Twitterpation

And we continue with our journal posting tradition. Here we go.

May 7, 2004
Well, lets update. Last night my family went to a choir concert that Mom was in. Aaron came with. He met Steph and Randy. (A pox on him!! [Not actually in journal]) Actually Randy and Aaron knew each other from elementary school. Weird huh? After that Aaron and I went bowling with some of the group. I bowled a 136 one game. Then Aaron and I left. We went to Wilson Ponds and walked around. We talked about things the other didn't know about the person.
Tonight Jason had a graduation banquet that I had to go to. It was alright, but it lasted forever! I finally made it to Aaron's house at 11:00 p.m. We hung out with a big group. He took me home and we kissed again. :)
Tomorrow we are going to Utah, so I won't get to see Aaron. :( It will break our streak. We have seen each other everyday for 3 weeks straight. Plus more. Time for bed.

It was weird that Aaron knew Randy because when my sister - who is 3 years older than me - was dating him, I thought that he was too old for her. Then I started dating someone who was in the same grade. Hah!
Oh, and I'm sure I wouldn't have thought Jason's banquet thing was so tediously long if I wasn't very aware of every moment that I wasn't able to spend with Aaron.

Um, I made an executive decision. I will post another entry today as well.

May 9, 2004
It is Mother's Day so we gave Mom gifts and I made dinner and we cleaned. We then had guests.
Joe Bird, Chanel, Brad Thorp and...Aaron! came over. We played Moods. Brad and Joe left after that, but the Nelsons stayed. We played Rook. Mom played. Then the two said they were leaving, so I walked them to their cars. Chanel left. Aaron stayed. We talked by his car. I really do like him. I think I may be falling in love. . . . maybe.
Neither of us has to work until the afternoon tomorrow, so we are going to do lunch or something. I've never seen him before like, 2:00 in the afternoon. It should be grand.
Well, I'll be sure to keep you updated. Stay tuned...
Oh, just a fun little fact, Aaron and I text each other for like an hour after parting ways. We are texting now. I sure love cell phones. Tonight Aaron asked me if he could call me his girlfriend. Of course I said yes. He is so tender. I will have to tell him so sometime. Goodnight!

There you go! I just hope that by opening myself (and Aaron) up to you all, you don't think any less of us. The giddy perception of an infatuated teenager (I was 19) might make us seem immature or something else negative. But I guess it's too late for me to worry about that.

Sprinklers

The other day as I was weeding the little flower garden bits in the front of our house I turned a sprinkler on for Morgan to have fun with. I barely turned it on, so only a little water ever came out, but it was enough for Morgan to completely soak himself.


After awhile he decided to use the sprinkler as a drinking fountain. Eww, yuck! The water here is pretty disgusting inside, so no doubt a good mother wouldn't allow her son to try to slurp the irrigation water... But it was cute.


His drawers became very droopy after getting them sufficiently water logged. So he ran around with his pants half hanging off. :)

Line em up!

We have a rule in our house that we don't have toys at the table when we are eating. To help Morgan come to terms with this when it was first implemented, we would put his toys, (usually cars) on the head of the couch, which was pretty close to our dinner table. They would hang out there and watch Morgan eat. This was at the old house. At this house we get to seperate our living room and dining room better so no couch to put toys on. However, there is a handy window seal right by the table which makes a perfect spot to line up his cars.

If you'll notice, most of them even have eyes, so it really is like they are watching Morgan eat. Even if we aren't eating though, Morgan has decided that this window seal is a particularly fun place to play and often lines up his cars there.

My First Kiss

Here's a particularly juicy bit of Aaron and Melanie history. Which also makes it particularly embarrassing. Don't be harsh.

