For the Google-savvy Cyber-stalkers

I recently had some children tell me that they found my blog by googling me...so I thought I'd share some happy moments from mine and Felipe's wedding.

Our wedding was at the Northeast Wedding Chapel in Hurst, TX. It was wonderful! We honeymooned at a Bed and Breakfast in Ft. Worth and it was not wonderful, to say the least.

We had a wonderful guitarist! He learned songs just for me! I highly recommend him. You can watch the flower girls and listen to our guitarist:





These were our vows that we made to each other. We take them very seriously and mean every word. I feel that many people today say that they will love each other forever but when it comes down to it, they really mean that they will love each other as long as they feel like it. That is terrible. God loves us always even when we are evil. I love Felipe and Felipe loves me even when we don't feel like it because we remember God's love for us!

Felipe and I waited to have sex until after we were married because we believe that is the calling God has placed on our lives. We should live not according to what we can get away with but instead live in such a way that is above reproach and far above scrutiny. We live this way because we love God.

Felipe to Lauren

I love you, and I know that God is the author of life and love and every good thing, and because of that I desire to be your one and only husband. Together with you I want to be vessels for His love so that through our marriage and our oneness Christ would be glorified. Despite the pressures of the present and whatever the future might bring, I promise to be faithful, to love, to lead, to serve, and to protect you as Christ does His Church, as long as we both have life. For God’s perfect love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. According to the grace of God, I promise to endeavor to show to you the same kind of love as Christ showed the Church when He died for her, and to love you as part of myself because, today, in His sight, we are one.

Lauren to Felipe

Through your friendship I have been drawn closer to God; And I have found that friend that sticks closer than a brother. As Christ loves the Church, I have felt your love toward me, and as the Church is called to follow Christ I vow to follow you, to love you, to honor you, to respect you, to submit to you, to cherish you, to serve you, to put your needs before mine, to make our home a place you desire to be, to remain faithful and never wander in thought or action from your loving embrace. Together I hope to model the love God has for his children when he sent his son to save us and draw us back to his loving embrace. I believe we glorify God more as a single unit than we do as individuals and this is why I choose to marry you. And as long as we are living, I will be your wife and through the grace of God find my satisfaction in you. I love you.

Our photographer made an album for us and these are the files from that. Enjoy!

The top picture is me with my mom. The middle is with me and my two sisters, and the bottom is me with my grandmother.

These are all my bridesmaids, jr. bridesmaids and half my flower girls.

The top left photo is Felipe with his best man, then one with his mom and the other is with his dad. The one across the bottom is all his groomsmen with his dad and my dad at either end.
Felipe is so handsome!
My beautiful bridesmaids!

Here's a couple more flower girls added to the pictures.

Here's all the flower girls and jr. bridesmaids! The two on the far right are Felipe's cousins. The other four in pink and the dark haired jr bridesmaid are all sister and very good friends of my family. I love them like family. The only blonde girl is my cousin. I was her mother's flower girl!

We couldn't actually see each other...but I was pretending to see him. But we had breakfast together that morning anyway.

Top is grandma Mulford (now great-grandma!) with our good friend Joshua. Middle is grandma and grandpa Rangel (Felipe's mom's parents) and bottom is Grandma Rita (my mom's mom) with my favorite cousin James Colin. The side picture is my parents.

Top left is Shilloy (friend from UTA and first person to know about me and Felipe), middle is Aubrey (Felipe's sister), top right is Kirsten (my older sister), bottom left is Nina (my younger sister), middle is Jessica (one of my best friends from forever, we started college together when we were 14 and she is awesome), bottom right is Erin (my maid-of-honor and another of my best friends whose life seems to strangely parallel mine; she got engaged three days before my wedding, got married in January and is now pregnant too!).
The journey of our flower girls! The ring-bearer is Felipe's cousin and brother to the flower girls.

This is just too precious! Lanayah was named when my younger sister and I decided to combine our names somehow. We snuck it in with a few other suggestions so it would sound legit and it just so happened to be the one they picked!

