, along with our family and friends who were there to celebrate with us, it was absolutely perfect!
So the day after the wedding, our photograph came back and did a Trash the Dress session with us. I got a bit of grief for "ruining my wedding dress"...ya know, that dress that you spend all that money on for one day, then hang up in the closet for the rest of your life and never touch again? Yeah, that one. Well, let me tell you, that dress was COVERED in sand and salt water after that day. After sending it to a professional cleaner, it is now perfectly cleaned and preserved in a box in my closet with a see-through window..so BOOM. I had so much fun that day! If you're considering doing a TTD session, I highly, highly recommend it! It was a great way to end a wedding weekend!
After the wedding, we, tearfully, dropped off our little man with my parents and heading back to Raleigh so we could pack for our Vegas honeymoon. Mike and I both grew up on the east coast with beaches, we wanted to do something different. How much different can you get than Vegas??
I have to say, I am absolutely terrified of flying. I mean panic attack inducing terrified. My thought process is usually something like this, "If this plane crashes, I have an awfully time to think about dying. What if it crashes and I survive but we're in the ocean with sharks? What if no one else makes?! **panic, panic, panic** Dear God, please keep this plane in the air. No, God, please let me make it off of this plane in one piece. No, I mean please just let this stupid plane land safely in Las Vegas and my husband and I get off of this thing without dying!" I hate planes. But, I sucked it up, closed my eyes, and made the very long plane ride from one end of the US to the *almost* other far end of the US. It was worth it. Vegas was...different. Like an entirely different world. I think I would have enjoyed it much more had it not been for the insane amounts of cigarette smoke and people trying to shove hooker cards in my face. In an seriousness, we had a blast. We walked up and down the strip mostly, which took a lot longer than I would have thought. The strip doesn't look nearly as big on TV. We saw Chriss Angel, the Jabawokeez, the Secret Garden at Mirage, the Shark Reef, far too many shops, the M&M building **ah-mazing!** and far too much more to even put into this blog. I can't wait to go back one day! Hopefully we can take Aidan with us then and see the Grand Canyon and Hoover Dam as well.
When we got back from Vegas, things were pretty uneventful. We spent Thanksgiving together at our house as a family. I think we had both had enough traveling for a while. My dad and sister came up and I cooked all day, but it was nice to have an uneventful month!
December was a pretty awesome month. We decided to take Aidan to Hill Ridge Farms to see Santa and see their lights. If you haven't been, you have to go, we all had a blast! It was seriously freezing that night so we couldn't stay out for too long, but we got to drink hot cocoa, roast marshmallows, slide down a HUGE slide, see bunny's and feed ducks and goats, climb over hay stacks, go on a train ride and ride through the festival of lights. Aidan was only 19 months at the time, but he loved every second of it! He even got to eat his favorite sandwich, peanut butter and jelly, before we left! Needless to say, he loved everything except Santa. Go figure.
Christmas was a big event, as always. We spent Christmas Eve with my mom and stepdad, which was a blast. Aidan got entirely too many toys/clothes, but hey, he's our kid and we'll spoil him if we want to. He still doesn't entirely grasp the concept of Christmas or present opening, but he's getting there. Mike and I just enjoyed spending time together as a family. Of course Roxy and Koby got plenty of presents as well. We did a very big chunk of our lives missing this Christmas though...
Earlier in December, we noticed that Bailey wasn't acting like himself. He would have one day a week where he wouldn't get off of the bed and would breathe a little too hard for comfort. We took him to the vet and, in true Bailey fashion, he was his usual happy self. They ran some tests and couldn't find anything wrong. We held off on x-rays to see if he would start feeling better on his own. Fast forward a week and we knew that something was really, really wrong. His one bad day a week turned into very day being a bad day. He was barely eating and you could tell that he was having to put far too much effort into breathing. We decided to take him straight back to the vet. Before I continue here, I think it's worth it to mention that while Mike and I both loved Bailey with all of our hearts, Bailey was a daddy's boy through and through, much like Vegas was a mommas girl. I knew that something was very wrong and was convinced that Bailey was either in heart failure or had cancer. I wasn't very optimistic that we would get to bring him home from the vet, but Mike held out hope. When we got to the vet's office, we brought them up to speed and told them how much worse things had gotten. We had to drop him off so that they could do some chest x-rays and see if they could figure it out. Mike and I stayed at the house and worried ourselves sick.