May 5, 2004

Let this go down in history as the day that Melanie Dawn Martin was first kissed! Yesiree! I am no longer a VL! Aaron finally kissed me! Well I guess "finally" isn't a word that really fits. It's not like I've been waiting for a long time. We've not been dating that long. Okay, so here's some history. Last night a big group of us went to Shari's for Melissa's birthday, and then to Aaron's for a movie. I had a most enjoyable time snuggling with him. Ten he took me home. He said, "I've been wondering when I should kiss you...but I think not tonight. I have omelet breath." ZOUNDS! I was relieved that he said "not tonight". But then I said, "I don't know how to kiss." So he knew I was a VL. (He had an omelet at Shari's) So anyway, tonight he took me home after playing capture the flag with many others. Tonight he looked so good...Mmmm! He also bought good smelling stuff. The stuff that I helped pick out. He walked me to my door, where he said, "To kiss or not to kiss? It's up to you." I wanted to! But I didn't. So I said something to the effect of "I've never kissed before. But I want you to be the first. Just don't judge too harshly..." So, he leaned in...I watched his lips. Ours connected...I was kissing him...I laughed. Then he kissed me again. This time I got a lot of beard. There was even a third kiss. I never got good. But the thing is...it wasn't all that exciting. It was a bit wet, and kind of weird, but it didn't even really compare to hugging. I didn't get profound butterflies or anything.
I get to see him tomorrow. Well, it is 2:00 A.M. already. I really need to go to sleep. G'night!

And there are the details of my first kiss. See why I say not to judge too harshly? By the way, this happened on my brother's birthday, making the date easy to remember. So every year when Chris's birthday rolls around I also make mention of our first kiss anniversary.
I think I used more exclamation marks in this entry than anywhere else in my journal. It seemed rather discombobulated too. Like, the fact that he had omelets for dinner came a few sentences after the mention of omelet breath.
If you don't know what VL means...too bad for you. It's already embarrassing enough that I give you all the details of exactly what I said and how stupid I sounded. And these were extremely chaste kisses, okay? Just 'cause I "got a lot of beard" the second time doesn't mean I was swallowing him in my passion, I just hadn't gotten the hang of the whole aiming thing. :)

Wading Pool

It's been pretty hot lately. To counteract that we got a wading pool for Morgan, which he absolutely LOVES.
He particularly loved playing with the hose while it filled up. What he didn't seem to realize at first was that this water was FREEZING! I'm talking Payette-fed-by-a-glacier-Lake kind of cold. I was hyperventilating from just sticking my toes in the water.




Aaron started mowing the lawn while the pool filled and every time he came close to the pool it sent a cloud of dust and clippings to the pool, quickly dirtying it. But you can't expect these pools to stay clean, I suppose.

After turning the hose off Morgan still opted to play while standing up. I guess he did realize that the water was cold after all.

But then Aaron and I traded places. He came and sat in the camp chair while cooling his feet in the pool while I finished up mowing. And he "encouraged" Morgan to sit down.
Notice how he still protects his arms from the biting freeze? But he's happy.

When his lips were blue and his teeth were chattering I proposed that we go inside and get him into some warm dry clothes. That's why this adventure ended with a major temper tantrum.

What's more fun....

Sometime last week or something, before it was really warm enough for extensive water activities, Morgan discovered the joys of the hose. I took him out to help me water my tomato plants and he had to take his turn with the sprayer. His turn lasted a long time and ended with him SOAKED and with his Mommy pretty wet too. It was a very pleasant evening with a slight breeze, the kind of day that you would want to just be outside to enjoy. However, it wouldn't be very enjoyable if you were soaking wet and every breeze shivered your timbers! Morgan didn't care.

Once he discovered that Mommy would shriek and dodge when the spray of water was aimed in her direction Morgan had a hard time ignoring the temptation. At one point he even got me hiding behind the shed for protection. But I digress. Morgan had fun, and I had fun watching him have fun.
P.S. I have to upload the pictures one at a time. It takes For.Ev.Er. One more quirk about this Dugway place.

A Dugway Experience

The Movie Theater.
It plays two movies a week. One on Friday at 7:30 and one on Saturday at 7:30. A different movie each time, though they won't start it until they've sold 6 tickets. Saturday we decided we would go watch Knowing. However, dinner took a little bit longer to make than was planned so when 7:30 rolled around we were still sitting at the table scarfing down our dinner. But we decided to go anyway, even though we would be 5-10 minutes late. Thankfully it doesn't take long to get anywhere here.
When we arrived we were a bit surprised to see a bunch of people milling about in front of the theater. This was probably the biggest grouping of people we've ever seen while on post. Maybe 20 or so. So we parked and got in line. We were happy enough with the $3.50 ticket prices, ($2.00 for kids) and went on in to the theater. It looked kinda like a big auditorium. Or, a small auditorium. But a big theater. I doubt that it's EVER been full.
We found seats in the still brightly lit room. The screen is empty, no previews or anything. So we glean from this that the 7:30 start time is more of a guideline. But that's okay, it means we didn't miss anything.
Soon the lights are dimmed and an ad starts. But if it's just an advertisement why is everyone in the room suddenly standing up and covering their hearts? We follow suit and proceed to watch a video of a group of cadets or something sing The National Anthem. Occasionally they showed a flag, but usually we were just saluting the singers, which was a little strange.
The song ended and everyone resumed their seats. What came next was a News Reel. Well, maybe not a news reel so much as an advertisement for a military store or something, but it was in the news reel fashion, with the video or slide show being shown with a voice-over. It was entertaining.
After that the previews started, then the movie. One interesting thing to note was that you could hear the projector the whole time, if you were listening for it.
All in all, it was an enjoyable evening.

