looking back

this week, as i boarded the train for my last final, i thought back to the beginning of college six years ago. i remembered moving in to my first apartment, my mom and i sobbing when she drove away, leaving me alone. i remembered sharing a room with a stranger for the first time (sounds skankier than it really was) and how i couldn't remember which roommate was "melissa" and which was "alyssa" for like three weeks. it was so bittersweet to sit on that train and flash through all of my experiences. i did some digging through my old myspace account and found a few pictures. warning, it's about to get nostalgic up in here.

 can't find a picture with all 6 of us, but here are my SUU 

gymnast roommies and nikki, the babe in the middle. 

we lived in eccles c 305. there was an elevator in our building. 

um, i used to fart in it almost every time right before i got out. 

snigger.

 my boyfriend alex, who drove down many a weekend to see me. 

 linds and i at albertsons, with the boys who lived across the hall from us. 

just sharing a pair of sweats. 

we practically lived at the boys apartment,

 eating frozen pizza and brownies all. the. time.

the first week of school, headed to a luau.

nikki was a college socialite who always 

tried to get me to go out with her.

yep, i dated the one with the tongue sticking out. 

for multiple years. 

(promise i'll tell that story someday. when i'm not so angry.) 

my murray friends who always came down to try to get with my roommates. 

oh we always stayed up so late! 

i remember one night, melissa, one of the gymnasts, came home super drunk

and we convinced her to do back handsprings all the way down the hall. 

headed out to go boating in st. george with our boys across the hall.

yeah, i hardly wore any clothes back then. 

my second year at SUU, with mikelle late one night. always up so late. 

that was the year alex left on his mission and i was so lonely and depressed. 

i would not go back to that year. 

military ball with my friend rory.

one of our many hiking trips to zion nat park. 

the only thing that made that year bearable, my best friend morgan moving down to cedar city. 

headed out to a friend's ballroom dance recital. 

our roommates from korea. it was my first experience living with someone from another country

and i loved it. they always fed us delicious food and taught us new words. 

ok, i have hundreds of pictures from hawaii i could put up. 

moving to hawaii was in my life's top three best decisions. 

the year i spent there changed me and taught me so much. 

to love myself, to forgive myself, to trust others again,

friendship, loyalty, love, romance, oh the list goes on and on. 

hawaii was where my healing process began. 

it would never have happened without the amazing people i met. 

and i'm going to start crying here. 

 at the beach with my besties. oh i miss these girls! 

choir concert. being in the university choir was so wonderful! 

choir party at the beach. 

so at BYUH, you aren't supposed to wear bikinis. 

i obviously didn't follow that rule, but for school functions, 

i had to have a "modest" suit. 

so i bought a swimming suit that looked like lingerie.

such a rebel back then. 

also, i was thirty five pounds heavier then. 

i dated a zillion boys. 

fell in love a few times. 

kissed a lot of dudes.

at the airport after christmas, heading back. 

my mom and i always cried. 

at the beach, like always.

my gpa went from a 4.0 to a 2.8.

in one semester. 

first real beach trip with erika dick.

the day i met alyssa herzinger. 

we had no idea. :) 

the four of us were inseparable.

for the first time in my life, i had a group of girlfriends. 

i told you i didn't used to wear clothes. 

seriously, no decency. :) 

the five of us in our laie house, winter semester. 

the sea sider, where we had disgusting lunches every day. 

north shore surf competitions, day after thanksgiving. 

the day i got swallowed by a wave in front of thousands of people

and the loudspeaker announced, "stay off the beach"

and my phone was destroyed. 

waiting at the bus stop. we took the bus everywhere.

one time, a guy asked erika and i if we were a couple.

that's how close we were, strangers thought we were in love. :) 

 one of the most perfect days. 

the gang of us after hiking that "rock" behind us. 

don't worry, it wasn't all beach. 

here we are at the school newspaper, 

workin' away. 

i think i've reached the limit of post space. U of U to follow in next post.

searching for home: part 1

our house. is a mess.

and we haven't even packed our bedrooms yet.
it is AWESOME!

this is what it sounds like when we pack:
travis, taking down the kitchen table, says, "wow, i remember putting this table up with nate and us eating eating our first meal in this house." pause. "and you were so mad at me."
i laugh, "yeah i was! and you were so scared of me!"