Around 2pm, our vet called with the news that I was half expecting and Mike was praying wouldn't come. Bailey had cancer. Bad cancer. He had nodules in his chest and it had spread to his internal organs. There was nothing we could do. There was no radiation or chemo that would take it away. There was no surgery. There was nothing. We felt so helpless. A lot of people don't understand the bond between a dog and their owner, but trust me, we would have paid anything to be able to bring Bailey home with us and have him happy and healthy. He was worth it. Unfortunately, it just wasn't in the cards for Bailey. He was very, very sick. Our vet wasn't sure if he would make it through the night. He had so much fluid in his lungs that he could barely breathe. We had to make the decision to put him down, to let him run free and not suffer anymore. We had to put his well-being before our happiness. Mike and I sat on the couch and cried for what felt like hours. When we finally pulled ourselves together, we packed up Aidan and made our way to the vet's office. I hated that drive. I hate the grief room that we've seen far too often in the last 2 years. I love our vet, but I hated being there. They brought Bailey out and I went in first so we could say good-bye. We didn't want Aidan climbing all over him in the condition that he was in. We spent about 30 tear-filled, choked up minutes together before I went out to get Mike. Mike stayed with Bailey for a long time. He stayed when they put him to sleep and held him in his lap. He stayed for a long time after that. I'm still not sure that's at peace with Bailey being gone, but I'm not sure that I am either. Something is just missing now. It's not the same without him. We both talk about him quite a bit. He was our Bailey-boo that was supposed to live forever. This wasn't supposed to happen. Bailey was supposed to pass away of natural causes in his sleep when he was very, very old. He wasn't supposed to suffer. He wasn't supposed to ever feel any pain. He had survived one of the most aggressive forms of cancer that a dog can get when he was 4. He was supposed to survive this too. But he didn't. We lost our bubba a few weeks before Christmas and we know that it will never be the same. I know that Bailey running around with Vegas now and they're patiently waiting to be reunited with us many, many years from now. Those two were my rock through some serious crap. They were my everything for a very long time. I know that they're both pain free now, but December will always be a month that we both now dread, having lost both Vegas and Bailey in December almost exactly 2 years apart...and things will never really be the same around here.
***Run free Bailey boy...we love you and miss you so, so much!**
Now that I've thoroughly soaked my face in tears, I think it's time to get back to some happy thoughts...
We usually travel over Christmas to see our families, and while we love visiting and we desperately missed them, it was really nice just having that time to relax instead of the cluster that our holidays usually are. I made a breakfast casserole for us to snack on while Aidan was playing with his toys and we spent most of the day just hanging around and making dinner. I have a tendency to make far too much for just Aidan, Mike and myself, but it's fun anyways. I also made the decision to accept Jesus Christ into my life in December and was Baptized. I've been a Baptist my entire life, but never did get Baptized. We started going to a non-denominational church a while back and I just felt that this was it, this was the church where I needed to rededicate my life to Christ. I'm thrilled to have made this decision!
So, December comes and goes and we roll into January. Mike and I had been talking about enrolling Aidan into swimming lessons for awhile and we just happened to notice that the new pool up the road was now enrolling, so we bit the bullet and signed him up! Best.Decision.Ever. He LOVED the water. I mean LOVE. Like he hated being held, he wanted to just take the jump and do it himself. His instructor was amazed that he was so fearless! It wasn't a very long class, only a month, but I definitely think we'll sign him up for the next level once he turns 2, it was so worth it!
In February, Mike had a meet that he had to go to in Concord, so Aidan and I went along and we stayed at Great Wolf Lodge. I don't have many pictures because they're on our water proof disposable camera that no one can seem to figure out how to develop, but we had a blast! They have a huge kiddie pool that Aidan stayed in most of the time. We were there over Valentine's Day so it was pretty packed, but I would go back anytime. We met up with a friend of mine that lives in South Carolina and let the kids play before we went home. And there was a freak blizzard the day before we were supposed to leave. It was so strange, but Aidan did love looking at it. Thank goodness everything was inside!
In March, we made a quick trip to Florida to visit my family. My grandpa was diagnosed with cancer and isn't doing very well. My aunt let us know that it had spread to his lymph nodes and other organs and the prognosis was dim, so we packed up and drove the 12 hours back home to Florida to send a few days with him. It was good seeing him, but it was awful knowing that it will probably be my last time spending time with him and it will probably be the last time he will see Aidan. I did talk to my grandma the other day and I got to talk to my grandpa for a few minutes, it was bittersweet. He sounded awful and it just breaks my heart to hear him suffer through this illness. Cancer is such an awful, awful disease. I pray every day that some one will find a cure soon.
We haven't been up to much since Florida, just hanging around and spending together as a family of 3...since our family of 3 will become a family of 4 in November! That's right, there's a little Faber in the oven, Aidan is going to be a big brother! I had to end this extremely long post on a happy note, so this is my wonderful, wonderful news! I'm hoping to keep up with this blog more, but I can't make any promises. I really am not motivated to do anything except play with Aidan...sigh...it's a rough life ; )
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