Summer Rundown

Our life has been busy!   I'll try to do a quick rundown of things that have happened in our lives the last few months:

-We went to Alaska in May!  It was so so fun, and we got to experience a late winter, which wounds weird to be excited about, but it was amazing.  Clara loved seeing snow and I loved wearing sweaters.  We all loved spending time with family.  Jordan worked over 300 hours in May while we were in Alaska, so I was super grateful to be there, and not stuck at home alone with two small kids in Phoenix while Jordan worked insane (INSANE!) hours.  In early June, Jordan and his parents surprised me when they flew Jordan up to visit for the weekend and then fly home with me and the kid's.  It was so cool to be in Alaska with Jordan.

Snowing, in May, in Alaska

It was a cold morning in Alaska, so we cuddled

-After getting back from Alaska, I had two weeks before turning around and flying to Missouri for a couple of weeks with Jordan's sisters.  It was two weeks of recuperating and... we bought a minivan.  Jordan and I have been discussing getting a second car for ages, and we finally just bit the bullet and did it!  It's a 2006 Toyota Sienna, and we L-O-V-E it.  It has totally changed my life.  We were a one car family for a long time, and it was starting to wear on me.  Have a second car (especially one with so much room) has given me an immense amount of freedom, and the kids and I gleefully go from one fun activity to the next in this baby.

I love the color.  I love this van.

Lucy playing in the pool in Phoenix

-At the end of June, the kids and I boarded a plane once again and headed off to Missouri.  Missouri is amazing.  Jordan's sisters live literally right next door to each other, and the kids basically wander the farm between the two houses.  I love being able to give Clara so much space and freedom, and so so so many playmates.  I love being able to talk to family whenever I want.  Jordan joined us for reunion about 2 weeks after the kids and I got there, and then he stayed for a week and a half.

Clara and cousin Katy

-Jordan and I had our 5 year anniversary while we were in Missouri!  The day of our anniversary, the Hull family reunion had planned an awesome trip to a Missouri lake where we rented two boats.  Jordan and I aren't particularly picky about our anniversary, we don't' feel like we need to do something special every single year (ok, confession: about half our anniversaries I'm usually in Alaska by myself), so we just had a great time on the boat with family.  That being said, to commemorate 5 years of marriage, we jumped off of the top of the boat together, and got this picture:
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The couple that breaks rules and jumps off the tops of boats together, stays together.  That's a thing, right?

-Our last day there, we went to this little carnival that had rides perfectly sized for toddlers.  Really, it looked like all the rides were miniature, including a miniature Ferris wheel.  It was so fun, Clara loved it.

At a toddler carnival in Missouri.  Yes, a toddler carnival.

-When we finally got back to Phoenix at the end of July, we just had August and September left of summer, so we went to splash pads!  We ended up trying one all the over in Fountain Hills (about a 30 minute drive from our house) that was less busy and had super cool water features.

Clara thinks she's being super brave getting her hair wet.  You can imagine how difficult bath time is.

And there you have it.  A basic rundown of our summer!

Long Distance (Part III)

Much of our early relationship was spent in "long distance" mode.  Which sometimes seems so ironic to me because we grew up near each other, our parents (still, to this day) live 10 minutes apart from one another, and there were so many years where we were so close... but not together.  The most annoying was the very early days of our budding romance, right after we decided we were "together."  We had tip-toed around each other all summer, not sure what the other was feeling.  It wasn't until 5 days (FIVE DAYS!) before I had to fly back to Texas for college that we got our crap together and figured out that we loved each other.  And we had five days to enjoy it before the long periods of separation began.

Jordan stayed in Fairbanks to work and prepare for his mission.  I went back for my sophomore year at Stephen F. Austin in Nacogdoches, TX.  And here's the crazy thing: I think the fact that our early years were spent in separation made the whole experience that much more romantic.  There were declarations of love, written down for me to go and read latter.  There were long. drawn out phone conversations that lasted until 4 am, even though I had class at 8.  There were those thrilling moments when we were finally reunited, if only briefly, and they were out-of-this-world exciting.

A curious thing happened for us that I think foreshadowed the fact that we were going to make it, despite being mired in long-distance.  Rather than drifting apart, we drifted together.  When I first went to Texas, we'd email daily, and talk every 3 or 4 days on the phone.  Then Jordan came to visit me at school in November.  After that, we talked on the phone daily, and emailed several times a day.  When I returned to school after spending Christmas with Jordan (where we literally spent every waking second together), we proceeded to talk on the phone nearly every break we had in the day, and then we were too busy talking on the phone to send emails more than once a day.

Looking back, I can see how the long distance deepened our relationship.  Built on more than mutual attraction, more than convinence, more than even friendship, the very foundation of our romantic relationship was built upon sincere commitment, a very real desire we had to be together.  That sense of commitment, due to the nature of long distance relationships, has solidified in our marriage.  We feel deeply loyal to each other because we had years of practice of being loyal to each other.

Hiking in Denali (Part II)

The first time Jordan and I went hiking in Denali, I was completely infatuated with him and desperately trying to get him to like me.  I was headed into my Junior year of high school, and Jordan was headed for BYU in just a few days.  I was sad at the prospect of him leaving college, but even sadder at the thought that he wouldn't even miss me.  Over the course of the summer, we had become email buddies, exchanging letter once every few days, talking about a variety of topics, although love was never one of them (I wasn't brazen enough to just come out and tell him "I'm totally in love with you!"), and, oh yeah, he had a girl friend.  But before he headed to BYU, I somehow convinced him to go hiking in Denali with me.  Frankly, the fact that he even agreed to drive 2 hours to a hiking location with me days before leaving for college demonstrates the value of our friendship to him, although I was too caught up in the fact that he didn't love me to appreciate it.