travis and nate, eating the first meal in our house

we laugh now, but when we were first married, it was a pretty tough adjustment. sex was painful and scary, which made travis feel guilty and withdraw, making me wonder why travis was acting so different, leading to me getting really defensive and angry, leading travis to think i regretted marrying him.... etc.

then there was the house. it's a long story, but the reasons we bought this house weren't really great reasons. we were trying to find something in a certain amount of time so we could get that $8,000 tax credit. (that we didn't end up getting, but ended up being a huge blessing because if we had gotten it, we would have had to pay it back before selling our house.)  we didn't really know anything about buying a house. i'll just leave it at that. but the house was a disaster. filthy, crawling with spiders, covered in construction mess. etc.

then came the adjustment of living alone 2-3 days a week while travis went to work. i really resented his job for a while- and i know, i should have been thankful he had such a great job, but i wasn't.

then there was the fact that we were living in the neighborhood he grew up in. a great neighborhood, but i just never felt like it was mine. it was like i was visiting his, you know?

sorry, this is becoming a list of negative things. but to understand why i'm so thankful we are moving, you have to know the reasons it was really hard living in this house. every room in our house is full of memories of sadness. the other day my mom was over, helping me when i hurt my back. she was sitting in our t.v. room, saying how nice it looked. i told her what i though about every time i see that room, our first night spent in the house.

 our first night back from our honeymoon. we had barely spoken to each other on the plane ride home. my parents picked us up from the airport with a cute sign, "welcome home bodtchers!" i saw the name "bodtcher" and panicked, because i didn't understand how travis and i had had such a good thing before getting married and now all the sudden we weren't speaking. and now i was supposed to just be a bodtcher? when my parents asked us how our trip was, both of us were probably thinking the same thing: i feel like a failure because sex is impossible, and i think my spouse hates my guts. and i can't believe i have a spouse. when we walked into our house, it was a mess, the floor covered in brown paper to protect it from all the sanding and mudding we would have to do. florescent lights cast shadows on the dingy walls. my dad looked at us, perhaps reading the panic in our eyes, and said, "this place is going to be great, you know. once you get it all painted and decorated and remodeled." i wasn't sure i believed him.

then my parents left us alone. our first night in our house. a bed was set up in the only room that didn't have paper covering the floor. it wasn't our bedspread, just someone's extra we were borrowing. there was an ikea catalog someone had left us. i got into bed and started leafing through it, trying to start conversation with travis about decorating our house. he disagreed with every suggestion i made, probably feeling stressed out about money just looking at how expensive everything was. we had a fight, then turned to face opposite walls, and i fell asleep with tears on my cheeks, wondering what had happened to us.

that is what i think of every time i see that t.v. room.

there are so many other memories similar to that one. our first year of marriage was hard. between all the normal newly married adjusting, remodeling our house, travis's job, paying for my schooling, travis's mentor committing suicide, my PTSD and sex being so scary, fighting about our families- "make your family stop telling me to have a baby"- travis's damn dog roxy and her nine puppies, travis having to live paycheck to paycheck for the first time in his life...  we both agree that it's a miracle we came out of that and stayed married. but we did. we stuck it out, started figuring it out,  and we are so happy now.

travis started talking to me about wanting to move last january. neither of us have ever felt at home in our house. i have always had a weird way of thinking about inanimate objects as alive, (like when i used to put band-aids on the kitchen table because it had an owie...) and i have just always felt that our house didn't really want us there. maybe it was sick of all the disagreements and anger. i know, it sounds crazy. but it was never home.

so when we say we are excited to move, it's more than just being excited for a new house with a dishwasher and more space. although those things will be a huge upgrade from what we have now, we are so excited for a fresh start in a place that feels like home. and i'll always be thankful for the lessons we learned in our red brick house, as painful as they were. because through all of the fights and doubt, i always knew travis was the one. that even though we were making each other miserable, we could be great together. we could be happy. i thought i knew that when we were dating and happy. but if you're completely miserable with a person, and still want to be with that person, that is when you really know.

i'm so thankful for travis and for that first awful year of marriage we struggled through.
probably more thankful it's over and things are good now.

guys, it's really happening! we are moving!

and if you need to talk about how hard marriage can be, feel free to email me. i won't judge you. :)

happy weekend! -xo
 

that time travis might be pregnant: worrying, rambling, and awkward jokes.

