The Making of the Peters Family Band:My Perfect Man

After I wrote that last post about how Michael and I met, I sat down and figured out exactly when all those events took place. Turns out, we did NOT date for five months like I've been telling people for years. I must have changed the dates in my mind because the truth is much, much worse. When we got engaged, we knew each other for just less than five months, but from our first date to the day Michael proposed was only three months.

Three months!

Michael and I both agree that if one of our boys tries to pull a stunt like that, we will put a foot down.

Three months...how ridiculous.

You may have been wondering how I knew so certainly from the very start that Michael was the man for me. Well, I'll tell you...it was the sideburns. That might sound like a silly answer, but in a church with a whole lot of this...


...Michael was a rare find.

In this picture, Michael has traced his sideburns with some kind of glow in the dark facepaint. I don't know...it seemed cool at the time.

Other reasons I fell in love with Michael:

: : He was a returned missionary and he played in a rock band. On our first date, Michael took me to his band's rehearsal. While I watched, they wrote a song. Afterward, Michael said he hoped I hadn't been too bored, and I was like, "You just wrote a song!!!"


: : Our phone conversations went like this:

• "How was your day?"
• "Fine. Yours?"
• "Good...I really don't have anything to say."
• "Me either."
• "Okay, I'll talk to you tomorrow."
• "Okay."
  

And he was totally fine with that.


: : He was almost as smart as me. ;) And yet just as stupid as me. A few months before we met, Michael was doing dishes and discovered that he'd run out of dishwasher detergent. "I'm sure dish soap will work just as well," he thought to himself. An hour later, he was frantically cleaning up bubbles as they spilled out of the dishwasher and all over the kitchen.

Michael's roommates loved to tell me that story, and all I could think was, "But has he ever forgotten his shoes on the way to Opryland?"


: : Many of our dates involved me reading a book while Michael watched TV. Perfection!

For the First Time...

...one of my boys responded with a character (rather than a flavor) when I asked him what kind of cake he wanted for his birthday.

You get Super Parent Bonus Points if you can identify the cake - and party theme - that he requested:

Our little Pokemon fanatic.

Downtown in Our Crazy Home Town

Way too early for a Saturday morning, we headed downtown to catch Raleigh's annual Christmas parade.

Here's a bit of trivia for you: Raleigh has had their parade on the weekend before Thanksgiving for the past 63 years. So don't complain, all you grinches. They aren't going to change a tradition.

I have to say, though, Raleigh has a pretty interesting way of kicking off the holiday season....

There were storm troopers.

A giant toilet.

A half-deflated Animal balloon that I'm not sure made it to the end of the parade.


Didn't Jesus have a llama?

I hear tell that this fellow was on some TV show that I never watch. He is much cuter on his poster than in person.

In my opinion, the highlight of the parade was when one of the horses crapped in the middle of the road, and then we watched on the edge of our seats for the next half hour to see if one of the bands would march right through the crap. No one did (phew!), and eventually, another group of horses passed by with a designated crap-picker-upper. Everyone cheered. Highlight of the parade, I'm telling you.

Rylan would probably tell you it was the monster trucks, though.


In the photo below, Rylan had just dropped his hot chocolate. All of their expressions are priceless!

I have already scoped out our seats for next year. They will be closer to the courthouse on the far side of Fayetteville...The sun came up over there a couple hours before it reached our spot, and I saw people taking off their coats while I was huddling up with Eli to keep warm.

Christmas Parades Gone By

• 2010
• 2009
  

Give a Kid a Camera...

Rylan's turn...

My turn...

11:11 on 11/11/11

Van Gogh

In Eli's elective this quarter, he learned about famous artists and then attempted to copy their masterpieces using a computer drawing program. Almost every day, Eli came home from school gushing about how much fun he was having in his elective. Today, he brought home a CD of his finished projects. My favorites:

Hey, whaddaya know! I'm a Mormon!

Thank you, Amy, for the flowers!

My Mormon.org profile was finally approved. It took a week and a half, during which time someone somewhere out in Utah was looking over what I wrote to make sure I didn't fabricate any falsehoods about the church or teach incorrect doctrine. I was on pins and needles, but phew! I passed... ;)

Take a look!

Speaking of which, on the drive home from church on Sunday, I decided to bear my testimony to my children because it was fast Sunday and I realized that I have never once shared my testimony during fast and testimony meeting in front of my children. And the reason I have never done so is because of what happened while I was trying to bear my testimony while driving home from church: Tears started streaming uncontrollably down my cheeks, and I got so choked up, I could hardly get the words out.

So if any of you dear friends happened to pass me on the road after church on Sunday, I was crying because I'm an emotional fool. Not because Michael is out of town on my birthday.

Speaking of which, today is my birthday. Happy 33rd to me!

