I feel like there is so much to say, but nothing all at once.

For our one year anniversary Andrew told me to leave the house for at least four hours. I ran to pick up our cake at the bakery, went and snuggled the moose, got my nails done, hung out with the Crumbakers...waited some more...and then came home to 4,000 post-its covering the walls of our bedrooms with little notes scattered on every 10th one. The first year the traditional gift is paper...so it loved me with notes. It was perfect. I'm a grand gesture kind of girl, but feel guilty when loads of money are spent, so he really did the exactly perfect thing. I am a princess-truly.

Our trip was...quite honestly-painful. We were originally going to fly standby a la the tickets my amazing friend Lauren gave us, but when we arrived at the airport found out that they had overbooked the flights for PAYING customers by THREE DAYS....so we looked into driving or taking the train to Seattle and getting on there....those flights had 25 people flying standby in front of us with only six seats available. We looked at taking the train-full. We thought of taking the bus-couldn't....so instead of canceling our trip and not going to visit my grandma who never has any visitors we rented a car and drove 16 hours straight to Vegas. I can say with certainty that I despise Vegas. I really do. I had been there once before when I was 12 and I despised it then. We went because it was a cheap vacation due to the fact that my grandmother and her gambling addiction got free hotel rooms for the entire trip, and Andrew hadn't been. I tried to warn him ahead of time that Vegas isn't really that great, and it's just full of gambling, strippers, and tackiness, but we got excited just to be taking a trip anyway. Spending time with Andrew was amazing, it really was, and I so look forward to the Fall when we finally take our very first vacation where we're not spending our time off either at the beach with Papa or in Nevada with Grandma....Barcelona please don'd disappoint!...My grandmother though, really was hard to get along with. I try to rationalize how much we dislike each other. I look at my female peers and analyze the relationships they have with their mothers. I see that for all females the hardest person to take advice or help from is generally one's mother, and that all mother's feel frustrated at trying endlessly to no avail. I lived with my grandparents during the most hormonally challenging part of my upbringing, and therefore can see why I would have the same frustrations with my grandmother as others do with their mothers...but there's more to it.

She really doesn't like me. If not for Andrew I'm sure she would have very politely just asked me to go home early. Fortunately, I married a man it is impossible not to love, and therefore many are willing to overlook my countless faults. By the end of the first day I had become so disgusted by the fact that all she wanted to do was go to other casinos and...play slots. Literally. She didn't want to do anything but dump hundreds and hundreds of dollars into these games. The entire trip Andrew and I had one meal alone together, and it was only because we woke up at 11:00 one night starving so quietly snuck out of the room so as not to wake grandma, and had a late dinner by ourselves. One full week of spending time with my grandmother 20 hours out of the day.

She has a cute little house the perfect size for one, in a cute little retirement community in Bullhead City, Nevada-right across from Laughlin, Nevada a.k.a. home to 8 casinos...but it's really is the perfect place for her. It's warm, she gets to swim everyday, she has a cat, she can gamble...but the ENTIRE trip all she wanted to do was gamble and talk crap about my papa. Which is not okay. She slapped him with a divorce out of the blue last year after telling everyone in the free world he had pulled a gun on her, and he had no idea it was coming. They hadn't lived together for nearly a decade anyway, but had decided to stay together for the tax reasons. They had even gotten a legal division of property, but were going to stay married. He is now trying to be happy and has started seeing someone, but she is just hanging on to her misery for dear life. So we tried to deflect, and talk about other things. But the ENTIRE trip, and I know this may just be me being selfish, she never asked me anything about my life. She has no idea what I'm doing at school, if I'm even going to school, if I have any plans, what's going on with my friends, she wouldn't even know I'm not working if I hadn't told her...which just led to endless sideways comments about incompetent women...went so far as to(as she always does, I'm sure out of jealousy) to talk bad about Margo and how she is just a useless woman catering to her husband's needs...that now that her kids are out of the house she needs to work. I politely just said that for some people who have the opportunity to choose as Margo does, they actually prefer to stay at home. "huh..."

The last night we were there while my husband was in the bathroom, so there would be no witnesses, she brought up papa and how he was being such an asshole by not helping her with this and that. How it was so lonely down there, but she didn't have anywhere else to go becuase he wouldn't help her (which is total bs. She is better set up for retirement than he is, he just doesn't gamble 75% of his income away...) I just told her to stop, and that after having him served with divorce papers in his driveway one day without so much as a warning email, he owed her nothing. That she had always wanted out and that she finally was. She couldn't expect anything from him, and he no longer owed her anything. She was LIVID pissed. When Andrew showed back up at the table, we just got up and left. As we were walking out the door after four whole minutes of silence from her, which is a lot, I promise, she turns to me and says "You know Heather, I just want to say one thing. That day that grandpa pulled that gun on me I just knew that I had to get out bec..." "Just stop grandma! He doesn't talk shit about you so stop talking shit about him! You divorced him, it's over, finito, let it go, move on!" Instead of just letting it lie she went onto say "Weeelll you just know everything don't you missy?!"

Insert poor Andrew trying to be polite but looking at her like she just lit her hair on fire.

"No grandma, and considering it's over, I don't NEED to know everything. What would be the point? It's over."

Then my amazing prince stepped in and deflected and told her we were going to go ahead and get the car and meet her by the front door. We drove her back to her place and the whole time tried to make small talk but she kept making offhand comments about the tragedy of motherhood and how horrible she had been treated her whole life.....This morning as she dropped us off at the airport I gave her a hug and a thanks so much for letting us come visit, and she leaned over and gave Andrew a hug saying "You balance Heather out really well. Without you I wouldn't have survived this trip."

My husband has a really hard time empathizing with me and my feelings toward my family. Until he spends time with them. I recognize my grandmother is wounded, that she really is lonely, and that she just needs love. I am thankful that due to my amazing husband I can try to love her even though it hurts. I wish that there were others, like her two favorite children-my aunt Julie and uncle Jamey, who would visit her more often so that she wasn't so lonely. Or that she would just sell that house and move here and make it easier for everyone. But if wishes and buts were candies and nuts we'd all have a really great Christmas.

Bottom line, I love my husband. My family is dark and twisty and I've told Andrew to watch the Ya Ya Sisterhood movie to try to get a grasp on why we all are who we are...lol...no, but seriously, that really is my family....and I love my Savior. Even though each person in my life that has played the "mother" role has seriously fallen short by the standards ascribed to by not only all of my past therapists, but also anyone who has every heard the entire story, God gave me three women to love me. Without my mother I wouldn't have been nurtured as a small child which ultimately was the base for my entire personality. Without my grandmother I would have been stuck with my mother and Robert and his abuse and control...and honestly I can't even say I would be alive today. Without Margo I would have never learned about Christ, and His great love. I would have never seen how to authentically and unconditionally love others. So even though each of these women has hurt me in immeasurable ways, I know that God did not leave me or forsake me. He rained down mannah from heaven and I am so grateful for His blessing. He sustains me, He loves me, and He watches over me with the persistance of Edward Cullen...lol.

I am blessed.