Life is Beautiful

Motherhood, Sewing, Family

Instagram Husband

~ Etc.

Have you guys seen this video? If you haven’t, you need to watch it, it is hilarious! Several months ago my friend and I talked about making a video making fun of bloggers and these guys beat us to it!
Instagram husband? What’s that? This is the face he gave me as soon as I held my phone up to take a photo. You think he was just playing & stopped soon after to allow me to take a “picture perfect” photo? Nope, he kept giving me this face as long as I held my phone in front of them.😓 He’s the opposite of an Instagram husband and would never let me turn into those girls, nor would I dare to pull any of those moves on him, for the fear and the endless wrath of his mockery. So where are all my wives of the anti-Instagram husbands?🙋🏻
Fortunately, I have a husband who keeps me grounded and only takes 2 pictures at a time and I can only ask him to take photos maybe in 2 settings max when we go somewhere. Sometimes I wish he was more like these Instagram husbands who put up with their wives! He does not wait until I take pictures of the food, for more than literally 10 seconds, after I ask him for the second time to take a picture for me at any given day, he’ll say, “Okay, this is the last one I take, then you gotta put your camera away.” He’d laugh at me so hard if I stood on the chair to take food photos or ran around with my flag, that I don’t dare ever try to take photos like that! Haha. But I think those Instagram husbands are great and I still think my husband is pretty great too. Thanks for keeping me grounded, hun!

Lessons about life part two – why I say I'm sorry to my husband first when I know he was downright wrong and I was dang right.

~ Etc.

At Jay’s work party last week.  Lone Star was the performer for the party and he was so good!
my outfit: love & grit tee | sequin jacket: poshmark | leather leggings: F21

Oh hello.  Don’t you just love it when I have my midnight ramblings about life?  Haha.  You can read Part One if you’d like, I get really deep and philosophical, I’m warning you.  You probably hate my ramblings and don’t even care but I love it.  And I care.  So anyway… my title for this post is “Why I say I’m sorry to my husband first when I know he’s downright wrong and I’m dang right”.  Now, don’t call me an angel or a saint because I can have some major sass and attitude and be the biggest brat when I’m angry, just ask my husband. 🙂  But this lesson is something I’ve learned several months ago and something I try my best to remember and implement when I get annoyed/defensive/mad at my husband.  


Let’s say my husband and I get in a fight(hypothetically speaking obviously, since we’ve never fought of course ;).   Even though I know he was so wrong and I was so right, and he needs to apologize to me first since he’s the one who hurt my feelings, I go to him and say sweetly, “I’m sorry honey.” and sincerely look into his eyes.  Just 20 seconds before this, I was so irritated and annoyed at him and mad at him.  I know I am right and he’s so wrong!  ARGH!  But then I stop and I realize and ask myself, “What is more important, me being right or us having peace?  What is a better way to live my life, being angry and holding a grudge until hoping he’ll realize how wrong he was and apologizes, or I decide to forgive and humble myself and apologize to him first?”  Then I decide to forgive him and apologize.  And most of the time he doesn’t even know I’m mad at him, what the heck!?  He is clueless as to why I’m mad at him.  Well, if he doesn’t even know what he did, what’s the use of pouting and giving him the silent treatment?  That leaves only the frustrated wife even more frustrated the more time it goes by, and nothing gets resolved.  If I say I’m sorry first and he goes,”Huh? For what? What happened?”(what planet do men come from again?), at least I’m calm and I’m able to speak to him with respect and not out of anger or frustration.  He will listen more intently because I’m speaking from a place of love and not hatred.  I’m not going to pretend like I do this every time, oh, I have a long ways to go to be the person I’d like to be.  But I can distinctively remember two times I’ve done this and when I said I’m sorry to my husband with sincerity and love, he just looked back at me and I saw his face soften and letting go of any negative feelings towards me.  And getting those negative feelings replaced with love, respect and humility.  He comes to me and gives me a big, long hug and sincerely apologizes to me.  We talk about it while we’re both calm and kind to each other, and he acts super sweet to me, and vice versa, and so I’m happy, he’s happy, and life is good again.  
As I get older, I realize life isn’t about being right.  Or being stubborn or prideful.  It isn’t about proving someone that they’re wrong just so they can tell you that you were right.  Life is about having happiness.  And peace.  I choose happiness and peace over having contention and being pissed off because I know I was right.  And in the end, I get the result I wanted anyway which was an apology and for him to treat me extra sweet and extra special.  By me saying sorry first, it softens his heart and he treats me even better.  Isn’t that why I got mad at him in the first place?  Because I wanted him to treat me better?

What are your thoughts on this?  Do you care to try it out with your husband/boyfriend/lover next time you get in a fight?  

5 year anniversary date.

~ Etc.

We celebrated our 5 year anniversary by going to the temple a few days before our anniversary day.     We also had plans to go to Park City that weekend, just the two of us, to go zip lining and go out to eat, but the weather ended up being very cold and windy so it had to be cancelled.  I originally wanted just the two of us to go on a trip somewhere far and exotic but my parents being older and not too keen on watching them for a few days, that choice was not even an option for us.  At first I was a little whiny  and thought, man, if we didn’t have kids, we could have gone to anywhere we wanted!  It’s our 5 year anniversary, this is a big deal! When will we ever be able to go on a trip just us two, maybe in 15 years?  But then another thought quickly came to my mind which was, yes, you do give up a lot when you have kids, but you gain it back and so, so much more in many other ways.  I then reprimanded myself for thinking selfishly because the truth is, having two irresistible, smart, funny little girls is worth way more than going on numerous exciting trips with just me and my husband.  I’ll happily take our two girls over exciting trips just the two of us any day.  

the curse of taking family pictures.