Maybe I'll post more pictures from the album in the future. It takes forever for the pics to load...well, like one minute each, not FOREVER!

Receiving Blanket

I made a blanket for Caleb! It did not turn out the way I had imagined. But I think it is okay anyway.

I wanted it to be Calvin & Hobbes (of course). So I had to go buy some more iron-on paper. I wanted to also buy some mittens and socks and a hat to bring him home in, but maybe that isn't a good idea since it will be May and possibly a warm day.

Here's the process pic:

And the final product:

The edges will fray on their own. I wish I had done the image smaller. I think I'm the only one who cares, though. Have you ever had a moment where you were so consumed with some detail only to realize later that no one else on the planet even cares? It is actually a very good realization. I have to remind my very hormonal self that I'm not making things because I want other people to enjoy them; I'm making things because I enjoy them. And if I spend all this time fretting over who else likes it and who else doesn't like it, then I won't be able to enjoy it at all! Caleb certainly won't be able to tell the difference.

But, alas, I still do not like it. So, Felipe's aunt, Elizabeth, gave us a very beautiful layette set that I am going to use for Caleb's coming home outfit. It has a very cute onesie and hat and receiving blanket. It's perfect! I love it so much better!!

And in other news, Caleb's daddy bought a new book. It is called Baby Owner's Manual:

It has very clever diagrams and witty instructions without all the "flowery words" (as Felipe calls them) that books designed for mommies have. Felipe says this is a book for daddies. I love how much he cares and how much he is involved with the baby stuff. A lot of women don't have that and this reminds me to be very appreciative to God and to Felipe.

Family Fun Night!!!!

The other night while Felipe and I were walking through the grocery store I thought it would be fun to have a "Family Fun Night" where we rent a movie and make pizza and tater-tots and popcorn and soda. We enjoyed ourselves so much I think it's going to become a tradition.

We don't have a TV set up right now so we needed to use one of our computers. We had to go through all three computers before one of them worked properly with the disc. We wanted to watch the movie in the bed and had everything set-up there:

But we had to move to the living room to use the speakers we have out there. I don't know if it was just a bad disc or what. But we enjoyed the movie and the food.

The movie was Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. Every sci-fi cliche you can think of is in that movie. It was so stupid...and very entertaining. Nothing bad, just ridiculous. Perfectly safe for little Caleb to watch and laugh at. We rented it from one of those new Blockbuster boxes that's like Red Box.

Felipe and I have talked about Family Nights. I really like the idea of coming together one night a week where all we do is have fun and everyone gets to eat their favorite junk food and laugh and play games. This is one area that I think the Mormons got right. They're not perfect, but they are very family-centered and I can appreciate that. I don't think our only focus should be on the family though.

Our main focus should be on Christ Jesus. If it was not for his sacrifice on the cross we could not enjoy God. By acknowledging that Jesus Christ is Lord and God I am saying that I understand that the man Jesus is also God. I am saying that he is Christ, my Messiah, because I am a sinner in need of saving. This saving has only been accomplished through the sacrificial death of Jesus on the cross. I am saying that he is Lord because I acknowledge that only he has the right to govern my actions. By submitting to him I can find fulfillment. I am human and will always remain human. When my physical body dies, my spirit will continue to live forever with God in eternity.

Baby Stroller!

So Felipe made the baby crib. And when I wanted the stroller made he was sick, so I made it!

Felipe has spoiled me so much that at first I wasn't sure if I could do it or not. But then I remembered that I put together my own furniture many times and was even once a mechanical engineering major. My pregnancy brain begs to argue...I've even called "2" "zero" once. That was embarrassing. I hope the brain damage isn't permanent...although, I would like to have child #1 and #2 very close together so it might appear permanent! oh noooo! And then there's my really close friends who might claim that I've always had brain damage. I'm just kidding. None of my friends would ever claim that. I only befriend nice people.