This is a fantastic picture of where we went hiking.  We started by climbing that rock formation there at the bottom of the picture (the hike I always went on), and then Jordan said, "why don't we climb this next one!" that mountain to the right of the picture.  I, ever the eager-pleaser, agreed, and it about killed me and my way out of shape butt.  Jordan spent the entire time using his new, cool GPS he won in a mathematics competition in school, and I spent the whole time wishing he was as into me as he was into the GPS. But alas, we climbed, we had fun, we went back down as friends.  Jordan left a couple of days later, and we spent the next few years writing emails back and forth, as friends.

Almost exactly three years later, we decided to go hiking again.  Things were different.  We had spent the last three years as friends, emailing regularly about our lives.  We were both single and working in Fairbanks for the summer, and neither of us knew what that meant.  I had been telling myself for months now that I didn't have feelings for Jordan anymore.  And honestly, I still don't know what Jordan was thinking for the majority of that summer.  Anyway, 5 days before I was to head back to Texas for college, I told Jordan I wanted to go hiking in Denali.  He agreed.  After climbing the first rock formation, I realized we had forgotten a flashlight and Jordan volunteered to run back to the car before we conquered the second peak. As he ran down, I told him, "Don't get hurt!" and he replied, "Anything for you!" and all I could think of was the Princess Bride and how when Wesley says "As you wish" he really means "I love you" and oh my goodness, Jordan loves me! He came back, we hiked up to the second  peak, and as we sat there in punctuated conversation, looking at the spectacular view, everything came spilling all out. We loved each other.  We wanted to be together.  There were a lot of things said, half I can't remember because it was such an insane, heady experience, but I walked away knowing we were going to be married, that this was indeed the person I wanted to spend the rest of my life with.  

One more time, nearly 3 years later, we found ourselves hiking once again. We didn't climb with secret crushes, but with our relationship well established and consistent.  I was finished with college and working in Fairbanks, and Jordan had returned from his mission in Mongolia just 3 months earlier.  We had spent every single day together (something, that up to that point, we had never been able to do).  It was May 31, 2008, and although Jordan didn't know, it was exactly 10 years since my father had died.  We followed the same path: up the first peak, and then up the second.  There at the top, we tried to find the exact spot where we had started our relationship almost 3 years earlier.  Instead of silence and anticipation, there was easy conversation and laughter.  And then he got on one knee and asked me to marry him.  We stayed on top of that mountain, talking about our futures and where we would go and what we wanted our lives to be like.  

We haven't been back since, mostly because our lives are so busy.  College, then a baby, then a job, then a move, then another baby and here we are.  But I love that it seems everything for us came back to a beautiful hike in one of the most beautiful places in the world.  And you know, hiking is so much like marriage.  Sometimes it's steep, and it's so hard and you don't know if you can keep going, and sometime the views are so breathtakingly beautiful you try to remember every detail of the moment so you can always go back there.  You spend most of the time helping each other.  When one wants to quit, the other is there to tell them to keep going, because it's all going to be worth it. And it has been worth it.  Every moment I have been with Jordan has been worth it.

It started as a friendship (Part 1)

(Over a year ago I wrote a couple of blog posts about my history/love story with Jordan.  They have been sitting in my posts section, unpublished, for various reasons... I was waiting until our 5 year anniversary, which has past... I was somewhat self-concious about them... etc.  But I think I should put them out there.  I think my husband is pretty amazing, and I think our story is kinda cool, but I'm not offended in the least if you totally skip these.)

One of my favorite things that I do about once a year is to go back and read the old emails Jordan and I wrote between each other the years before we got married.  And when I say "years of emails" I mean we seriously have about 5 years worth of emails and letters.  We started writing as he graduated high school into his first year of college, and as I went into my Junior year of high school.  I had a mad crush on him, and he had a steady girlfriend to whom he was pretty committed.  This, of course, did not stop me from trying to weasel my way into his life, by any means possible.  I eventually realized this meant I needed to be his friend, and I would be totally there to catch him when his relationship eventually failed (or so I hoped).

Looking back, I am more than a little ashamed of the selfish and pretty questionable ethics that prompted our friendship.  And it didn't work out at all like I thought it would, so that gives me a bit of peace of mind.

Anyway, these emails at the time were a bit of me trying to coax him into liking me.  But they have turned out to be far more valuable than that.  For instance, Jordan did NOT start emailing me to woo me, and therefore his emails are far more genuine and in many ways, fascinating glimpses into the head of a thoughtful 18 year old as his entire life is changing.  I am lucky he felt comfortable sharing many vulnerable aspects of his soul, probably because I wasn't the love of his life, but because I was his friend (and although he'll never admit it, I think he knew I adored him, and therefore could do very little wrong in my eyes.  A safe place for secrets).

That first year we began emailing each other (me in Alaska attending high school, Jordan at BYU), I was trying to please him in emails.  To sound smart, competent, and kind.  I wanted him to know I cared, but I also wanted him to think of me as an equal, not just some little high schooler.  I am highly embarrassed of these emails, to the point I can not read them.  I have tried.  It is humiliating.  I keep waiting for the time when I can look back and laugh, and clearly (even 11 years later) I have not reached that point.

That being said, I can not regret emailing him, because Jordan was going through something important.  He was really struggling with college.  Not with the academics or the new independence, but with the emotional aspect of being a nice guy in a sea of jerks. I am so grateful to have been able to be a part of it, even if in small part.  I have such a greater understanding of my husband now because he wrote me, he talked to me, honestly as a friend through some of his most difficult experiences.  I wasn't his only or even most important confidant, but I was there.