Explaining the Blog Name

I don't think I have ever explained my blog name. Bear with me folks because while it is a random story I will bring it all back together again.

Let's preface this with I'm not the coolest of people and neither is my husband. Important point to remember is God loves us unconditionally, despite our uncoolness. Josh and I are more suited for each other than the two sides of a coin. We rarely ever look at each other with a face of what weird rock did you crawl out from under, instead we wholeheartedly join together in a weird unity! One night a few months ago our darling daughter (who is also doomed to be uncool and weird) was making her little baby squeaky noises. These little baby squeaky noises sound much like a small dinosaur. So we affectionately started calling her baby t-rex whenever she made her little baby dinosaur noises. So on this particular evening Josh and I were in the kitchen and one of us had wee one and she like normal was making baby t-rex noises. Then for some strange and yes weird reason and I seriously have forgotten who did it first one of us came over to wee one and put our arms up in the air, like a t-rex, and gave wee one t-rex hugs! We laughed, she laughed it was a good, wholesome family moment. I think this occurred on an evening I had to go back to school to tutor, and I was getting ready to leave when Josh comes running over to me in full on t-rex pose and says t-rex hugs (in a high pitched voice) and we both t-rex hug each other. Then I very quickly said THAT WAS WEIRD! and we both dissolved into laughter which made wee one giggle too. We moved on with our lives from that point. A few days later, my husband who is notorious for leaving me loves notes, left one on the counter and it was signed Love Josh xoxo and T-rex hugs. From that point on the infamous t-rex hugs became a part of our daily email correspondence and love letters and sometimes even parting words.