Back to the stroller. This is the adorable car seat that all strollers seem to come with nowadays (for which I am very thankful). Felipe has already put the seat in the car.

This is the stroller fresh out of the box:

And this is me hammering pieces together. Grandpa Bjorkman took these photos:
This is Grandma Bjorkman watching me put the stroller together.

And the final product:

It's so cute! I can't wait to walk around the neighborhood and the park and the mall and...I've already pushed it around the apartment pretending little Caleb was inside. There's a little window in the canopy shade where I can pretend to see little Caleb. I imagine that there will be many times of just staring at the baby for hours when he first arrives. I hope he looks just like his daddy.

First Load of Baby Clothing!

I wonder if there is any comparison between the excitement I feel about Caleb and the excitement God feels whenever a person is first saved. I'm sure there isn't. God's delight and happiness over eternal life outweighs my excitement about Caleb's birth by about a billion percent.

Becoming a parent, like becoming a bride, has given me new eyes to see God. He calls himself our Father and elsewhere he calls himself our Husband. Understanding what it's like to seek to serve someone the way a wife seeks to serve her husband shows me how I should have been living toward God all along. Now, becoming a mother, shows me the excitement that God feels about having a child. How he loves and cherishes and makes plans for that child. It must be devastating to watch as your child makes bad decision after bad decision. And it must be wonderful to watch as your child grows and responds to knowledge and happiness and life.

I want Caleb to be a baby for as long as he needs to be a baby. But I also want him to grow up. I want him to learn to speak and to walk and to tie his shoes. I want him to be able to cry when he's wet or hungry but I also want him to eventually be able to fix himself a sandwich. I want to teach him so much. It is very tempting to whip out the diffy-q books while he's still nursing...but perhaps I should teach him to count first. There's so much to enjoy in life and I want to share it all with him. It is very fun to anticipate how he will discover things and develop. What will his interests be? What will be his favorite color? Will he be mild or ferocious? All I know right now is that he really likes to dig his toes into my ribs and give me indigestion. I'm really hoping that that stops in about two weeks. TWO WEEKS! I cannot believe I am going to be a mommy in two weeks. I get tears just thinking about it.

So all those onesies and cutesy baby outfits went into the washer the other day:

So cute! I wanted to make sure there was nothing on them that posed a threat to the baby. Of course, there's no way to be 100% sure. I'm not paranoid, but I can wash clothes before putting them on the baby.

Of course, after cleaning all the clothing, the only natural thing to do was to put all the clothing on the sleeping daddy!!!

Notice the stuffed animal friends who joined this picture...

Please look at the camera as I push all the clothing on your head...Thank you :)

Felipe's a good sport about all my excitement. He usually sleeps right through it. But he doesn't have a baby kicking his diaphragm all night...And Brackston Hicks is a jerk for inventing these false contractions. (I know he didn't invent them, they're just named after him.)

I wonder if Felipe has any new spiritual insights since getting married and becoming a daddy.

Baby Crib

At our baby shower we received Caleb's crib which a is Graco Pack and Play. It was very much fun to unpack it and put it together! Everything about it is so cute!

This is mobile that came with it.

Felipe put the play-yard together:

A brief stop to study the instructions...

turns out, the instructions weren't any help. Luckily the engineers made it all intuitive.

This is Felipe's finished product:

But...something is missing. So this is when Mommy put on the finishing touch!

This is the mobile in progress...

And the Mommy-Daddy-compilation-crib-final-product:

It's so beautiful! Can't you just imagine little Caleb sleeping down there?! I can! I stay up until midnight just imagining it...I just get too excited to go to sleep!

One of my favorite gifts is the froggy bathtub:

How cute is that! Froggy Baths!

My Husband, Felipe.

My husband is a very interesting man. He's a very good man too. Just this morning I made him breakfast and he did the dishes, which is wonderful because I hate doing the dishes.

But he also puts out the ant killer for me when we have ants roaming the kitchen...

They were big ants too! They must have been 1.5 to 2cm long. I wish I had taken a picture of them, but I was too busy killing them all!

