Happy 3rd Anniversary to us!

Yesterday, February 16th, Joshua and I had our 3rd wedding anniversary.

So, I figured I would tell you all the story of how we met.

Joshua and I met online at singlesaints.com.

My Dad had suggested that I go online to meet a guy, and my sister thought that would be a great idea too. So, we went online and she wrote out my profile.

This is what it said:
"Hi, this is Joy's sister. I have persuaded Joy to try out what online dating has to offer, but she isn't motivated enough to actually fill this stuff out. I guess that I have to help her out, but hey, what is a sister for? Joy is a very talented girl. She loves to paint (although she hasn't done it in a long time), she can sew and design clothing (she has a fashion design degree from The Art Institute of Colorado), and she is very fun to be around (she laughs a lot). I just want her to find someone to settle down with. I want my daughter Ashlyn to have some more cousins to play with! Joy would make a great mother. She is very outgoing. She is also an attractive girl. She is slender and has blond hair and blue eyes. Why she is still available is beyond me. I guess it is from the lack of suitable men in this area. Please help me in my search for men for her. If you are financially stable, handsome, and fun to be around, then please apply now. Who knows, maybe you just might get hired...or fired...but you won't unless you try!"

This was my profile picture.

I did not have Internet where I lived at the time, so when we set up my singlesaints.com account, we set it up so my sister, Julie would get emails when someone wrote to me on the site. So, Julie would call when guys sent messages and she would read them to me. Then she would analyze their picture (tell me if they were cute or not) and we would decide how to respond.

One day, we got a message from Josh. He said that he didn't have a picture online, but he would send pictures, if we wanted. I told Julie, over the phone, to just write him back and tell him to send pictures. And so she did, but she added extra stuff like something about the weather and so on.

Anyway, here's what Josh's profile said:
"Accountant, Not the boring type, I control country's...*smile*, Just Joshin ya. I'm a detective...okay, Okay, I'm an accountant in a tiny cubical that doesn't go near the third floor window because I know that I'll jump from frustration. My interests are, as I am 25 to find the woman I will unintentionally love, desire, and fight to keep. I have a son named Kaden who is two and a half. He is the best thing that ever happened to me and we need a mommy. I have my son full time. I know...baggage, ya I got some of that. Convert. Have an undeniable passion for my father in heaven but the woman that reads this is definitely going to have to be absolutely the strongest most amazing creature. I need her help to get me where I have a goal to be. So line up baby, because my son and I are hot items in the fall fashion of deliberate sales and advertisement."

And here's the picture he emailed us:

Josh and I emailed back and forth once or twice and then we started talking on the phone. We started talking around January of 2006. We talked almost daily, for 2-3 hours at a time. Josh was living in Arizona and he said he wrote to me because I was the only girl in Oregon. --And then, my cousin, Shawna had a baby, down in Arizona. So, I caught a ride down to Arizona with my Aunt Becky and Uncle Leo at the beginning of February.

This is a picture I took along the way to Arizona, to meet Josh.

And this is a picture of Josh and I the day we met, February 6th 2006.

Josh drove up to meet me, where we were staying, at Aunt Becky's friend's house. And before he took me out, Aunt Becky and Uncle Leo made him give them his driver's license and copied all the information, and they snapped pictures of us. And, while doing so, secretly snapped pictures of his license plate too. ---You know, just in case...they wanted me to stay safe.

As, you all know, things worked out...

We were married while I was in Arizona, exactly 10 days after we officially met.

February 16th, 2006

We were just married by Josh's Bishop, in a room next door to his office, in the church building. We just had two witnesses, that happened to be in the church building at the time.

The Bishop married us, after lecturing us for about an hour, to make sure that we really were sure about doing this thing.

Josh wore his suit and I wore a white linen skirt, a white short-sleeved jacket and blue top, with my white flip-flops...and as we were married, Kaden slept on the floor in the Bishop's office.

Unfortunately, we don't have any pictures from the day we were married, but we do have the pictures below, from the day I had to fly back home to Oregon. --Two days after we were married.

