Sep 11
Everyone,
Where was I on this day, 10 years ago?
I was days away from turning 21. As in, 2 days. Juice and I had just celebrated our 1 month, 1 week anniversary. We were living in a small basement apartment near our college in Utah. I was in my senior year of college, and Juice was in his junior year. It was a Tuesday morning. I had classes a little later than I did on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and I don’t think that Juice had classes until after noon that day.
I got up and went into the bathroom to get ready for my day. I always have a radio in the bathroom so I can sing along in the shower. That day, I turned on the radio half asleep, and wondered where the music was. They kept saying “this tragedy. This horrible scene.”
Now this radio station is kind of known for their practical jokes. They often announce the wrong time on the air in the morning just to get people’s blood pumping. So I half thought that it was a odd kind of joke they were playing. But when they switched to CNN broadcasting, I knew I had to turn on the news.
I took 2 steps to our tv (remember our apartment was tiny) and flipped it on. I saw the first tower smoking, and called to Juice in the bedroom. I listened to them talk about how it must be a small plane that hit the tower. I wondered at the pilot and the offices he hit. Juice came out blinking and bleary in time to see the second plane hit the second tower. I sat down on our coffee table, still holding the remote in my hand.
All I could think of was all those people. All those people.
And all their families.
We watched as the first tower slid to the ground, and I had to get up. I had class with my favorite teacher that morning. Once I was ready, I called my brother. My mom. My dad who was traveling that day.
I left for school and found my classroom empty. I went to my professor’s office and found him glued to the tv. Class cancelled. I went to my next professor’s office and got the same answer. Class cancelled.
By mid-morning, the entire school had cancelled classes that day and called a special meeting in the school center. There, we had a short prayer as a school, and a short talk on faith. I honestly don’t remember what was said, but I remembered the biggest feeling of gratitude.
Not the kind of gratitude that you get when you dodged a bullet or didn’t get caught sneaking in.
Nope, this was gratitude that I know that those people are okay. That I know that our Heavenly Father knows each of us individually and that he cares for us. And he cared for every single one of those people in the towers.
That he cares for me.
Life in Utah, and especially in Utah county, can be like being wrapped in a huge bubble sometimes. Life went back to normal. Long before the rest of the nation seemed to. But I try never to forget the feeling of peace that I had that day, the calm assurance that our Heavenly Father loves everyone. That He loves me.
Safire
Safireme and Juice, Sept. 11 memories
Jan 02
Since we met on New Year’s Eve, Safire thought it would be fun for me to share my memories about the night we met. (Of course, after she asked me to do it, she also claimed rights to edit my post. What’s with that!? 
Anyway, I’m not sure what you’ll actually get to read, but it should be fun to write.)
Honestly I have a very poor memory. There are a few that are vivid in my mind, like the night I took Safire to homecoming, but that’s not what I’ve been asked to talk about tonight. Most of what I remember about that night is due to my diligent journal writing from the time I was 14 until I was 21. (I didn’t quite write every night, but it was close.) Reading my entry for that night is rather humorous. Apparently when I was a teenager I spoke in some sort of cryptic code. Apparently you couldn’t just say that you liked a girl or thought she was pretty. There were special code words to describe how cute she was or how much you liked her without having to say it. 
I remember that I was 15-years-old, not old enough to date, but old enough to go to stake dances. These were fascinating events where the 14 and 15-year-olds (since the 16-year-olds can date they don’t always feel obliged to come) go and stand around. The boys sit in the chairs along the walls and wonder what they’re doing there. The girls stand around in groups, effectively preventing boys from coming up and asking them to dance by sheer numbers. In each group they whisper to each other about who they consider cute. Occasionally some of them somehow manage to end up dancing and talking and generally everyone has a good time by the end of the evening.
This particular stake dance was a special opportunity for me. My best friend and I had been invited to a stake dance in another stake by a girl we both thought was really cute. She invited us because there was a guy coming that she used to like. He was supposed to be really charming, and she asked us to come so she wouldn’t end up falling for him again (or something like that. I don’t recall exactly.) The point is that rather than being around girls that I’d known since I was four or five, I was going to be around girls that I’d never met before and might never meet again. This was an opportunity to be whoever I wanted to be for one night. I could flirt with anyone I wanted to and no one would know that I was normally really shy and nervous around girls.