Mothers Day/Birthday

Since everything here on Dugway is so close I wanted a bike trailer to pull Morgan around in so we could run errands on the bike. So, my wonderful husband made it happen. Since my birthday is also in May we combined budgets and Aaron got me the trailer as well as materials to fix my bike so it would be ridable. Yay!

Morgan was excited about it too and got in much earlier than was necessary. But that's okay. He was perfectly content to just sit in the trailer while daddy pumped tires and everything.

We've gone to the post office, the library and parks in this manner. It should be a great source of exercise for me as well as convenient. But it sure does hurt my Gluteus Maximus!

Our first date

Here's more o' my old journal. I reserve the right to edit out sentences here and there that are just too cheesey and/or embarrassing. But I will not tell you when or where I do it, so you will never know. Except for the fact that I just told you I would do it. Boo yeah. And I might make other indications as well. So you might, in fact, know exactly when and where I edit.

May 2, 2004
Ready for more Aaron? Well, Friday was our first date. I've got to write about the first date of mine where the male was the instigator. He picked me up around 6:40 and we went to Celebration Park. The purpose of this was to find petroglyph's on the rocks. it was cool. These ancient writings were thus placed by Indians. Very old. Very cool. Then we just walked around a bit on a trail and to the bridge there. We stood there on the bridge and looked out at the river and surrounding areas. He played with my hair a bit, and.....oh it was so romantic and loverly! After that we went to his house and ate some pasta, then watched a movie. "Big Fish." Pretty good movie. I liked the company. I snuggled next to him and put my head on his shoulder. We saw dear on the way home.
Saturday we went to Joe Sandy's house and watched the edited version of "Matrix Reloaded." Not really worth watching. Today he and Chanel came over after church. We chatted and we took out the telescope. and we saw planets. That was a whole family thing. When they finally went to the inside, Chanel, Aaron and I remained outside to chat. We eventually went to the porch swing and I was able to cuddle better. :)
Aaron and I shared another side hug. We haven't had a real second hug. (worded that one weird.) But...anyway...I saw brother Chandler today!
Aaron is really smart. I think he knows about everything.
Well, I should go now. Melanie Martin

So, just barely had our first date, yet we were already considering ourselves a couple. (At least I was. Can't speak for Aaron.) And yes, that was the first date that I went on that wasn't set up by a roommate.
I can't imagine this is very interesting to anyone anymore. All I write about is cuddling. And when I say cuddle here, basically I think I mean that we sat right next to each other and maybe rested a head on a shoulder or something.
And I still think that Aaron knows just about everything. Facts, that is. When we have minor disagreements, I'm right. :) And that doesn't mean that Aaron's right on the major ones. Maybe we don't have those kinds, okay?! Tee hee.....

Indian Vest

Back in the day when I was little, my mom would bring home groceries in the big brown paper bags. Since we have done most of our grocery shopping at Wal-Mart we never got the paper bags. But the Commissary here uses them. So Morgan and I got to do a little project that spoke of my childhood. I used to love making Indian vests out of the bags, so that's what Morgan and I did last week.

Morgan decorating his costume.


Ah, so handsomely he sports it.

Backyard

In this house we have a yard, which is a GREAT improvement from the place in Saratoga Springs. And we have a big yard. However, we don't have grass, we have dandelions. We plan to remedy that.
Here are some cute pictures of Morgan playing with the weeds and spreading their seeds.





Then, a couple of days later, this is what it looked like. Yuck. We don't have a lawn mower, but fortunately they are available to borrow here. Like, we checked one out for the whole summer. For free. Nice.

Morgan and I hung out on our back patio/thingy and watched Daddy mow the lawn. The evenings have been so nice lately. Morgan was still a bit sick, which you can see in his eyes. Maybe.


Morgan tried to climb our tree. (We have a tree!)


