Our First Post!

This is our first post! Marie and I have never written a blog together and we are extremely excited to see what we can make of it. We want to write posts often and hopefully include a lot of photographs. We lead an interesting life and we tend to be quite entertaining so hopefully this will be a good experience for anybody who reads. If nobody reads, we're more than happy to just enjoy the experience ourselves! :o) Most likely this blog will be more of a journal of the events that surround and affect our lives and a diary of our thoughts about them.

For example, take our capricious cats. There are two of them:


Zach, the older and male cat, can usually be found afraid of his own shadow. He's really a sweetheart and loves to snuggle when the moment strikes him right. He'll also play tag with Marie - running up and down the stairs with her. When she stops, he'll playfully meow after her for a while.



Zoë, the younger female cat, can usually be found causing havoc and horror. She's adorable and loves to be loved but she is, at heart, an adventurer. She usually exploits Zach's terror of the unknown - she loves to sneak up on him. She also loves to sit in the pepper planter for hours - we're pretty sure she sometimes thinks she is a pepper.

 As I write about these eccentric two, they're sleeping. When I started writing this post, they were chasing each other (correction: Zoë was chasing Zach) up and down the stairs. They must have tuckered themselves out!

I had a good friend once tell me to raise four legs before I raised two. Having raised these two four-leggers for almost a year, what do I think? Have they prepared us for children?

Last night, Zoë kept Marie up for half the night. She likes to try to jump in the baby's crib (something we do not allow) but she isn't exactly sneaky about it. She announces her intention every time with a series of short meows; I don't think she's ever tried to jump in without making sure one of us - usually Marie - is up! We now have a squirt bottle next to the bed. This only seemed to increase the volume of her pre-naughtiness meow. I swear she only jumps up to the crib to get some real adventure out of the long, boring night.

Both cats love to wake us up during the night for other reasons too. Sometimes Zach will jump onto the bed and just stand on Marie until she wakes up. If she doesn't react to his presence, he begins to meow at her head until she responds. Zoë will attack my feet if I hang them too far off the edge of the bed while I'm sleeping and loves to chew noisily on my cell phone charger.

And, granted, they sometimes meow and meow during the day until we figure out what it is they want. But are they preparing us for children?

They have no diapers to change - no bottoms to wipe clean. They eat the same food day-in and day-out and never really complain if the food has been sitting out for several hours. They drink out of a bowl of water we change only once per day. We can leave them alone in the house for hours - no babysitter, no worry. In other words, other than affection and attention, we only need to pay enough mind to them to refill their food bowls, change their water, and change their litter box.

Babies take more time. Babies take more effort. Babies take more heart! Don't get me wrong - we love our little kitties - but they are not sufficient preparation for children. My advice: start with the real thing. Even the mandatory nine month waiting period for a new baby is worth it! Nothing has made me happier than to watch and feel my dear daughter growing within the wonderful woman who condescended to marry me.

So that's my little large soapbox.

I originally came here to excitedly tell you about our plans for Christmas and some of our traditions but these might need to wait until a post closer to the Yuletide.

On an important but lachrymose note, we had our last Sunday School lesson with our wonderful class yesterday. We were called as Sunday School teachers to the youth in September. This was so exciting for both of us: Both of us enjoyed teaching the Gospel Essentials Class in our last ward and I'd spent four years teaching the adult Sunday School in my Grandmother's ward (the ward I grew up in). We were both so excited to get started teaching the New Testament. When we discovered our new class would only be with us until the end of the year (when they would move up to the older youth Sunday School), we were distraught. We made the best we could of these last few months and they've been wonderful! Every member of our class is phenomenal and we'll miss teaching them very much. It should be mentioned that we are indeed excited to meet our new class on January 1st.

What an adventure life is! We look forward to sharing it with you and hope today proves to be wonderful for you. I need to go anyway - from upstairs, I hear, "Zoë! Get down from there."