According to my journal I met five girls that night within the first fifteen minutes. All of them would be my friends for the next several years. Safire’s favorite part is the fact that of all the people I met that night, hers in the only name I couldn’t remember. She is forever immortalized as “…another girl whose name I cannot remember. I’m so mad. I’ve got to remember names. I’ve got her phone number…” So how do you call a cute girl if you know her number but not her name? Well, that would be a problem for another evening…
Safire says that she remembers what I was wearing that night. I wish I could say the same about anyone there (even myself), but I have no memory for such things. My journal focuses on what I remember about each of the people I met. For Safire I don’t say much more than that I’m not sure how I feel about her. She is, however the only girl that I specifically mention dancing with. (I asked her to dance the last dance of the evening, which was naturally a slow song.) The only thing that I really remember about that evening was playing Twister. They had games in some of the classrooms in the building. We all decided to play Twister. It was fun. I’ve always been really good at Twister. They had four Twister mats together in a square so that lots of people could play at once. I remember that Safire and I were the last two left at the end of the game. She was also really good. Neither of us were going to fall on our own, so I decided to be more aggressive. (I’d only ever played Twister with my older siblings.) I intentionally began to move across the mats to where she was. I cornered her, trying to limit her access to the colors she’d need to play. It worked, but not as intended. She eventually lost, but she did it intentionally because she was embarrased about me being so close. I realized too late that I’d made her uncomfortable. I felt really bad, although she didn’t really seem to mind too much. So I gave her the Starbursts that I got for winning. I remember thinking that she was really cute when she blushes…still is, as a matter of fact.
Juice
Safireme and Juice Juice.
Dec 30
Everyone,
9th Grade! This was the year I met my husband, Juice. Yes. It’s true. We have known each other for, what, 16 years now? Today I’m reposting something I wrote several years ago about the night we met. And tomorrow, I’ll (hopefully) go through the rest of the year.
It was 11 years ago today (New Year’s Eve) that Juice and I met. Our church was having a youth dance. It was going to be my first one ever (you’re not allowed to go until you’re 14). All of my friends had been going to them all summer and I wanted to see what the fuss was about. I was obsessive about writing in my journal at the time so I know exactly what was going on that day.
I was mad at my friend Jordan because he didn’t want to go with me to the dance. I really liked Jordan but he was not Mormon and I don’t think he really wanted to go to a Mormon dance. MusicMan, my brother, had to drive me to the stake center (which was just up the road) and we were late. As always. As I walked in, all of my friends were there and hanging out in a big circle. Kristie ran up to me to tell me that D had brought some boys that we didn’t know. That was a big thing since these dances are organized by stakes (a group of congregations in the same area, if you will) and you can only dance with the same boys so many times. Apparently. Kristie and I walked up to the circle, introductions were made and a slow song started. Juice turned to me and said, “You’re tall. Want to dance?” Of course I said yes and was probably happy I was tall for the first time in a long time.
Through the course of the evening, Juice and I danced almost all of the slow songs. Juice and I also played on the giant twister board that they had set up in another room of the church. The end game came down to me and Juice, and he beat me only because I was very embarrassed about so close to him. He gave me the candy he won in front of everyone. I remember offering some to Melanie and she hissed “NO! He gave it to you! Keep it all!” I think I still have a wrapper of the starbursts taped in my journal. He danced the last two dances with me. Kristie (being a very good friend at the time) gave him my number because I was too shy to do it myself.
Little did I know that Juice did like me because I was tall, and pretty. But did he like me enough to remember my name from that night? No. He had to call around and ask who I was before he could use my number. In Juice’s journal, he mentions me as the “pretty tall girl I danced most of the night with” and that’s it.
He did call me a few days later and we got together with friends and played Pictionary in my basement. Juice and I soundly beat Melanie and Max (his best friend, also at the dance that night) and we even slaughtered them at Charades. I think we hung out once more and then didn’t see each other until September that year. I was still in junior high and he went to high school.