This picture is meant to illustrate the many dandelion fluffs taking flight as Aaron mowed. You can kinda see them.


And here's the after! SO much better. And you can see the boundaries of our yard too. :)

Moving in

Moving in is hard/exhausting work. Which is why Morgan zonked out on the couch our second day here. Totally unusual for Morgan to fall asleep anywhere besides bed. He doesn't even sleep in the car much these days.



The old baby carrier was moved from the moving van and into the living room originally. Morgan thought it was a great discovery and spent some time playing in his old hang-out place. Ah, nostalgia.



So, much to Aaron's chagrin, we had a bunch of water stored for our food storage that had to be moved. Morgan loved helping with that. We were just moving them from the kitchen, where they were left originally, to our little attached storage area in the back.



Ah, then the kitchen. We have our BEFORE unpacking....



Our during unpacking. Morgan helped by sitting in the middle of the pile of newspapers that were used to protect the dishes and using his tool on them. He's so good at that. :)



And finally, the finished product.



Unfortunately we don't have after pictures of all the rooms in the house yet, so no pictures! Yet.

Pictures!

I have SO many pictures but I will have to exercise restraint and not do all the posts today. One at a time.
These are just random pictures of Morgan with the new camera. It was the first night we had it, (right before we moved, so the house was in a crazy state) so we had to take pictures and experiment. I REALLY like the new camera. It seems like it works so much better than the other one. The pictures just have a easily noticeable nicer quality.
So, without further ado, I give you Morgan!







Tomorrow I will have pictures of the new place. Some. Not many. :)

It's a love story

Sunday tradition continues with excerpts from my journal. The love story between Aaron and I also continues.

April 29, 2004
I really should be sleeping. I fall asleep in Jennie's class all the time because I don't sleep enough. But I had to write about Aaron! I like him so incredibly much. I want to be around him constantly. I hung out with him yesterday while bowling. Now more people are aware of us together. Tonight I went to his house. No Chris or Chanel this time. Aaron's roommie Brad was there. We watched a movie. The movie was quite dumb though. But that's alright because I got to sit close to Aaron and hold his hand. After the movie Aaron and I drove to Wilson Ponds to look at stars. It was chilly so we went to the car and just drove. We talked, held hands some more. He payed me many compliments. He said that I was pretty. He also likes my hair and my sense of humor.
When we got back to his house I decided to leave. He walked me to my car, and we had our first real hug. It even lasted awhile. It could have lasted for forever and I would have been happy. I really like Aaron Wendell Nelson! More so than anybody ever. He makes me happy. He makes me want to be more smart, more funny, and more cool. I wish I could make him laugh every time I wanted to. I wish I could make him feel lucky to be around me. I wish I were worthy of him.
Work is pretty good. Jennie 's smart.
Time for bed.
Melanie Dawn...Nelson? :)

Haha! I love how I use six words to acknowledge that I have more going on in life other than Aaron.
Oh, and everytime I finish a journal entry I always sign my name. It's just something I do. Back then it normally read, "Melanie Dawn Martin." But I was deeply in-like and am a girl afterall...
By the way, Jennie was a 6 year old girl that I worked with. She had autism so I went to her Kindergarten class with her and helped her out.

More oddities

Dugway is an hour away from the next closest town. Yesterday we spent most of the day in Utah County running errands. When we got home we were tired and completely out of food. And it was date night. So I say, "Hey Aaron, how about we go to Subway or the Community Club for dinner?" Then he reminded me that it was after 6:00 on a Friday night. Everything would be closed. On Friday night! "Well," I say, "How about we go to the Commissary and pick something up?" But no! On the weekend that closes at something ridiculous like 4:30! In desperation we went to the gas station which surprisingly doesn't close till 8:00. That was a rude awakening.
Church was a little bit strange. It kinda felt like we weren't in Utah anymore or something. Oh, and even though we are the only ward in the building we had Sacrament Meeting last. That will be hard for Morgan to get used to.
Throughout the day you hear what kind of sounds like distant peals of thunder. But in reality it is weapons and stuff being tested and trained on way out in the desert.
In other news Morgan is feeling a bit better, but it is now clear that I won't escape unscathed.
I'm still waiting on the other computer to be set up so I can upload pictures. The end.

