I have so much fun when I’m traveling and take so many pictures that I’m always behind in uploading and posting. Oh well. I guess I am on vacation after all. So I’ll just catch you up to this past Sunday.

We left OMSHville on Saturday morning and headed for Houston. In case you didn’t know, Texans pronounce it YEW-sten. I did not know that myself till I heard Heather pronounce it that way. And that suburb of Houston next door to IAH, Humble, is correctly pronounced without the ‘H’ sound. I don’t know about you, but I like to know these things when I travel so I don’t sound like a total ignoramus.

Anyway. We drove to the airport to pick up Troy and there was much rejoicing. Then we went to see some friends of ours who live in Houston. Chris and Angie both went to UNL around the same time we did, but we didn’t know them back then. Erin and Angie became good friends when they did a study-abroad semester in Spain together, and we’ve gotten to know them through Erin over the years.

Chris and Angie have two kids, 3-year-old Isabelle and 6-month-old Tommy. They are both totally adorable. Annalie and Isabelle renewed their acquaintance over the backyard swing set and, minor squabbles over a toy laptop aside, they got along well. Everything Annalie did, Isabelle wanted to do too. Annalie wanted mini-corndogs? So did Isabelle. Annalie wanted the pink cup? So did Isabelle. Annalie wanted french toast? Isabelle too, please!

Tommy, meanwhile, just sat around looking cute enough to eat and smiling at whomever came into his line of vision.

He’s such an easygoing baby that after his evening feeding, Angie put him down on his playmat in the living room, gave him his pacifier, and he turned onto his tummy and unceremoniously went to sleep. As the parent of a child who has only voluntarily put herself to sleep three times in four and a half years (every time, she had a fever) I found that amazing.

Saturday after we arrived Troy got to watch the Nebraska game on a big-screen HDTV with other Husker fans. And Nebraska beat Iowa State, 35-7. So he was happy.

After going to the park in OMSHville the day before and watching the big kids on the swings, Annalie did her first-ever flip on a swing without any help from me. The mom in me was thinking, Eek! Careful! Don’t hit your head! Are you old enough to be doing this?! But the 10-year-old in me who used to spend all her recesses inventing new and better ways to jump and flip off the swings was thinking, Wow, she figured it out on her own, that’s awesome! And I’m right here taking pictures of it!

Motherhood is weird sometimes.

We had originally wanted to leave early Sunday morning but Troy had only gotten about two hours of sleep the night before, thanks to his crack-of-dawn flight, and I was getting sick. So we let ourselves sleep in a bit and didn’t rush. Thank goodness because Angie cooked us a delicious breakfast of french toast, hash browns, and scrambled eggs with sausage, peppers and onions. I helped with the hash browns a tiny bit and I also managed to make their coffeemaker overflow. Don’t you all want to invite me over now? I bring disease and break appliances wherever I go.

This is Angie explaining why she never wants to see me in her house again. Just kidding! They were extremely gracious about the coffeemaker, insisting that it overflows all the time. And since Isabelle was already sick when we got there, I don’t think they could blame us for that.

After breakfast for Annalie and Isabelle snuggled adorably up on the couch and watched a little Disney Channel before we left. We said thank you and good-bye, promised to come again and stay longer next time, and headed down the road to Mom & Tom’s.

Someone asked me today in an email when we were leaving OMSHville. Oh, uh, we left there two days ago. I just have not had the chance to blog about it, what with picking Troy up at the airport in Houston, staying the night with friends there and loving on their seriously cute baby boy while Annalie played with their equally adorable almost-3-year-old daughter, and then driving half a day to Troy’s mom & stepdad’s RV park.

Oh, and I also crocheted a Frankenstein’s Monster trick-or-treat bag. I had the idea for his curly hair and just couldn’t resist. I don’t know yet what I’ll do with it, if I’ll keep it or give it away or put it in my shop.

Troy is going to be helping his mom buy a laptop and she’s getting DSL installed so I hope to have the chance to post more later in the week. If I don’t, then you can just assume I had better things to do (like swimming in the heated pool). Off to have BLA’s (bacon, lettuce and avocado sandwiches) for lunch!

Troy and I were engaged on October 9, 1995. It’s kind of a funny story.

We met in August 1994, during Resident Assistant training. We had both ended long-term relationships right before we met, and neither of us were in a hurry to start dating someone new. Not that we considered each other potential dating material, because we didn’t. We were just co-workers and friends at first. As fall turned to winter we got to know each other better and became good friends. We spent so much time together that our co-workers and friends started asking us, “Are you guys dating?”

The first few times we were asked that question, we laughed about how people saw a guy and girl together and automatically assumed they must be romantically involved. After the sixth or seventh person asked us we said, Hmm, why does everyone keep asking us that? We decided that maybe we’d be missing out on something really great if we didn’t at least give it a try. So we shifted our paradigm and started dating. Three weeks later we knew we would eventually get married. It wasn’t any grand gesture or realization, it was just a quiet knowledge that we were supposed to be together, a sense of rightness.

Troy graduated in May 1995 and was commissioned as a Navy officer. He stayed in Lincoln that summer, working at the ROTC unit and spending as much time with me as we could manage. At the end of July he drove off to Athens, Georgia, where he would be a student at the Navy Supply School for six months. Saying good-bye to him was one of the hardest things I’d ever done, and that initial period of living in different states remains the most difficult separation we’ve endured in our 14 years of knowing each other.

When I went to visit Troy over Columbus Day weekend in October, we weren’t planning to get engaged. We thought maybe we’d get engaged at Christmas, and while I was there we went looking at rings so Troy could get an idea of what I liked. At one small jewelry store the owner was very friendly and spent a long time talking to us, asking us questions about where we were from, how long we’d known each other, etc. In the course of conversation we mentioned that I was there visiting for the weekend and would be going home the next day.

There was a ring at that store that I liked very much. Troy decided to go ahead and buy it so he’d have it when he decided the time was right to propose. That was perfectly all right with me; I knew we’d get engaged eventually and wasn’t in a big hurry. But the jeweler was astonished that I didn’t want to take the ring back to Nebraska with me. He told us he could have the ring resized and ready to pick up by the next day, if we changed our minds. We assured him that wasn’t necessary, thanked him for all his help, and said good-bye.

Back at Troy’s apartment we got to talking about it and decided that maybe…yeah, maybe we did want to get engaged now! Troy called up the jewelry store and asked them to have the ring ready the next day. Then we called our parents to tell them we were officially engaged. They were all happy and unsurprised, which we thought was funny. They’d all seen it coming, even though we hadn’t. That was going to be a common theme in the days and weeks to come when we shared the news with friends and family.

The next day we stopped by the store to pick up the ring on our way to the airport in Atlanta. When we got back to the car, I said to Troy, “You do realize that a jeweler talked us into getting engaged, don’t you?” We both cracked up, Troy put the ring on my finger, and we drove happily to the airport. It wasn’t till later that we realized we were so busy laughing that Troy never officially proposed, but it was okay. Laughing together was, and still is, sort of a defining element of our relationship. We figured it was fitting that our engagement started not with a proposal but with laughter.