My 10th grade year I don’t remember hanging out with him very much. I liked him a lot, but so did a lot of other girls. At the beginning of my junior year, he asked me to Homecoming [see above picture] (my first date!) and hung out every day after that. Okay, not EVERY day, but it was close. We were off and on dating until he went on his mission. I wrote him in Germany, and didn’t see him until a few months after he got back. We were both at BYU by then (my junior year again) and within 2 weeks of school starting, we were looking at rings together.
We were engaged on Nov 2, and 10 months later, married on Aug 4, 2001.
All together now…aww….
Safire
Safireme and Juice, my past my story
Feb 14
Everyone,
Tonight I am playing along with the Multiples and More question of the week. This week’s question is:
Who are your Valentines and why?
As much as I’d like to say my beautiful kiddos are my Valentines, they are not. They are sweet. They are beautiful. They light up my life and I would do anything for them.
But they will grow up and move on. They will (hopefully) fall in love themselves and have families of their own. Where will that leave me?
With Juice. I am so lucky to be able to say that I get to spend the rest of my life with Juice. He is so kind, so considerate, so compassionate. To know that I get to grow old with him makes me so happy. So here’s a list of 14 things I love about my love on Valentine’s Day.
1. He always smiles when he sees me. Even if I haven’t showered in days, the house is a mess, children are hanging off of me and snotty, he always smiles.
2. He fixes things. Sometimes I feel a little sad that I can’t go out and buy a new appliance or something because he always fixes it. Sometimes I am thrilled that he fixed it because then I don’t have to get a new one. But I love that he CAN fix anything and does if I ask him to.
3. He cares about others. Who else would have spent 3 hours in a snow storm pushing cars up hills and digging people out? Who else would see our neighbor cleaning off his car with a shovel no bigger than his fore arm and rush out with our shovel to loan to him? He enjoys serving others and inspires me to do the same.
4. He takes our faith seriously. I have recently seen how important this is to our happiness together. I am so glad he is strong in his faith.
5. He loves those kids. He is SUCH a good Daddy. He is always on the floor playing with them or reading to them or teaching them. At the end of the day, I can barely pull them away from him to each dinner or get ready for bed. I love that he’s such a hands on Daddy.
6. His hair. It’s a silly thing, I know. But he has the most awesome thick straight hair I’ve ever seen. It has a natural part and is rarely out of place. He has so many little natural highlights in his hair too. I hope one of our kids got this hair.
7. He works hard. His job is important to him, but not as important as our family. I like it this way. Yes, I know he will never be the boss or high up in the company with that attitude, but I don’t want him to be. I want him to spend time with us. I love that he knows that is more important.
8. He loves to read. Granted he doesn’t read that much, but he understands my obsession with books because he also loves to read. Plus, we like to read the same stuff.
9. He is focused. Sometimes this gets him in trouble (like when he gets focused on a computer game) but I like that he is not pulled in tons of directions all the time.
10. He loves his family. He is the baby brother to some pretty awesome siblings. He may not talk to them much, but I know he really loves to when he does. His parents are always included in his daily prayers. And his 14 nieces and nephews have a mutual admiration society together. He says it’s sad that he will only ever have 14 since everyone is done having kids. He would love as many as he could get.
11. He is patient. This is a good trait for him. He is so patient with the kids. When he does loose his patience, I know it’s my turn to step up and get some of my own patience. He’s teaching me a lot about it.
12. He loves to vacuum. He also picks up all the toys to do the vacuuming. I rarely have to do it. Awesome! He also does the dishes every night, helps me fold laundry, cleans bathrooms and sweeps. He is also really great at shoveling snow.
13. He makes amazing waffles. It may be my recipe, but I can never make them as fluffy and wonderful as he does. He made some for us this morning. Butterfly had 2, Professor had 2 and Pirate had 1 1/2. I also love that he tried to get up early enough to bring some up to bed for breakfast for me this morning. Sadly, kids got up before he could make them. Still, I love that he thought of it!
14. He is all mine. I don’t know why this gives me so much pleasure, but it does.
He is a GREAT Valentine.
Safire
SafireJuice., me and Juice, Valentine's Day
May 16
Everyone,
Juice and I apparently went on the best adult date ever according to our 15 year old babysitter. What did we do? Well first, we went to a tiny Mexican restaurant for dinner. We’ve been talking about going to this place for awhile. Only because on the front window it states: We Speak English. I don’t know why that made me laugh every time so we thought we’d try it out.