Progress, or lack thereof and the flu

We still aren't very settled. I am not so good about unpacking when I don't have a deadline. Basically though, all we have left is the desk top computer stuff and all the things to hang on the walls. Oh, and the few boxes that are mostly empty but have a few odds and ends in them that I have NO idea what to do with.
But today I am very tired and don't feel like doing anything. Why am I so tired? Morgan. He's not feeling very well and was up a lot last night, which reminded me of having a newborn again. How did I do it then?
Poor Morgan has the flu. Hopefully it's not piggish. He's going on his third day of this bug and I hope it's slowing down. Morgan tends to get more whiny when he's sick. And I don't like cleaning up throw up. And I hate it when Morgan has a fever because that is potentially dangerous and we haven't got a competent thermometer.
Last night around 7:30 Morgan pretty much put himself to bed. He begged for a family prayer then led the way to his bedroom. He usually doesn't go to bed until 9:00. Then at 10:00 I hear a little voice from his room. I walk closer to the door and hear, "I love you mommy. Mommy, I love you." Just soft and quiet as could be. Awww! So sweet. So I go in his room and he asks if he can get up now. But it's bedtime for real now! So we sing some songs together then I give a couple more Tylenol's (candy) and get ready for bed myself. At 12:30 Morgan comes into the room complaining. I was worried that he'd thrown up again, but he had not. However he was apparently starving. And that makes sense, since he only ate breakfast the day before and a couple of bites of dinner, (which he promptly threw up). So, at 12:30 at night I sat down at the table with Morgan as he ate a bowl of fruitloops. That was all he wanted to eat, besides Ramen noodles. But I didn't want to make that. Then he wanted to watch a movie. But....no. That wasn't going to happen. It's not my fault he went to bed so early and now had his time all messed up!
He woke up again at 4:30 and came into our room. Daddy told him to go back to bed, which he did, in a fit of tears. I follow him to his room, he requested some candy, (Tylenol) so I acquiesced and stumbled back to bed.
This morning he woke up at 7:00, which is at least an hour earlier than usual. We're not early risers in this house. (Except Aaron on work days). He demanded breakfast again for his rumbling tummy and he ate his whole bowl of cereal.
Today his forehead hasn't been as warm and he's had a little bit more of an appetite, but I just had to take a break in writing this post because Morgan decided it was naptime. He was watching something on PBS and all of the sudden he says, "Take a nap". Then he stood up and walked to his bedroom, never even turning to see if I was following. When I got to his room he was sitting on his bed waiting for me to come read him a story. The second the book was finished he plopped down on his pillow and requested his favorite song and some more candy, (which was denied since he recently had his dose) and yawned and said goodnight.
I love that boy. I hope he feels better soon.
I also hope we get the regular computer up soon so I can upload the pictures we've taken and blog about other things.

I like him so much!

I continue my Sunday tradition of posting some of my old journal writings.

April 27, 2004
I'm back! I just can't stay away with all of this exciting stuff happening! So, i've still seen Aaron everyday for many days. People are asking questions. I might soon start calling him my boyfriend. Oh, I really like him! Yesterday at F.H.E. things were kind of awkward. I didn't know what do do or where to go. then today I was texting Chanel an we decided to do something tonight. Sh was just going to come over for a couple of hours. I was planning on inviting Aaron over as well. But he first called me! I love that he calls me! So I told him to come over, and he did. He arrived before Chanel. We played with the bullwhip and also on the swings a bit. Then we decided to go to the lake for rock skipping. We did. We went on a little walk when Aaron once again took my hand. We sat on his car and talked a little. then Chanel got a text message from Melissa Neils informing her about plans to see a movie. We were invited. So we went to see "The Best Two Years." I'd seen it before. It's a very good movie. I liked it. i especially liked Aaron about it. He took my hand through part of it. The drive home was spent with our hands together when he wasn's shifting gears. We talked a lot and learned a lot about each other. He is so kind! Always opens doors, and is such a gentleman! He and I also have quite a bit in common. When we arrived home we did a little side hug goodnight. Oh! i just like him so much! Chanel told me that Shelby and Melissa said that Aaron and i look cute together. Aaron is so smart! I swear, he knows everything. His language is great. I'm about to fall asleep. Goodnight!

Oh, but I liked him so much! As you can see. Oh, and lest you be confused, Aaron doesn't speak a different language; no, he is just really good at using ours, which is what I meant by the whole, "his language is great" thing.
As you can see, Chanel was a great boon to our early relationship. She was the link between us that we needed to be more comfortable. Thanks Chanel!