26

26 was pretty bad.  We moved out of our lovely Provo house on August 20. Greg then drove back to North Carolina in my car while I stayed with my grandparents in American Fork using Greg's sister's car for a week, and then stayed at Greg's other sister's house in Greensboro, NC for a week.  And then we moved into Greg's parent's house and two weeks later Alice appeared on our bathroom floor.

I won't bore you with more details since I've gone through ad nauseum all the pros and cons of living in Charlotte.  We'll just say this, the year I was 26 was the first time I openly acknowledged to myself and any one who would listen that I was severely depressed.  Turns out not a lot of people were listening because when I mention it now, people are surprised, which is surprising to me because all I talked about for a year was how wonderful Provo is...maybe that's why no one remember's--they all just stopped listening to my word vomit.

I made it through the year with the help of lots of naps (2-3 hours a day), a few great friends (you know who you are), a cute baby who learned to give the best hugs at 3 months and is still the top hugger in our family, and a sensitive toddler who reassured me from the back seat, "It's ok Mom.  You don't have to cry; we'll find it" (I got lost on the nearly-impossible to navigate streets of Charlotte almost daily despite my brand-new GPS unit in the car), and a loving husband who let me do and buy whatever the hell I wanted because I followed him to the hell-hole that is Charlotte (that's what I thought then.  I've since changed my tune--about Charlotte, not Greg.  I still think Greg is pretty cool).

And that's all I have to say about 26.  27 gets better and by 28 I am fully functioning again.

Not all babies are cute, but Alice, she was beautiful.

See how sweet Rex was?

3 generations on blessing day

See how Greg humored me?  We were the cast of Peter Pan for Halloween.  Greg was Smee, nobody knew how he was.

We flew to California for my brother's wedding when Alice was 7 weeks old.

Great friends convinced me to do a mud run with them.  Best race ever.

See Greg again?  Chasing kids around a muddy obstacle course so they could cheer me on.