Saturday nights are apparently karaoke nights at this little restaurant. It was LOUD. Not crowded, but very loud. And all in Spanish. And not really sung well. Not the nice quiet reconnection I was hoping to have with my hubby. Still the food was good, the price was reasonable, and we went away laughing at our adventure.
After Mexican Karaoke, we decided to go to the local kid arcade place and play some skee ball. Why in the world did we do that? Well, when we were dating and first married, we were at BYU going to college. They have a game room on campus with 4 lanes of skee ball. When we had a free moment and a free dollar, we would go in and play a few games just for fun. We ended up saving up a bunch of tickets from that and getting something…a pair of BYU socks I think. Anyway, we look back at that time as a lot of fun. So we thought we’d go play skee ball again.
This was good in theory. It was almost 9pm. The place doesn’t close until 11pm. I figured it wouldn’t be swarming with kids when we got there. Boy was I wrong. Tiny tiny kids running everywhere. Parent just sitting around at tables looking bored or doing something with their cell phone. I just couldn’t help wonder why these kids aren’t in bed!!
We made our way right over to the skee ball lanes (all but two were broken, and even then there were only 4 balls between them) and proceeded to start our games. The coins went in, the balls came down, and every toddler in the place bee lined for us. They climbed up onto the ball lanes, stole our balls, and ran off with them. Seriously, I counted 6 little tiny kids all fighting over a ball at one point. There we are, standing there watching in horror as the games we were trying to play were being thwarted. No parents came. One big sister came and pulled a little girl off the lane only to have her climb right back up there. The sister shrugged her shoulders, and left. ARG!
We abandoned the skee ball and went to play other arcade games, half of which were broken. Seriously, this place is getting more ghetto as the night goes on. We stayed for an hour and saw most of the families go home. Yay! We played about 10 games of skee ball, turned in our tickets for a little rocket launcher for Buttterfly, and left.
While it wasn’t the best date for us, it was a lot of fun.
Safire
Safiredates, me and Juice
Jan 16
Everyone,
In a random spurt of energy, I decided to clean out our filing cabinet. It’s only a two drawer cabinet. Black, metal, and missing the handle of the bottom drawer. It’s pretty dented in places. When we moved to Virginia, we put something heavy on the top and it did not do well on the cross country move. Juice took a towel and a hammer to it and put it back into shape. Sort of. We keep talking about getting a new one. A taller one. But it never happens. I do kind of like having just a tiny bit of storage because it forces me to keep it up to date and clean it out every once in awhile.
Like today.
After clearing out the year’s receipts and things, Juice jumped in and starting pulling out all the folders. Wait, I was just going to do the top drawer, not the bottom one! But now that they were out, we had to do them. My favorite folders were the marriage licence folder and the love notes folder.
In the marriage licence folder you have our marriage licence (surprise surprise) but also a card from our sealer (the guy who married us) and what he said during the ceremony. We also had a ribbon that tied up our marriage certificate, and a schedule of the Jordan River Temple. It was fun to hold up everything for Juice to look at and to smile at the memories of the day.
In the love notes folder, there are a whole bunch of birthday, anniversary, baby shower cards. Juice was asking me where the more current anniversary cards were and I said we hadn’t been getting each other those in awhile. He wanted to know why that was. Me too. Also in the folder are a ton of little tiny notes we wrote each other when we were first married. We were both in school. We had my old car Alex and I think I had two jobs and he had three. We planned our day around where we were going and who needed the car and where we were going to park the car so the other could pick it up. We had a note pad in the car and wrote short notes on how our days were going and how much we loved each other. It was cute and I’m glad we saved them.
Oh, I also found our list of kid names we made up as our final list long before we had any kids. We had three girl names and three boy names. We used one girl name. I don’t like one any more and Juice doesn’t like the other. We’ve used one boy name, and one boy middle name. My brother used the other boy name on the list. Those were some good names.
Because of this, the cabinet can now shut. Yay for progress! I have also found our wills and the deed to the house and re-organized our “house is burning down better grab this folder” folder.
