May 2004 - A Wedding At Last!

With my divorce final May 7, Charles and I could plan our wedding at last. We saw no reason for putting it off or waiting for some distant date. We had already waited far too long for the papers to all be final. My status as 'divorced' must have been one of the shortest in the history of court papers. May 27 less than three weeks later, Charles and I were married.

Because my Mom was so sick and my Dad would be unable to attend anyway, we chose to have a small ceremony in our home. We had completed six months of premarital counseling and our counselor was a licensed pastor. We asked him to marry us. Christopher gave me away, Zachary held one ring and Ben held the other. All three boys stood up with us at the homemade alter in our living room. Our ceremony was sweet and intimate. We only had nine guests invited to celebrate with us.

Charles' Mom had offered to watch the boys over the weekend while we went to the coast for a short honeymoon. Our longer honeymoon was scheduled later that summer. Charles' Mom and the boys prepared our home for our big reception on Saturday. After two days away we returned just in time for our 75 guests to arrive at our home for our BBQ reception. It was perfect. We felt our family blending into a loving home.

Of course there were great moments and not so great moments. There were moments that the kids were overjoyed to be living in California in our nice new home. There were moments when the rules of going to bed at ten and minimum grade requirements made them say they wanted to move to Oregon with their dad. I would tell them, sure just schedule a court date and let the judge know the reason you want to live with your dad is that there are less rules and let's just see if he wants to move you. Kids will be kids and even kids who live with both parents in one home will try to play one parent against the other from time to time. These guys had it easy since their dad was always offering bribes to get them to move back to Oregon. He offered them freedoms and even money but they were happy in Redding.

My dream of having more children was rekindled. Charles had not had any biological children and very much wanted to try. My heart was overflowing with the thought of being able to once again be the Mother of a newborn. The idea of parenting a child with a man who loved me was so inviting. We began trying to conceive right away. We had hoped to conceive on our honeymoon, but that didn't happen.

The boys loved the idea of having a new baby in the house. Zachary liked the idea of no longer being the baby. Christopher and Benjamin hoped for a baby sister. Charles and I just hoped for an easy conception. Since it was 12 years since I had last conceived, I was really not sure how easy or hard it would be to conceive again. Soon June passed with no baby, then July. I was beginning to become afraid that I was too old to try again. I was after all 36 years old. In August I began having hot flashes. I felt like I had failed my new husband. Was I going through the change of life so early? I could remember well, how my mother described her hot flashes. These seemed frighteningly similar.

Hoping against all hope that instead of menopause, this could be early signs of pregnancy I took a pregnancy test. As I sat alone in my bathroom I almost willed that second line to appear on the pregnancy test, be there, come on be there. When it appeared I was in shock! I really was pregnant! I didn't know if I should dance and leap for joy or fall to my knees and just cry that my heart's desire was going to come true! A baby was on its way!! I came out of the bathroom. Charles was washing the dinner dishes and I asked Zachary to have him come to my bedroom. Charles came back concerned because I hadn't been feeling well. "Sweetie, Are you ok?" he asked me.

I handed him the stick. "Wait, remind me, what does two mean? Are two lines good?" He sat on the edge of the bathroom the room spinning. His life suddenly changed forever. He had a huge silly smile on his face. A smile that said he was terrified and overjoyed at once.

"What do you think about them apples?" I asked him. This was one of our favorite lines from a movie.

"Them are some apples." was his usual reply. He said this as he looked up at me with tears in his eyes. We danced in the privacy of our bathroom to the music playing so loudly in our hearts. Zachary walked in on us, and asked what was going on. We told him to assemble his brothers in the living room.

The boys had been struggling with their homework and grades. We pretended the family meeting was going to be about that. "With a new school year starting, we wanted to talk to you guys about tests." They were looking at us with utter confusion in their eyes. "We decided since we have asked you to try harder on your tests this year, it was only fair that we also tried harder for our tests. So we took a pregnancy test tonight and got 100%!" Now they were totally lost! They just turned their heads to the side like bewildered puppies.

"Your mom is pregnant, we are going to have a baby." Charles explained. After answering a few more questions for the boys we went back to our room to call friends and family. We were thrilled to say the least. A new baby was on its way. I did a bit of calculating and realized, this new baby was due on Mother's Day 2005! How wonderful, the best Mother's Day gift I could possibly hope for!