He sometimes likes to drink coffee in the morning. Once I found this in the shower:

For some reason it made me very happy. I think it must be because I love him so much.

Yesterday, I found a sheet of notes that I believe I took during our premarital counseling class. I wasn't sure what it was until the end. But reading through it was a consistent testament that Felipe and I are supposed to be married. There was a list of comparison between infatuation and love. Some of the items listed included loving a person's idiosyncrasies. Maybe someone else would not feel love when they found a coffee cup in the shower. Maybe if I found someone else's coffee cup in the shower I would not feel very affectionate toward that person. But for whatever reason, when I find Felipe's coffee cup in the shower, it makes me love him even more.

Even though he likes food that is really smelly and nauseating, I'll still cook it for him. Even though he leaves lights on in rooms that no one is in, I'll just go turn off those lights. I would do these things anyway, but it becomes even easier when I remember that I have my own idiosyncrasies that he puts up with. For instance, I like to be able to see all my clothing all the time. So a good portion of it is on the bed at any given moment. But Felipe loves me anyway. Also, if I don't know the words to a song, I just make up my own lyrics. Usually those lyrics either don't make any sense at all or completely change the meaning to the song. But he loves me anyway...even if it's his favorite song.

He always makes me feel so feminine too! For instance, our ice cream:
Can you guess which is his bowl and which is mine??

Day at the Arcade!

During spring break, Felipe and I went to the mall in Arlington. It's been great fun to wander through the stores and halls waiting for Caleb to drop...I've got about a month to go!

There's an arcade in this mall and as we approach that area Felipe says, "Let's go in, Mama. I'm going to win you a stuffed animal." So we go in.

We exchange some dollars for some coins. Then, we hit up the skee-ball.

Some basket-ball...

Back over to skee-ball...where we found someone had abandoned a bunch of tickets. At one point we played "Deal or No Deal" (not my idea)...I protested by not taking any pictures.

I did play skee-ball, though!

We ended our arcade trip with a little brown creature with green hair...allegedly he's a beaver:

It was a fun time. I would never have thought to go into a mall arcade...or any arcade. But my husband has that Y-chromosome that leads him to all sorts of places that I'd never think to go on my own.

He's also very loving. Often he'll take me to a store that he knows that I like and will say, "Ok, you have a $50 limit. Go." And then I get to pick out anything I want as long as it's less than $50. It always makes me feel so pretty and loved. I think a lot more wives would spend less on themselves and futility if they knew that on occasion their husbands were going to surprise them with a spending gift. It's always more fun to spend money when he's around then when I'm by myself. It seems like a gift from him even though we're both employed, making the same salary. I still see him as the provider. He has the final say-so and he isn't afraid to say no to me. But I'm also not greedy to always ask for stupid things...and we have a budget.

I love serving Felipe. If I get toward evening and I feel that I haven't adequately served him I always ask him if there's anything I can do for him. And besides the obvious, sometimes it's just a glass of water, but the other night it was a massage. Luckily, my mom bought me this little tool:

for Christmas one year...I think. Or maybe this is one I bought myself...I can't remember now. But that's besides the point (Don't you hate it when someone gets so caught up in a trivial point that they lose focus of the story?). So, anyway, I massaged my husband to sleep. It was wonderful. I love loving him.

This furthers my idea that God gave me marriage to show me more about himself. Usually, I live day to day just doing whatever the day brings. If a good deed presents itself, I may or may not act on it. But perhaps, just like how I seek out ways to love my husband, I should seek out way to love God. Maybe instead of waiting to see someone in need, I should seek out someone in need? Just an idea. I don't know how to do it though.

In other news, Caleb's little butt is so cute when it sticks out of my belly. And recently I have discovered that I can bounce it up and down in the amniotic fluid. I think he likes it. I hope he likes it, anyway. I also walk my fingers over his spine in a sort-of baby/fetus massage. His daddy likes it when I do that to him, so I thought maybe baby/fetus Caleb would like it too.