monday morning.
between my sprained back and travis waking up to run to the bathroom and puke all morning, we are in sorry shape.
"are you pregnant travis?!"
not funny.
i did the take-temperature-with-back-of-my-hand technique and he doesn't seem to be running a fever.
(don't you love our english language? if you have a fever you're running a fever. if you want to soak in a bathtub, you draw a bath. that's half the fun of taking a bath, that you get to say things like, "i'm going to draw a hot bath." rather, shall. other intelligent sounding words. )

but i digress.

i'm doing much better. i can move my head almost all the way around. like an owl. no, but i don't just have to rely on the rods in my peripheral vision to do my seeing for me, which is a huge relief since rods don't see color or detail very well. and yes, i'm studying for my sensation and perception class all the time.
if you're nerdy and like knowledge, check it out. {here}
if you've known that for your whole life, props.

so travis is sick. but i don't think he has a fever; i think he ate something yucky. yucky. i'm practicing my momspeak, since travis is pregnant and all.

when i was sick growing up, it was almost a treat. skip school, lay on the couch with full remote control power, and trays of food brought to you. blue popscicles for sore throats, homemade chicken noodle soup for the flu. mom rubbing your back to help you fall asleep. moms are the best.

the other day before travis took me to instacare, i asked him to help me get dressed, which he was pretty good at, and let's be honest, how different is that from taking my clothes off, which he has real talent for. but then when i asked him to help me put my hair in a ponytail, he was pretty confused. it took a few tries and he was very gentle, afraid to hurt my head. which reminded me of the few times my mom wasn't around to do my hair before school in elementary school. my dad getting frustrated and my hair looking terrible. to his credit, my dad is bald and has been since i was young.

i'm not even sure what i'm trying to get at here. it was just interesting to sleep at my parents' house and let them baby me all weekend. i hadn't slept there since before i was married. my mom had to work all weekend and my dad ended up being the one to sit with me at the doctor's, to bring me lunch on a tray, and to make sure i took enough drugs and drank enough water. my mom rubbed the knots out of my back and let me read her copy of mockingjay, even though she had been waiting all week to get a chance to read it. i have a hard time letting people do things for me. it's difficult for me to open up, even to the people i love, but it was amazing to feel the love my family has for me. i guess ever since i was 18 and moved out, i have liked to picture myself as this independent woman, who can take care of everything herself. it was kinda nice to lean on my parents again.

there isn't a point to this. i'm just thankful for my family and my parents. last night travis and i were talking, about the future, the past, and i asked him what he would do if i never feel ready to have a baby. (if it seems like anxiety about having babies dominates a large part of my life, it's because it does. but my sister in law is expecting and we had seen them earlier that night, which led to discussion about the future, me working, if i would want to keep working, etc.) travis told me i need to stop worrying about it. yeah, right. i guess part of why i worry so much is that i don't think i could handle my child going through what i had to deal with. and feeling responsible for all of that. i have a hard enough time with feeling protective of every girl i know and feeling like i have to keep bad things from happening to them. how will i ever handle being responsible for my own? making sure she respects herself, and believes in herself, and never lets anyone use her.
and then if it's a boy, how do i make sure he never treats a girl the way i was treated?
(and yes, i know that men/boys are often victims of assault, harassment, bullying, etc. too. and that women/girls can be perps, too. just covering mah bases here.)

yeah, yeah, yeah. same old stuff right?

some days i just think, maybe if i just get pregnant, i'll be able to face everything and stop worrying. worrying is way worse than actually dealing with fears. maybe.
then i remember the IUD being lodged in my uterus, and there IS NO WAY THAT THING IS COMING OUT.

my dad has always told me to enjoy the ride of life. just enjoy each stage and stop sprinting to the next one. but i'm a goal oriented person. how does a person work toward their goals, but still enjoy the journey it takes to get there?

omg, is that the secret?

i think that's enough babbling.
i'm going to go check on my puke-y man and make sure he's doin' okay.
here's to a week of enjoying the journey. even if the journey means moving out, sleeping at the inlaws', writing a major paper, and trudging to school in the snow. uphill. barefoot.

cheers!

thankful

holidays make me nostalgic. since i was a kid i have loved looked back to last christmas, or the fourth of july 2 years ago, or the valentines when i was 9 and we went snowmobiling in island park.