In other news, we went grocery shopping today and it was SO COLD. If it’s like this next week we are NOT going downtown. (The jury is still out on if we’re going at all…Anie, find me at church and let’s talk. Maybe we can all go together.)
And now, I’m going to go play rock band again. Love that game!
Safire
Safirecleaning, me and Juice
Dec 31
Everyone,
I’m 28 years old. If you divide that in half you get 14. And if you get 14, you get this:
14 years ago I met Juice. You can read about that night here. You can also read about our first date here. Well, the first installment of that night.
Here’s another story of us in high school. I think I was 16 but I’m not sure. It was fall of that year, Halloween time to be exact. We were going with a bunch of friends to the haunted forest at a local farm. It was kind of silly. They hung little electric shock wires from the trees and had you walk through a lot of little zaps.
I don’t remember who came. I do remember hanging onto Juice’s arm all night long and often burying my head into his back because I absolutely hate haunted houses. This was a good way to be able to hang on to a guy, though so it wasn’t all that unpleasant. It was also not unpleasant for Juice, he says. I remember walking down a long tunnel and getting more and more nervous with every step. I was holding Juice’s hand and walking behind him. He yelled out “ouch!” all of a sudden and I think I jumped a mile backwards. He had to come and get me and tell me he hit his head on the ceiling, that it was an optical illusion and nothing bad was going to happen. We had to crawl through a tiny door at the end of the hall. That’s as much as I remember in the haunted house.
The best part about the evening was the car ride there. Juice’s friend Max was driving and Juice was in the passenger seat. I was behind Juice, and I think there were 2 other people in the car but I can’t remember. I do remember Juice and I playing peek-a-boo over the seat and noticing for the first time that he has some great green/hazel eyes that night. Juice and I had a great time flirting over the seat like this. His friend Max was horrified though. He thought it was absurd that an adult would play peek-a-boo with another adult. That moment in the car is one of my strongest memories of Juice in high school though. For him too.
So now I’ve known Juice half my life. And we still have fun together, like that night in the car. I still love to hold his hand and we still like to play games together. (Current game: rock band where Juice got a 695 note streak on a song…time to make it a little harder huh?)
Can’t wait to see what the next 14 years brings! I’ll be…42. Butterfly will be 17 and the boys will be 14. Wow.
Happy New Year!
Safire
Safireme and Juice
Feb 09
Everyone,
Juice and I have been staying up late the past couple of nights laughing so hard we are crying. And why is that? We’ve been reading through the comments of Pioneer Woman’s latest give away. She have everyone post their most embarrassing moments and randomly picked a person to win a Wii.
Go here to get a good laugh. Juice’s favorite is the guy with the glue and the toilet seat…mine is the lady who knocked out her GYN. Enjoy!
Safire
Safireme and Juice
Feb 04
Everyone,
Juice is sitting here reading over my shoulder and I asked him what I should post about today. He said I should post about how he had to stay at work. Poor Daddy. All day at work with adults and the chance to eat all of his own food.
He laughs and says he was locked in a dark room, had too much conversation with other people, and had too many meetings. He did get to eat all of his lunch though. (He says with a smirk.) (And he’s laughing at me for my lack of proper punctuation. I ask, who is the English major here?!)
I had to wake Butterfly up from a nap today to actually go and pick him up from work. When I asked her if she wanted to go pick up Daddy, she said, “No! I don’t want Daddy! He has to stay at work ALL NIGHT LONG!” and flung herself back on her bed. I had to call him up and tell him that we would not be picking him up for a while. I had to convince Butterfly that we liked having Daddy home in the evenings. Especially Mommy. Because then Mommy can sit on the couch with her lap top and watch them play. It’s very nice for Mommy.
(But I’m not letting him read over my shoulder anymore. He keeps picking on my word usage, spelling and grammar!)
Oh, and we did finally go get him. Thanks to some dried apricots that made Butterfly stop crying in a pinch. Gotta love those things.
Safire
SafireButterfly and Juice, Juice., me and Juice
Jan 18
Everyone,
Since Butterfly is enamored with Ariel right now, I thought I’d take a few moments and type up the conclusion to the first date story. You can read the first installment here (or just look at the picture again).
