i think having a baby makes you think and view about things in differently. atleast it did/does to me...it's crazy how fast time goes by now so much more than ever before. i was thinking the other night about the monumental times i've had that make time stop. events that have happened and you remember the smells, colors, tastes, feelings and even what you were wearing that particular moment in time. day to day begins to become a blur but those kind of stopping time moments are amazing to me. so i came up w/ a list of the 10 most time stopping moments in my life, in no particular order, good and bad. here goes...it's kinda wordy if you have the time...

1. this really is a couple jammed into one, but really, it was one event - in 2001 i moved here from colorado thinking i'd only be here a few months to get away, and then go back to colorado. so the second i got here, i reserved a plane ticket to visit back home 2 weeks later, on 9/9/01. it was a sunday. i stayed at my friend a's house. that night, maybe 1 a.m. as we were fast asleep, the phone rang. and rang. and rang until finally someone picked up. i suddenly heard screaming crying from another room. i ran out to see what was happening - our friend tim had just died that night in a head on car collision. whaaaaaat?!? we grew up w/ tim. tim was a twin to one of my closest friends' fiance...oh the pain...2 days later, was at a different friends house. we wake up in the morning, 9/11/01 to her mom bursting thru the room crying. we freak out thinking someone else we know had died. not any of our friends, no, but many other innocent people in the 9/11 attacks. omg. so many more details to this week but we'll sum it up with the week was spent in pure mourning and numbness from shock...the day i came back to k.c. i went to a church conference w/ my parents and sobbed for about 3 hours straight and then went home and slept. alot.

2. the night b & i met was truly monumental. it was october of '02. my good friend/roommate and i went to a concert that night at the beaumont to see from autumn to ashes, cursive, engine down and thursday. a fabulous concert btw. we sat in the bar because it overlooked the stage and everything else was big and flat and we wanted to see...we sat and after the first band, i kind of tapped the person next to me w/o looking and asked if they knew who was playing next. the person turned and i looked to see what this person looked like. whoooooaaaaaa!!! HELLO! this was the cutest guy who has ever made my heart jump. b was wearing a jean jacket w/ a screen printed alycium logo w/ his wire rimmed glasses. i was wearing my black dickies dress w/ jeans underneath. my hair was pinned up. he and i talked the entire night. his buddy who brought him to the show wore a brown jacket & talked to me in an irish accent all night trying to convince me he was irish...at the end of the night, b GAVE me his number & asked for mine...don't ask how long it took him to ask me out on a date, but the rest is history...good history... :)

3. in kindergarten, i was standing on a balance beam playing and leaning against a book shelf. i'm not really sure what the class was doing and why the teacher kept making me wait to go to the bathroom, but i just couldn't hold it any longer. yes. wet and warm flowing down my legs, soaking my pink pants...i was soooo embarrased. thanks ms. baumgardner...

4. i think elias being born and the week thereafter in the hospital will always be fried into my brain. so many details are fuzzy considering i was on so many pain killers that week, but so many details are ridiculously clear...it was the best of times and it was the worst of times...

5. remembering the detailed grueling moments of eating popeyes chicken in 5th grade and being violently ill afterwards ties with eating a bk whopper in highschool and pulling a piece of tooth floss from down my throat that came from the whopper. YUCK. to this day, no whoppers or popeyes chicken at all for me...yuck...