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Have you ever had a "defining moment" in your life? An "ah-ha" moment when you knew things had to change, were going to change? What was it and what did you learn?
This is a great idea...I may do it on FB
See you tomorrow!! Kristen
Well, as usual, a life lived the wrong way tends to lead you to the wrong place. I found myself evicted from my apartment when my roommates (whose names were not on the lease) disappeared one day while I was out. I lost my job and had no money. I was homeless, jobless, and the friends I did have left were not good influences.
It took me a while, but I started to realize that it was my string of bad choices that led me to that point. I couldn't blame my roommates or my boss for my situation, I would never have been at that point if I hadn't relied on unreliable people, or been so very unreliable myself.
I was able to turn my life around and return to God. It's funny, but when you follow His plan for your life instead of your own, it always works out better, and is so much more fun and fulfilling! Sometimes it takes hitting rock bottom to realize that, though. After looking for a job for over a month, surfing from couch to couch and finally moving back in with my parents, I was hired at Lids as the assistant manager, by the man who became my husband. And the rest is history.
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When will your brother and I get to have dinner with all y'all again? =)
How did you decide on all the kids' names (first and middle)?
When you are able to get a bigger place, will you get any other pets besides Teddy your cat?
Love you! ~Bethany
We actually picked Emma's name before we were married. My middle name is Leone, my mom's middle name is Leone, and my Grandmother's first name was Leone. We knew we wanted to continue that tradition, and I liked the name Elle Leone. Marty didn't like Elle, and he suggested Emma. This was back before Rachel on Friends named her daughter Emma, so it wasn't the most popular girl's name ever then. When we found out we were having a girl, we knew it was our Emma. It wasn't till after that we discovered the name had soared up the ratings and that she would be one of many, many Emmas.
The twins were more difficult. Once again we had girls names picked out in case they were girls, but we struggled with the boy names. We had liked the name Benjamin, but had brought that up to people and someone who was closely related immediately said, "Oh! Yeah, then we can call him Benji!" and we immediately decided against the name. See, our family is BIG into cutesy nicknames, and we are not. So we wanted to be careful. Marty is still called Mart-fart by his family.
Grant is the name of our pastor at church, he started as Marty's middle school pastor, and moved through the church as Marty grew. He was also his high school pastor, his college pastor, and moved churches after Marty did and was the pastor who did our pre-marital counseling as the young marrieds pastor. He is now the senior pastor at our church and is a wonderful, caring, enthusiastic, Godly man. We were honored to name our son after him. Grant's middle name is David, after my dad.
We has a really hard time with the second twin name, and finally came back around to Ben, with the agreement that he would never be Benji. He is Benjamin Ryon, Ryon is Marty's favorite cousin who he spent a great deal of his childhood
Drew was a tough one. Because Marty had basically picked out the other three kids' names, I got to pick this one. I could not decide, though, (Marty had veto power and did not like the names I loved) and by the time he was born I had it narrowed down to Andrew, Jason, or Jackson. We were almost certain he would be Andrew, but when he was born, we knew he did not look like an Andy. He was taken to the nursery soon after his birth, and I could not pick his name without seeing his face, so he was a couple hours old before we decided he was still Andrew, just Drew instead of Andy. We really like Drew's name because he has choices later in life. Also, Drew Stauffer sounds like a football player, Andy Stauffer sounds like a baseball player, and Andrew Stauffer sounds like a lawyer or business owner. He is Andrew Martin, after Marty.
As far as other pets, I would LOVE to get a dog or two. I really am a dog person, and had dogs growing up. Plus, I would love to have a furry vacuum that can keep the kitchen floor cleaned! It's hard because we have the perfect yard for dogs now, but not the greatest house. Or time to take care of a dog. Or money to buy dog food. But I am really looking forward to having a dog again!
Well, I was planning on finishing this today, but I'll have to do a part three instead. Grant has decided that today is the day he wants to go pee-pee on the potty, and I'm not going to do anything to impair that. Remember the 27,000 diapers? Yup, I'd like that to end as soon as possible.
Have a great day, and I'll do my best to answer the rest tomorrow!
2 comments:
Andrew Dylan was the name we'd picked for the baby we miscarried. We were going to call him Drew. I didn't know Drew's name was actually Andrew!
I still really like the name
Thanks for answering my questions in this one! Jeff and I haven't talked about kids names yet, but I'm thinking it's nice that so may of our family names are similar; my older brother's first name is Andrew, my younger brother's middle name is David, and my Dad's first and middle names are David Andrew. Though we'll steer clear of using Andrew as a first name so as to not confuse the cousins! ^.^
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