last year was my first married thanksgiving. travis and i split up the family time, eating two big meals, one around lunch and the other for dinner. we went to the mall and window shopped for a while and played games later. it was a little strange and we both felt slightly upset that we had to share the time between our families, each preferring to spend thanksgiving the way we had always done, and not with inlaws, one of whom heartily harassed me about having a baby. i admit i wasn't really feeling all that thankful, feeling more that life was changing and i wasn't sure how much i wanted that change.

the year before that, in 2009, was an exciting day because it was the first time travis would meet my dad's side of the family. i had never taken a boy to thanksgiving dinner before, and i was anticipating showing off my new boyfriend. travis and i had been dating for about six months. he had started his daily "will you marry me" routine, but i obviously hadn't said yes yet. my cousins invited travis to join their thanksgiving day basketball game and he was nervous to meet everyone, but earned their respect after shooting several three pointers. i was still dieting and trying to lose weight at the time, so i remembering eating a small amount of food, but feeling so happy that i had lost 20 pounds and that my skin was clearing up.

after spending the day with my family, we headed to west jordan to see travis's side of the family. i was still getting to know everyone, but already felt very loved and included. toward the end of the night when everyone was leaving, travis's grandpa sat us down and told us he had something important to say. he told us he was worried about how close we were getting, and that we needed to get married, and soon. you know, before travis knocked me up. to say the least, i was mortified. here i was, talking to an old man about our dangerous lust. i wasn't even sure if travis was "the guy" and his grandfather was urging us to get married. ah, that was a thanksgiving to remember.

and of course, this wouldn't be a nostalgic post without mentioning hawaii. three years ago, in 2008, i woke up on thanksgiving day and threw on my bikini. a boy who i thought was "the boy" had flown in to spend the holiday with me and we all headed to the beach. it was so strange not to have snow for thanksgiving, but honestly, i wasn't too chuffed about it. one of my roommates had "bought" a big screen tv (planning to return it after the weekend...tsk tsk...) so we could play video games and watch movies. a polynesian family cooked our turkey in the ground for us and we all pitched in for the side dishes, mashed potatoes, jello, rolls, some kind of vegetable i'm sure... and fruit. oh and chocolate haupia pie. the BEST pie in the world, from Ted's Bakery on north shore. drooling now just thinking about it.
pretty sure i packed on the final ten pounds over thanksgiving weekend that year, eating pie for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, rounding off at a whopping 150 pounds for my 5'4 frame.
worth it, almost.

but what a great holiday that was. ting shen taking endless photos of us, running around the yard with bonnie, playing apples to apples, eating erika's tye dyed rolls, playing rockband with roxanne miller, and getting to know alyssa better.

ah memories. i don't really like remembering the thanksgiving of 2007, because yet another boy who i thought was "the boy" (gosh, i dated a lot of boys back then) had just left on his mission and i was dreadfully sad. like listen to a voicemail he'd left me over and over and over and over and cry myself to sleep every night, hound the mailman for letters, refuse to go out on weekends, write 10 page letters a day, sad. but we don't have to go there.

as for this year's thanksgiving, travis is at the fire station, so i'll be heading over there tomorrow at 2pm. i'm excited to get to know the guys and their wives a little better. plus i get to spend the whole day with travis while he's getting paid to work.

life really is flying by. i finally feel like i'm at a place where, while i can fondly remember the past, i'm really enjoying the present.

i'm so thankful this year! i'm so thankful for travis and that he is mine and i am his. i am so thankful for how hard he works and how much he does for me. the other night, there was a huge mess of dishes, mostly mine. we don't have a dishwasher, so doing dishes is a horrible chore. i was dreading doing them, and told myself i'd do them after my homework was done. travis sneakily did all the dishes while i was doing stats. i'm so thankful to be married to a man who shows me he cares through these small acts of kindness.

i'm thankful for my family, for my strong parents who have always been an example of hard work and how to enjoy life. i'm grateful to have three younger brothers who teach me things and are such a joy to be around. i'm thankful that travis has a secure job and that we have a home. i'm thankful to live in a country that allows me religious freedom, among countless other things. i'm thankful for travis's family who have come to feel like my own family and all they do for us. i'm thankful for rich friendships in my life and for the adventures i have had with them. i'm so thankful for my savior Jesus Christ and that he atoned for my sins. i'm so thankful for a Heavenly Father who continues to bless me, even when i doubt Him or am ungrateful. i'm just so grateful and humbled to have this life to grow and learn and feel joy.

hope all of your thanksgivings are full of warmth, food, and good company. thank you for all you do for me!