When I sat down one evening to start a blog and the empty blog name box was staring at me I had no idea what to put. I thought long and hard about what would describe our family best, since I was mainly starting this blog to document our family's life. I tried all these cheesy things (I know you are thinking what could be cheesier than t-rex hugs) but none of them seemed to fit right. Then I thought when do I feel the most joy with our small family and that evening in the kitchen came back to me so quickly, then I knew what the name had to be. While it is a sweet memory of a fun moment in our young family's life it is also a testament to God's sovereignty. He brought Josh and I together in the most perfect of ways. So I'll now segue into our love story (this may be the longest blog entry known to man)! I was an unhappy junior in high school. I was raised in church and felt so alone at our church. I felt left out in the youth group and unnoticed each week at church. I had a friend at school who's dad was a pastor at a church. I decided to go on a Wednesday night. I felt such warmth and peace at the church. I saw the body of Christ in action for the first time in my teenage life. I quickly started going to this church on Wednesday nights and Sunday nights. Eventually I talked to my parents about going there ALL the time and no longer attending the church I grew up in. This was the best and hardest decision of my life to that point. I was nearing my 18th birthday and asked my parents for their blessing in switching churches and if I didn't get it then I would wait until I turned 18 to begin going to the church. They said they were fine with the change. It was hard going to a church without my family. Until people started knowing me, I always got questions about was this my first time attending church, did I know I'm more than welcome to invite my parents, etc. There were times it was uncomfortable because I knew I had grown up in a christian home but the rest of them didn't. I still felt that I was where God wanted me to be. One Sunday evening I was sitting next to a friend and I spied this guy in the front row of the sanctuary. We were singing and he had these beautiful hands spread out singing to God. I was floored and quickly wrote a note to my friend who is the hot guy up front??? (I still have this note!) She wrote back that is my sister's brother-in-law, Josh. I asked how old he was and I stored away this knowledge for another day. I will be quite honest as a love sick teenage girl my focus wasn't always on God at church, it was on Josh at the front of the church. He was gorgeous and I was fascinated by him. I began learning as much as I could about who he was. Obviously talking to him was OUT OF THE QUESTION! He was way out of my league. I learned that summer that he was leaving for Word of Life Bible Institute. I was bummed he was going to be gone, bummed isn't the right word, more like devastated. So off he left and I started my senior year of high school. I was kept busy but I still thought about him from time to time. Then when he was home he spoke to our youth group. It was the first time I heard him speak! *sigh* I thought he was HOT but then I heard him speak and I melted. So after he left I got really brave and wrote down his address that was posted on a prayer bulletin board and I wrote him a note thanking him for his testimony in youth group that Sunday. I sent it away thinking I have now officially ruined any chance of him even saying HI to me. Life went on and I was in the midst of swim season. At one particular meet my mom was waving me down like a mad woman from the stands. I ran over to see what she wanted and she pulls out an envelope and says Josh wrote you. Josh was common knowledge in my house. I had long since professed my undying love for a man I had never spoke to. I was elated with his letter (I also still have it and I later discovered after we got married he still had my letter to him)!!!! I think I started humming the wedding march that night in my head while I swam. Nothing happened then for a long time after the letter exchange. He came home for a visit over the summer before heading to the mission field with a singing team from school for a year in Canada. And I was packing up to go to college. Of course I said nothing to him, he said nothing to me. I was way to weak kneed and breathless and wordless to ever get near him. If we walked past each other in the hall at church I almost fainted. It was intense, at least for me. I later learned that he didn't know I really even existed and what little he did know of me he thought I was really weird. We left for our separate lives. He grew in his knowledge of the Lord and I grew away from the Lord that next year. The next summer he came home in August for good and I left for England for a semester. Our paths were always crossing but never colliding. I asked about him regularly when I'd call home. I decided I was over him, completely over him. I was moving on, or so I thought. I came home in December from England. He was home too. He was working at Target I found out. (Side note: my parents left their church and started coming to this church as well.) Josh's mom and my mom became friends. I made a resolution to begin talking to him every Sunday even if it killed me. So sure enough I began my tortured year. I would say hi to him in passing and then I'd have to run and sit down before I melted or fell down from swooning. I even got up the nerve once to coordinate an after church outing to steak'n'shake with a bunch of us and I invited him along. To my great surprise he said YES! I almost died!!! I could have went home happy for the rest of my life just with the answer YES. My friends were all in on this as well. It was set up just right that I ended up riding shot gun over there, he was driving. Then I ended up sitting next to him. Conversation was like getting your teeth pulled. He seemed miserable and I seemed like a mental patient. My friends told me it was quite funny to watch us that night. It was a bust of an evening but I was still happy. Surrounding this incident Josh seriously started running the other way from me. I would be mid-sentence in saying hello to him and he'd just walk off. I was appalled at how much he must hate me. I cried over it, then I resolved that I was DONE! Up to this point I had told my family I was going to marry this man someday and I specifically remember the night I went into my parent's room and said, "I'm done. He is so mean by walking off and ignoring me all the time. Obviously God doesn't want me to be with him. So I'm done." I was angry and hurt. This was the summer before my junior year of college. I started dating a guy from work. My heart still ached for Josh but I ignored it and stuck with this guy that summer and I quit talking to Josh. I went off to school that August and by mid September the summer romance fizzled out. I was really heart broken in general at this point. I had a new roommate this year who was a christian and had broken up with her boyfriend over the summer. God had brought us together to help each other through such a dark time. Over that fall semester things started to get better. I started spending a lot more time in devotions and actively praying again. I started attending a bible study and going to a college group at my roomie's church. Over Christmas break I admitted to myself that I still liked Josh. Also, by this point in time EVERYONE in the church knew I had a sweet spot for Josh. His mother and I had even talked about it briefly. So she decided to have our family over for dinner on a night that Josh wouldn't be at work. It was his parents, my parents, and then one eligible bachelorette and three eligible bachelors, Josh, his brother Matt, and a friend of Matt's. I figured if Josh ignored me I'd have two other guys to talk to that night at dinner. Josh ignored me before dinner, during dinner, and for awhile after dinner. Then his mom suggested we play a game. So we started playing skip-bo. I was so nervous. I didn't want to do anything that would startle him, he was like a wild animal! hehe! He was nervous too. He drank so much coffee that night to keep himself busy that he was twitching with so much caffeine in him. It was getting late and my parents said it was time to go but we weren't done with our game and then Josh made the most pivotal move in our relationship. He looked at me with his beautiful face and said, "If you want to stay and finish the game I could take you home later if it's okay with your parents." Of course it was okay!!! So I stayed for another hour or two playing skip-bo at his kitchen table. If I was head over heels in love before then I was to the moon and back after that Saturday night in December 2004.

That folks is where I'm going to leave us for tonight. I'll finish our love story and finish answering why my blog name is so appropriate tomorrow.