Our date began early at around 1pm that Saturday afternoon. When Juice told me, I had visions of having to haul my dress around in plastic in the car all day and changing at his house. And what would I do with my hair?! Juice must have seen the expression on my face and quickly explained what we would be doing. Since the first weekend in October is our church’s big semi-annual conference, we were going to plan our date around that. The second session starts at 2pm. He was coming to get me before that, and we would have a picnic and listen to the session before heading off to the dance at the school.
1pm came, and I was ready. He came to pick me up in his dad’s tiny white car, and drove me over to his best friend’s house to pick him up. And then Max’s date. (Alisha was her name I think.) We went back over to Max’s house and listened to the session while eating BLTs. Now, I hate tomatoes. So I picked mine off and just had a bacon and lettuce sandwich. Yummy! Max was horrified that I didn’t like tomatoes and then promptly ate mine. Juice confided in me that he wasn’t a fan of them either but liked them on sandwiches and in things. More conversation about ketchup, spaghetti sauce, etc. followed. In between listening, of course.
After the session was over, they ran us girls home so we could get ready for the dance and the guys went to the men only session that evening. I had plenty of time to get ready. When Juice showed up (looking very handsome and tall in his suit), he met my dad at the door. I was coming down the stairs and Juice looked up and saw me and said, “Wow.” He also took a step back and we all laughed.
Now, this is how I remember it. Juice says that he was sitting on the couch and stood up to meet me and sat back down because he was surprised at how good I looked. (And I did look nice!) My parents side with me so that is how the story is going to be written out.
Flowers were exchanged (with a lot of hand shaking on my part. I was nervous!) and he walked me back out to his dad’s tiny white car. Max was in the back. Juice put his hand on my back and whispered that I looked really good as I got in the car. I’m sure my smile went from big to huge at that point.
We drove about 20 minutes back to Juice’s neighborhood and picked up Alisha. She was also wearing blue. We all looked very nice together. Once Alisha was in the car, Max was very quiet and nervous. I think he liked her.
Back at Juice’s house, the guys escorted us out to a table that they had set up in the field behind Juice’s house. (Juice’s parents own the field…think of it as an extension of their back yard but with grape vines and various fruit trees in it. Oh, and a duck pond.) Apparently the table had been decorated before they left but it was slightly windy and it had blown all the decorations all over the field. They managed to find the lantern and the table cloth. They spread the cloth (refusing any help from us), lit the lantern and left us to go get dinner. Alisha and I chatted about dresses and the boys for about 3 minutes. I knew her from band at school, but we had never really talked.
The lantern blew out. Suddenly, we were plunged into darkness. We gasped, “Oh no!” and started to laugh because we said it the same time, the same way. The guys were coming out with the food at that point and heard us. They rushed over, tried to light the lantern and couldn’t. Then the table cloth tried to blow away and take the food with it. I was quick and grabbed Juice’s plate (and mine too) and watched the table cloth envelope Juice and the lantern. Hehe…he struggled, balled up the table cloth and said, “Let’s go inside.” Yes please! It wasn’t cold, but it was too windy.
Inside, Juice’s new brother in law (who had just spent 2 years in Italy on his mission) was cooking pasta for us. It was delicious! I think his sister and bil joined us at the end, and we had a great time eating and talking and laughing. Then, we decided that it was probably time to go to the dance.
The dance was at the high school, only minutes away from Juice’s house. We walked into the main hall, showed our ticket (I believe it was black with silver stars all over…I think I still have it) and went into the gym. We had our pictures taken, and then started to dance. I still remember the song we danced to, since Juice complained the whole time that it kept changing beats. (You can listen to it here.) We were so late to the dance, that we only danced 6 or 7 songs and then it was over. It was probably the shortest dance I ever went to in high school and I had one of the best times with it.
We dropped of me first (I think) and Juice gave me a hug on my doorstep. That was it. Who knew that this first date would lead to other things…such as being married, having a 2 year old and twins on the way. Juice really is a very thoughtful person when he puts his mind to it. And he was very thoughtful this date. It’s probably one of the main reasons that I really liked him in high school. And still like him now.
Safire
Safireme and Juice
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