Happy Valentine’s Day!

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We’re Expecting!

I hope you’ll forgive me for the cliff-hanging last post. I wrote that post weeks ago when I was dying to tell people about my pregnancy.  

We found out we were expecting on July 5, 2009.  I’m due on March 14.  Everything is good, all the tests results have come back favorable, and everyone is excited about this first grandchild on each side of the family.  If you want to know more details, I started a new blog: Our Country Baby.  Here’s the ultrasound from yesterday!

Perfect Timing

Our Love Story continues…

“When are you going to have a baby?” That’s the question all newlyweds dread hearing, and the question people have no shame asking. Our token answer after our wedding was always “Oh, about five years.”

The truth was, we had so many goals and dreams, and having children was somewhere in the distant future for us. We both knew we wanted to have children, but not yet. Not for a long time.

The short list of thing I wanted to accomplish included getting my masters degree and tenure, and saving for a home. I didn’t want to raise a family in the apartment over my parents’ garage. Ed was focused on saving money and having our own home as well, and getting settled in once we moved there.

As a couple, we wanted to have fun, enjoy being young, and build our relationship. For us, a strong marriage is the foundation of a family. Since we both grew up in families where our parents loved each other, we knew we wanted to be able to provide the same two-parent environment for our children.

And so in those early years of marriage, we had fun together, taking trips to Maine, Vermont, and even Alaska to walk with Brown Bears. I furthered my career by completing my masters degree, obtaining tenure, becoming a teacher-mentor, and traveling to the Bahamas for a workshop in place-based learning. Ed continued to learn and work at stairbuilding, and was able to help his brother start up the aquaculture business from scratch. We also saved quite a bit of money for two young people, and Ed threw himself into building our dream home. When we finally completed our home with the help of our families, we realized it was one of the hardest things we would ever do, and we were so happy to be in a home where we could raise a family. All of these were accomplishments we knew would be delayed if we had children.

As time went on and we settled into our new home, finishing up little projects here and there, our minds started thinking about expanding our family. After months of discussion, we decided it was time to start a family in June of 2009, the same month we would celebrate our fifth wedding anniversary.

To be continued…

Here Comes the Bride

 To see how we got here, read The Farmer’s Daughter and the Country Boy

Our Wedding Day

June 26, 2004

 

Thrilled bride

Mother and daughter

Daughter and father

Nervous groom

Proud parents

Down the aisle

I, Abigail, take you, Edwin, to be my husband, knowing in my heart that you are my best friend, my constant companion, and my one true love.

I promise to be true to you in good times and in bad, for richer and for poorer, in sickness and in health.

I will love you and honor you all the days of my life.

I, Edwin, take you, Abigail, to be my wife, knowing in my heart that you are my best friend, my constant companion, and my one true love.

I promise to be true to you in good times and in bad, for richer and for poorer, in sickness and in health.

I will love you and honor you all the days of my life.

Smiles and tears

Wedding party

And we shall live happily ever after.

A Christmas Engagement

The Farmer’s Daughter and the Country Boy

Our Love Story, Part V

It was Christmas morning, 2002.  The alarm went off at 6am, and I didn’t want to get up. Ed turned off the alarm and reminded me that we needed to go to his parents’ house, and if we wanted to enjoy some time alone we should get up. We snuggled for a little while under the covers, in the cherry four-poster bed that Ed designed and built, and gave to me the night before as my present. Finally we got up, in fuzzy pajamas and warm socks.

Ed plugged in the Christmas tree lights and spread the quilt my great-grandmother made on the floor. We sat on the quilt and opened our presents by the light of the tree. One by one, we opened little things, until it came time for me to give Ed his big present: a welding helmet. He absolutely loved it, and to this day says it’s the best present I ever gave him. I felt a little silly, since he had built a bed for me, and I just bought him a welding helmet.

When I thought all the presents were opened, Ed told me there was one more for me, on the tree. In the early morning light, he had to help me find the silver ornament that he had hidden on the tree the night before. I plucked it off the tree, admired its beauty, and sat back on the quilt with it. 

 “It opens,” Ed said as he sat down in front of me. I found the latch and opened the ornament, revealing the velvety black box inside.

When I looked up, Ed was on his knee.  “Are you kidding me?”

“Will you marry me?” 

He was both smiling and teary-eyed as I opened the box to see my engagement ring.  Tears welled up in my eyes and I was so happy to say yes.  We were just a couple of kids, but we knew that we wanted to be together always.

Moving Day

Visit The Farmer’s Daughter and the Country Boy for the whole story!

Our Love Story, Part IV

The weekend before my 21st birthday, I was finally able to move into my apartment.  When I got a full scholarship to college, my dad told me he would build me an apartment over a 2-car garage (and build the garage for my mom).  Now, most of the way through my junior year, it was done.  It was so awesome! I had my own bathroom, walk-in closet with a stackable washer/dryer, bedroom, and a living space that included a kitchen and a place to sit and watch TV.  Ed helped by putting up the stairs, helped put up the kitchen cabinets, and helped me paint.

On moving day, I picked up all of my belongings and carried them across the driveway to my new apartment.  The next day, my brother Nathaniel, the proud new occupant of my former bedroom, was so kind as to throw anything I left behind out of the window and into his quad trailer, then promptly bring it to the dumpster at the farm market. 

Besides the piles of clothes and books, I had very few possessions.  Thinking back to how packed that apartment soon became, it was totally spacious when I first moved in…  My furniture consisted of a computer chair, beach chair, and a coffee table that Ed built and gave me for Christmas, and a mattress from my parents in the bedroom.  I bought a VCR at Walmart.  I had one video tape: Jaws.  I vividly remember inviting some of Ed’s friends over to my new apartment, sitting on my comforter on the floor and watching Jaws.  I also remember sitting on the floor at the coffee table with colored pencils, watching a show about reptiles on the Discovery Channel, and making insanely complicated graphs of data for my Animal Physiology class.  I guess it was before I knew how to graph on excel, and before professors expected you to actually make a graph on the computer. 

I loved the privacy of the apartment, the fact that I could do my homework and study without listening to stories about football or tractors.  I loved that I could watch TV with Ed without talking to moms (his or mine).  I accumulated furniture quickly: my parents bought me a couch, then a kitchen table and chairs.  I started to learn to cook by watching cooking shows.  I started getting interested in buying plates and kitchen gadgets, and I made regular trips to the grocery store to stock my fridge.  My brothers visited often, and I went to my family’s house, too.  But when the sun went down and everyone else went home, I was lonely.

To celebrate my birthday, I had the dorkiest 21st birthday party ever.  See, the thing is, I don’t drink.  I never have.  So my parents, brothers, Ed, and Ed’s parents took me out to a Chinese buffet for my birthday, where I ate lots of orange chicken and drank diet soda.  We went back to my parents’ house and had ice cream cake.  What a wild 21st birthday party!

One weekend, Ed’s parents went to Maine.  They agreed to let a friend’s guests from out of town stay in their house while they were gone, and Ed wasn’t about to stay there with strangers.  We decided he would stay with me for the weekend.  It wasn’t a conscious decision for Ed to move in with me, but after that weekend, it became our apartment.  I had officially lived by myself for two weeks.