Our Story

This is me and my husband, Nate, in 2008:



Nate and I started dating back in 2002 and I wrote about how we first met here. I also wrote more about our story here. He proposed on March 26, 2006 by tying my ring around my dog's neck. We took an obscene amount of engagement pictures to celebrate:



We got married on May 27, 2007 in St. Louis, Missouri. We wrote our own vows, saw each other before the ceremony, and partied until the wee hours of the morning with our friends and family.  It was one of the best day of our lives:


We have about 64 billion wedding pictures and if you are dying for more, and you can start with our wedding slideshow.

Then two days after the wedding we moved to 'The Great Artic', also known as Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It snows a lot here. My first winter in WI was pretty rough, with a record-breaking 100 inches of snow touching ground. I've learned to acclimate with lots of red wine and coffee, and really---it's not so bad here now. We are here to stay, in fact.


After the stressful move we treated ourselves to a fabulous St. Lucian honeymoon:


After all of those major transitions, we began to settle into married life in Wisconsin. We moved up here so Nate could go to graduate school in his home state while we 'started fresh' in a new city after marriage. It's also nice to have one set of parents [his] in the same city as us. Someday I hope to convince my parents to join the party up north but I'm not holding my breath. You saw the snow, right?

Then I started this blog. I posted a lot about my dog and married life and Wisconsin. And we got really into running marathons (halves mostly, and one full). I started a little album design biz and became obsessed with photography after the purchase of my first digital SLR camera. Then baby fever took hold and I got pregnant in 2009 (read: blogged a LOT while pregnant) and had our first son, Truman, in March 2010 (tried my hardest to blog as a mom, too, but darn that elusive free time stuff).

June 2009:


February 2010:


March 2010:





After his entry into the world, this blog basically became a 'mommy blog' and I do not reject that title one bit. 'Mom' is the most precious name I've been called in my life and although I do consider myself a little more complex than 'just' a mom, I admit that I mostly blog about my child. I blogged a lot about cloth diapering, breastfeeding, life as a working mom (changing companies, dropping from working 40 hours per week, to 36, to 30, and now just 20 hours per week), lack of sleep, and tried to capture the magical little moments along the way.



Right after Truman's first birthday, when I had just finished breastfeeding, Nate and I were happily surprised to get another big.fat.positive test in March 2011. We were not trying but baby fever was just starting to accumulate under the surface. Our world stopped briefly at our first ultrasound, at nine weeks, when they discovered the baby did not have a heartbeat and had stopped growing at 6 weeks. This horrible day also happened to be the day before my thirtieth birthday and was one of the saddest moments I can imagine. Losing baby Wren was absolutely one of the most defining experiences of my life and I will be forever changed as a part of the miscarriage club. I ended up with a prolonged, complicated miscarriage after a failed 'induction' led to severe hemorrhaging, an ER stay, and eventually an OB switch and finally a D&C in June 2011. This loss cost us more emotionally, financially, and physically than I thought possible but we somehow survived. I'd also say my faith grew throughout this challenging time in life and I learned to pray and talk to God more than I have in years.

Baby Wren, due in November 2011. You flew away too early but we'll never forget you!


Six months later, trying very hard this time, we got pregnant again in September 2011. After a scary first trimester, we welcomed Cecelia Lorene to our lives in May 2012--just one day before her due date. She was worth the wait and the painful journey before her. Times a million.

September 2011:


39 weeks pregnant in May



May 28, 2012



Our little girl:


And now I have the honor of being a mommy blogger x 2. Being a mother to these little buggers is quite the ride--an amazing, wild, hectic ride. I'm so glad I've continued to blog during the craziness or I'd surely forget everything about these 'little kid' years in my life. Sleep-deprivation, what?

Oh, yeah! Also, while I was pregnant with Cecelia we finally bit the bullet and bought our first home in February 2012. We did a ridiculous amount of DIY renovation projects and then moved in April 2011. Which means I was 32 weeks pregnant and had a lot of nesting energy to burn off in those final  7 weeks before Cecelia arrived. So.Much.Painting. So.Much.Pinterest.Searching. We loved having a brand new home (ahem, built in 1925 so not that 'new' but new for us) for our brand new baby's arrival. And we are glad to have done all of those renovations before CC was born, too. Newborns are a lot of work, you know? And so are old homes.


I started this blog in November 2007 in order to keep in touch with friends and family back in Missouri. Years later, this blog has morphed into something much greater than I could have ever predicted back then. I've met some of my closest girlfriends ever through this blog. I've shared my emotions and thoughts and struggles and triumphs here and don't regret putting it all out there. I may not blog every day (ahem, or every week) but it's still an important outlet for me to share my feelings. And let's get real, I really enjoy blogging so that I can copy and paste everything into our yearly albums and keep the words in print for years to come.

That's our story for now. Hopefully I can update this when new events happen and I won't do it once every 4 years again:)