Where to Begin?

I have wanted to start a blog since Paul and I got married in October 2007. I wanted to document our lives together and record all of the ups and downs that seem to be monumental at the time before quickly fading away to a distant memory. It has been over a year and a half and I am just now getting around to jotting down some thoughts. I'd like to give a brief synopsis of our life together before I begin telling the story that got me off the couch and into this computer chair to start with.

After our wedding in our hometown and our honeymoon in Tennessee, we moved Paul's worthy assets into our two bedroom duplex in East Grand Rapids. Despite being small and not having a dishwasher, air conditioning, or gutters, and despite the view of the weird neighbors with ten couches in the backyard and Christmas lights on 24/7, we really liked our place. It had cherry bookshelves and cherry ceilings. It was perfect for us while we searched for our first home and we had a lot of good times in the year that we lived there (like playing Olympics on our balance balls and nearly breaking our necks trying to stand on them).


The duplex is also where we raised our pup Griffin. I broke down and agreed to getting a puppy after months of Paul's pleas. He got laid off and I decided he would be a good stay at home daddy. I wanted a little girl pup named Lola and Paul wanted a boy. He talked me into going to see some brand new chocolate lab pups one winter night in January. He forgot to mention that there was one 13 month old male pup left from the last litter until we were pulling in the driveway. Sure enough, staring straight at us with cute little puppy dog eyes and a wagging tail, was Griffin. It only took two hours of convincing, but we finally walked out into the biggest freak snowstorm of 2008 with a little chocolate lab puppy. Paul never lets Griffin forget that "mommy didn't even want you" when he cuddles up to me. Now, I truly believe that animals can open up a part of your soul that you might go your whole life without knowing exists.

We started taking Griff for walks in the summer to look for our new home. I always hated this one block of Gladstone Ave just down the road from our duplex. It was really cluttered and had 10,000 little kids running across the street every day. Little did I know that we would find our dream starter house on that crumby old street! When we walked through our current house we were in love! We made an offer and a counter offer and then one month later we were moving in. We snuck in the house before we closed on our first anniversary to have a bottle of wine we bought on our honeymoon. We drank it in the kitchen and I'm pretty sure the neighbors thought we were crazy.

We had our first Halloween in the house - I was the neighborhood cat lady and Paul was Wendy. We had our first Christmas - the house killed our Christmas tree completely so that not even a single needle was left at the end of December. We had our first big fight. We got cable! We painted the hallway. We painted the bathroom. We scraped some change together to decorate one room at a time. Our house slowly but surely became a home. As an added bonus, we love our neighbors and we had better - we have a direct view into their kitchen! We are so blessed to have such a beautiful place to live!

What's next?