I'm a Mom?

A year after finding out I would soon be a mother, and nearly four months after meeting my baby, it still seems unbelievable that I actually am a mother. I was reading a book to Evan today about a Mama Bear and her Little Cub and in my mind, Mama Bear is still much older and wiser than I am. Even though he looks like my family and I see his dad's personality in him, it's still hard to believe that this amazing little boy who gets bigger and smarter each day is my son. I find myself constantly thinking, and sometimes saying out loud to Nathan, "We have a baby!" or "I made that!" 

Happy Mothers Day to all the moms. Does it ever sink in?

An $8 date

We've made it a priority in our marriage to have a date every week. This may sound expensive, but our dates are rarely the traditional dinner and a movie type dates. In fact, the one time we did eat out and see a movie the same day, it was lunch and a matinée. 

 For our most recent date, we took a long walk downtown.

 We walked along the canal...

 watched the local animals...

had fun taking photos...

 

 watched part of a free concert that happened to be going on...

and saw parts of the city we'd never seen before, like the central library.

(It's pretty epic.)

And we just had fun.

We bought some sorbet at the mall, which was our only expense other than the unavoidable parking costs. 

 

It was one of the best dates we've had in a while!

Inconveniences and Blessings

When life gets a little rough, it's not always so easy to see the good in the situation, but sometimes bad circumstances or an inconvenience can turn into a blessing. We recently found ourselves faced with a series of inconveniences that worked out pretty well in the end, and it was pretty amazing.
 

Inconvenience #1: When Nathan's car was at the mechanic's, they dented the bottom of his door while putting it up on the lift.

Inconvenience #2: Although the door would be replaced for free, the mechanic is located in the town where Nathan used to live, about an hour and a half away. It's not so easy to just leave a car there a couple days, so we put off the repair for several months.

Inconvenience #3: Nathan walked out to his car one morning last week and saw this:

And this is where the blessing comes in. What's a broken car window when you already have a free car door with your name on it? Sure, Nathan still had to drive all that way to get it replaced, but I went along for a Wednesday night date night - dinner at a restaurant we both love and lots of time talking and listening to an audio book in our complimentary rental car. As for the stereo, we didn't like the one in that car anyway, and Nathan might be able to get a cheap basic one from a coworker. Not such a bad deal if you ask me!

Even though things did work out okay, this incident has added quite a bit of weight to our Reasons to Move list. It would be one thing if only our car had been vandalized, but after one neighbor had his car stolen and another had a wheel taken off their car, I knew our cars weren't safe. We're probably going to be getting out of here in six months, if not sooner.