Our Angry Jack-o-Lantern

Every year I try to make an effort to do a cool Jack-o-lantern for our porch and for use at things like trunk-or-treats. Last year I did a full pumpkin carving of the Death Star. It took about four hours and was a huge undertaking since every inch of the pumpkin was carved with something. Unfortunately the boys didn't appreciate it at all since they've never seen Star Wars.

This year I decided to go with something more universal to the human experience, Angry Birds. Not only do most adults know those perturbed fowl but just about every kid does too, no matter their age. Last year at our church's trunk-or-treat only the adults recognized the Death Star. In contrast everyone remarked about how cool the enraged feathered creatures were, and several even took pictures.

Rylan Says...

At church today, the young man saying the sacrament prayer made a mistake and had to start the prayer over again. When he finished the prayer the second time, Rylan said, "He said the prayer wrong."

I said, "He made a mistake, so he had to say it again."

Rylan said, "But then he said it wrong again. He's supposed to say, 'Dear Heavenly Father. Thank you for this day.'"

The Making of the Peters Family Band:Love at Third Sight

In honor of our upcoming 10 year anniversary, a trip down memory lane...

Before the talent show. Photo by Dawn Majors.

Meeting #3: April 2001

In the spring of 2001, I drove down to Nashville for yet another Mormon single adult activity - this time a talent show. Because I had signed up to perform, I had to be there early for a sound check, and while I was waiting backstage for my turn, I started chatting with a cute boy (Michael), his brother (Stephan), and his brother's girlfriend (Becky, now Stephan's wife).

It's too bad that we can't recognize at the time which conversations will end up having an impact on our lives so that we can etch them in our memories. As it is, I don't have the tiniest recollection of what Michael and I said to each other that night beyond swapping names, though I have a feeling the conversation went something like this:

Me: "What are you guys performing?"

Michael: "Fake Plastic Trees by Radiohead. What about you?"

Me: "Longer Than by Dan Fogelburg."

Michael: "You play the guitar?"

Guys were always surprised that I played the guitar, and this was the answer I always gave: "Not well. My goal was to learn ten songs, so I have enough for a whole set if I ever want to do a show."

Then maybe I asked Michael how long he'd played guitar, and he told me since high school and that he was in a band. And then I realized that I'd just met my perfect man.

Later that night after the performances were over and the crowd was thinning, Michael made a point of coming up to me on his way out the door. "Nice job," he said. "Maybe I'll see you around."

He did not ask for my phone number.

Before the talent show. Photo by Dawn Majors.

Meeting #4: two or three weeks later

Another weekend, another singles activity. This one was a dance on a riverboat. I drove down with a couple friends, and we were standing around chatting when Michael walked past.

What went through my head: There's that really cute guy from the talent show. I hope he'll come talk to me!

What went through Michael's head: Hey, I know her! She was in my mission! And then without even acknowledging me, he walked up to my friend and began excitedly swapping mission stories.

I stood off to the side wondering if I'd completely misinterpreted Michael's subtle hints that he was interested in me at the talent show. But finally several minutes later, Michael noticed me, and we ended up talking the entire dance. Now, those who know me and Michael, and especially those who knew me back then, might be astounded that we had enough to talk about for that entire two (three?) hours, but that phenomenon can be explained easily enough:

• Michael and I had a surprising amount in common, so we had plenty to talk about.
  
• I've never been good at gracefully exiting a conversation, so even if we did run out of things to say, I was more likely to stand there feeling stupid than to walk away.
  
• Michael doesn't get uncomfortable when nobody is talking. Another reason he was so perfect for me.
  

At that point in my life, I had been on a lot of first dates but not a lot of second or third dates. Some people claimed I was being too picky, waiting around for some dream guy that didn't exist. Driving home from the riverboat dance after Michael had finally asked for my phone number, I felt like calling up each and every one of them and rubbing it in their faces - "Ha, ha. You were wrong! He does exist."

We hadn't even gone on one date yet, but I had already decided that someday, he and I were going to be married. I just had to wait until he figured that out.

What I Do When Michael Works Late

I have a theory that goes like this:

If a couple has two children of the same gender in a row, their third child is more likely to be that same gender. In other words, a couple is more likely to have three boys or three girls than to have two boys and a girl or two girls and a boy.

The other day, Michael told me that my theory was total hogwash. "Every time you get pregnant," he said, "there's a 50/50 chance of that child being a boy or a girl."

I said, "That may be true statistically. But in actuality, it seems like people with two of a kind are more likely to have a third of the same kind."

Michael continued to argue that statistically that was impossible, so two nights ago, I decided to prove him wrong. I listed everyone I could think of with three or more kids. If their first two kids were different genders, they were disqualified from my study. For everyone else, I made two lists - those with 2 of one kind and 1 of another, and those with three of a kind.

Here are the results:

• 2/1: 7 families
• 3 of a kind: 14 families

Stuff it, Michael!

(There is actually a scientific reason why this would be the case, but to explain, I would have to go into greater detail than is appropriate for a family blog...)