We were apart for about a month, after we were married, and then I moved down to Arizona to be with Josh and Kaden. We lived there for awhile, then moved back to Oregon, then on to Colorado, and now back to Oregon. Along the way, we had Versii and now we're expecting our 3rd boy.


Happy Anniversary Honey! I love you still!

Vexing Viruses

Many of you may be wondering why our blog has been so neglected lately. And the reason is due to viruses, two different types, actually: COLD and COMPUTER.

For the past few weeks we have been dealing with such a massive amount of computer viruses, that Mom and Dad's computer completely shut down -- to the point that the hard drive wasn't even accessible. And then our computer became inundated with so many viruses that we couldn't even access one program or website. The viruses were running the computer. Both computer were taken in to the shop to be repaired and it was several days before we had any kind of functioning computer in the house. Fortunately, all our computer cost to fix was $24 and an old laptop that was useless to us because it needed a completely new hard drive, which would have cost us $225. ---Long story short, the computer viruses caused a lot of trouble since we couldn't take care of things like computer homework, invoices and so on.

Plus I haven't looked at anyone's blogs in about two weeks...and now the thought is a little overwhelming, since I know you've all been added to them. I'll have a lot to catch up on.

---Then, on top of that we've all been plagued by the cold virus. It all started with Versii, who passed it to me, who passed it to Josh, who passed it to Dad, and now Kaden has it. We're mostly all better now, but we all still have a little bit of a cough hanging on.

Here are the kids a few weeks ago playing in their new ball pit. --Another great thrift store find. The kids have just loved it. And as you can imagine, we constantly have balls all over the house.

Next order of business: Is our child going to be a juvenile delinquent?

The answer: Not if I can help it!

Kaden's school called the other day and he was in the nurses office. He said he didn't feel well and so I went and picked him up early from school. As soon as he got in the car, he says, "I think I just need to eat." --So when we got home I made him a bowl of spaghetti O's. He was starting to get the cold we all had and he never will eat soup. --But anyway, I sat him down at the table to eat and went upstairs to take care of some things. Apparently, while I was upstairs, Kaden decided to scratch an "X" into Mom's new dining room table, with a spoon. It looks very much like something a child would do to a cafeteria table...and I contest that this must be behavior he learned at school. --I was pretty mad when I found it. Mom was a lot nicer about it. She explained to him that if he had done something like that to some one's fence or house or something that the police would come and he could go to jail. (This scared him, of course.) Plus he had to gift Grandma something that he really loved to help make up for the mistake --He has lost his XBox for an unknown length of time.

Here's something funny:

We installed one of those child locks on the pantry door, mostly because Versii wreaks so much havic if he can access all the can and jars of food.

So the other day, Josh went in the pantry to get something and apparently he switched the lock back into position --thinking he would forget to do it when he exited the pantry. --While he was in their, Versii walked in and closed the door behind him.

Mom and I were in the living room watching a movie and we're hearing all this knocking/pounding going on. And we kind of thought Josh was just playing some game with Versii. But the pounding sound was becoming annoying, so I went to investigate and found them locked in the pantry.

Josh is officially the first to be locked in the pantry. Every time I think about it, I laugh!

While I was taking a picture of the child lock and scratched table, Versii was following me around saying "Cheee" -- Every time he see the camera he stops and says "cheee," it's really cute, so I had to take a picture or two.


Last of all, another thing that has been monopolizing my time is the Zune.

I recently got a Zune and I must say, if I had known how really great it would be to have an MP3 player, I would have insisted I have one years ago. I have added 1724 songs loaded into my Zune right now, from 287 CDs. And I still haven't finished loaded them all. But fitting 287+ CD's into a device the size of my cell phone is pretty awesome!

I love my music! And now it's just become a lot more accessible then ever before!

Anyway, I love my Zune!

And I'll give Josh the credit...it was his suggestion to buy one. But, now he has so many songs in "my" zune, that he might just have his own soon. Since I'm not very good at sharing.