~ Etc.


warning: these are the extras from our christmas family shoot
and it’s a guinness world record for the highest number of pictures in a blog post.
i deleted quiet a lot(like three or four 😉 but i love them all so i have to post it all!

congratulations, you made it!  
there are way more pictures of A1(oldest one) than A2(youngest one) because A2 wasn’t in the best mood to take pictures.  oh, wait!  just like her dad!  i think we have a curse in our family.  the curse is that i get mad and cry every time we try to take family pictures.  remember our last year‘s pictures?  go back and look at how happy my husband looks.  oh boy!  we got in another fight this year and i cried and cried and cried.  it was probably the pain built over from the last year’s incident too, so it hurt x2.  i decided we’ll take individual shots since i was taking them myself and i can never get the self timer to focus good.  anyway, so after much thought on deciding the outfits we’d wear, i started snapping the pictures away with our girls.  A1 was a good sport, A2 was mad about something but she started to warm up for a short while, and then it was my husband’s turn to take pictures.  i thought his would be the easiest.  I wanted each of our personalities to show up in the photos so after taking some shots of him just looking at the camera with no personality whatsoever(and he has a lot of personality, one being really funny and witty), i told him to show his personality and he would just laugh and not even try.  i kept trying to encourage him like, “yeah, that was good!  i liked it when you looked to the side.  maybe look to the side and look tough!”  and he just continued to laugh and he would attempt at it, and then just start laughing.  i was so hurt!  i took that as, “i don’t care about these stupid photos, this is all a joke, so i’m not even going to try.”  pictures might seem like it’s just pictures, but to me it’s more than that.  it’s a whole year of happenings summed up in one picture.  that our family endured a year with happiness, hardships, health, imperfections, love, and forgiveness.  that we won’t be taking another family picture until a year later when our kids are a year older and they won’t look the way they look this year.  so i got snappy, and then got mad, and then he was mad that i was being snappy and pissy, and then i started crying and said forget about it and walked out of the room.  i continued to cry out loud in the livingroom while my girls came and hugged me and told me it was okay.  
it wasn’t until a few hours later, after they came home from church(which i stayed home because my eyes were like a puffer fish), and my attempts at giving him the death stare in trying to scare him(it never works, shesh!), we made up.  and guess what?  i was mad for no reason!  it was just a huge misunderstanding!  after communicating, we realized and understood why the other person was mad.  i told him what his actions were saying to me and he told me that wasn’t his intention at all.  that he was really trying his best but he just had the giggles!  that he really tried his best and he was more so laughing at himself in trying so hard.  ah.  only if i had not gotten emotional about it and we communicated correctly right then.  yes, yes, husband, i’m admitting that i’m sorry and that i was wrong.  it doesn’t happen often that i’m wrong, so you better embask in the moment. 😉
so the next day, he came home during his lunch break and he was great when i took pictures of him and he was wonderful at taking pictures of me.  and we were happy.  until next year’s family pictures.  hahaha.  haha.  ha. 

mars and venus.

~ Etc.

have you ever read the book men are from mars and women are from venus?  well, it’s an interesting book with many stereotypes(but i guess you can’t talk about every single case so you do have to direct it to the general) and i know there are always exceptions, but there’s a lot of truth in it in some cases for me and my husband.

for example, it’s been awhile since i briefly skimmed it, but there’s one part that goes something like this.
wife after coming home from work: “ugh, i had a terrible day at work.”
husband: “why? what happened?”
wife: ” i can’t stand my boss.  she is so bossy, condescending, blah blah blah….”
husband: “just quit your job then.”
wife: “……wait, what?”
husband: “if you hate your boss, then just quit your job!”
wife: “that’s not what i’m saying…”
wife gets even more frustrated than before and just leaves while the husband is confused and has no idea why she’s mad at him.
well, that’s me and my husband for ya.  my husband and i just had this conversation today.
me: “i haven’t really enjoyed blogging for the past few weeks.  i just feel like no one really reads my blog.  in the beginning when i started blogging and only my friends and family read it, i had way more comments that i do now!  and then i see other blogs who have around the same amount of readers as me or a lot less, and they get way more comments!  i mean, not that i blog just to get comments, but i just feel like no one reads or cares for my blog!  i put a lot of time and effort into my blog, especially when posting my sewing tutorials and i know other blogs who put a lot of time into theirs and offer their readers recipes/craft/sewing/fashion/photography tutorials and they don’t get much comments either, so it’s a little discouraging when i see blogs who post like two pictures and two sentences about going to go get ice-cream and they get like 100 comments of something like, “oh my gosh, i love ice-cream too!!!”  and i’m thinking, really? seriously?”
husband: “then stop blogging then!”
me: “i can’t, i have sponsors…”
husband: “just get rid of them and just stop blogging!”
me: “uh…. jay, i’m just trying to vent, i’m just trying to say…. ugh, never mind.”
husband: “i’m just saying, no one cares about stupid blogs.”
………..
one thing i learned on my mission, when you had to be with your companion for 24/7 and always had to be in a sight and hearing distance, is that when two people truly love each other and they’re both genuinely good people, and you happen to get offended by another, you have to remember that the other person never intentionally tried to hurt you and it’s a big misunderstanding. 
so even though my husband sounds like a jerk(at least in my ears haha), he is genuinely trying to help me with the best intention in his mind.   but it’s hard to remember at the moment when i’m frustrated because i’m not looking for him to solve the problem, i just want someone to understand and validate my feelings. you ladies understand, right?

but oh husband, i’m so, so grateful that you definitely make it up plus much more in other areas.  and i wouldn’t want to have these kind of conversations with anyone else but you. 🙂