Where to start?

We really did not forget about this blog! Life has been busy...crazy busy. Four children, multiple jobs, school, etc., sure keeps us busy! But I'm committed to get back to blogging.

So, where to start? There's been a lot of changes since our amazing wedding. Right now we have Michael and Riley 70% of the time, though it's actually more than that because they are with me when their dad is at work (yay!). We currently have Daniel and Hayden 50% of the time, with an upcoming court date in July to hopefully, prayerfully, get primary custody of them.

In January we moved out of our tiny, 1300 s.f., 3 bedroom house to a 3600 s.f., 5 bedroom house. It was a complete blessing from God and we have absolutely loved the space. It's done wonders for all the kids having their own rooms, their own space, and our own home with memories to make of our own family. We love our neighborhood and it's close to school and work.

Mike is still a full time student (though taking the summer off) at UCCS. He is also working at McDonald's, which has turned out to be a wonderful opportunity for him. Last week he started his manager training and he's excited about that. I quit my job at Chili's for the time being, after a huge pay cut and not much availability due to the kids school schedule. I also started coaching volleyball for Team Colorado, which has been amazing! I was blessed to be the assistant coach for an awesome woman! We coached the 12's team and had a blast. This summer I'm working various summer camps at Colorado College, as well as Big House.

Michael is going into 3rd grade, which just seems impossible. Riley's going into 1st and I can't believe that either! Daniel will be entering Kindergarden, hopefully at the same school as Michael and Riley. Hayden is 4 and loving preschool, always learning new stuff and growing bigger everyday. The kids are really growing together and getting used to the blended family that we have. It's taking a lot of hard work in areas we've never gone before...but it's getting there. We still have a lot of work to do, but through the Grace of God and lots of patience, we'll get there!

That's a brief summary for now. My goal is to jump in and start blogging about life now, as this crazy family of 6 that we are! There's always a lot of entertaining stories around here!

They are coming....

Wedding pictures and honeymoon pictures are coming...first we have to figure out how to get the cd from the wedding photographer to actually open the pictures on the computer that has internet. Hopefully tomorrow. Stay tuned, there's about to be a whole lot of blogging going on!

Fun.

Here are some lovely "blips" from some dear friends that I've gotten in the last week or so. It's so fun for our hearts to hear these kind words!

from my sweet Lauren, who I met through the CSPD Wives Association:
"I know it will be a wonderful day for you~of that we are all certain! I will miss not being there on the most important day of your NEW life with Mike. I'm so happy for you. Your contentment and love for that man shines through in your eyes. Literally right from your soul. Love you, Jen. Blessings all around!"

from dear heart Sarah (who knew both Mike and I in high school, we used to write long letters back and forth in class lamenting about the loves of our life!):
"Hey Love! How are you?!?! The big day is coming soon!!! Just wanted to write you a little note and let you know that I AM THE WORST RSVPer IN THE WORLD! I am leaving for New York on the 6th and come back on the 11th so I won't be here for the wedding. :( Totally bummed about that because THIS is the love story I have been wanting to see play out forever. So happy for you Jenni and I know this is forever. Know that I will be there in spirit and you have my 100% support in your life and in your love for Mike. Can't wait to see pictures!!"

from Mindy, my best friend from college who is coming in from Chicago:
"first off, I just wanted to tell you, you know I wouldn't miss your wedding for anything! I am so happy that you are happy, in love and starting a new chapter in life. I can't wait to meet your new family, husband and see the kiddos! I am so SO SO happy for you doll! Can't wait to see you, watch you become Mrs. Roe and cheer you on into your wonderful new life.
Love you lots."

from Tiff, my friend and coworker from two different jobs!:
"Please know how excited and happy I am for you and Mike. You two make me smile and its so great to see you happy. You deserve it so much!"

from my dear, dear friend Stephanie, who has been a friend to me through sooooooooo much, all through long distance! She is actually related to Mike Unrau and has remained a loyal and tender friend through the tumultuous last year and a half. I love her to pieces. Can't say enough about her angelic heart. Truly, she must be an angel on earth. Love her. :

"I have to say, after reading this, I am sitting here, in tears.....so beautiful, how you wrote what God does with us!
and so TRUE.
It is truely a beautiful thing, when HE is the one who resucues us from the ashes!!
Tears also, over how in love you are and how perfect it all is NOW....thru all the heartbreak and hurt....NOW you can see.....just WOW.

You know, choosing to remain your friend "thru it all" was actually NOT a difficult choice for me. I felt that over the years before it all became clear, that I got to know YOU, the woman's heart within, the you that you probably didn't show to everyone....and I knew in my heart that you were worth keeping as a friend....and yes, I actually have been made to justify my choice to remain your friend....I've also had to say that "I do not think that is entirely true, and please do not go around saying THAT, you do NOT KNOW". uggg. So awful! the gossip is just horrible and sad, and sooo unchristian. So instead, I just pray for them, and just don't say much. I'm very excited for you to open this new chapter of your life, and to find happiness!! I can't even tell you how glad for you I am!

I can't wait to see your wedding pix and see your joy!
Know I'll be praying for you.....and thinking of you as you go forth!

I love you too friend!"

These are just some of those sweet words and friendships. We will share more. But for tonight, well, now morning, I must get my butt to bed as I have an insanely busy but fun weekend ahead of me! Starting tomorrow!

5 Days and Counting...

In just a short 5 days Mike and I are getting married! October 9, 2010 will be the day we finally get to marry each other, after waiting for so long.

Our plan was to have our whole story written before our wedding day, so we could start fresh afterwards. Obviously with 4 children, a job and full time college, we didn't quite find the time to blog all of it yet. But it is coming! Slowly but surely. We will pick up where we left off after we get back from Hawaii and life resumes to normal again! This is something I journaled the other night.

"To my love,

This is the most important day of our life together. Not only because we are marrying each other, but because we have waited for 16 years to see this union, to experience the day where our lives become one...the life we have longed for, hoped and prayed for and dreamed about.

At 14 years old I met a boy that I knew in my young and childish heart I was going to marry. All the feelings inside me were very complex yet strong and they all led to my heart completely diving headfirst into love for this boy named Mike Roe. Everyone around me told me I was crazy and that I couldn't possibly know what love is at 15 years old. But I argued that I knew this boy, I knew his kind and gentle, loving heart. I knew the thoughtful and generous person that I experienced. If my feelings for him were not love then I would never know what love is.

15 years passed and we both went on to live seperate lives, finding our own versions of what love meant to us at the time. As always, along with the unfulfilled love comes hurt and heartache.

But then, through the hands of God and circumstances out of our own control, He brought us back together. I immediately fell back in love with the boy I fell in love with so long ago. But now he wasn't a boy, he was a man. He is a man that has lived through his own hurts and tragedies and has come out of those with a strong, wise and pure heart. He is a man that loves his children and family deeply and selflessly, who will protect them and provide for them, no matter the cost to him. He is a man that loves me beyond what I had ever hoped for, dreamed for, and begged God for. He loves me for who I am, which in turn has given me the freedom to embrace myself and love who I am as well. He loves me with abandon, passionately and purely. He has become my best friend, my love and my companion. Everyday with him is magical simply because he is by my side. Not only has his example taught me how to love better, to love selflessly and unconditionally, but to also live in joy and in laughter, to live in the everyday moments that make our family so special, to embrace the moments that matter and let go of the ones that don't.

When I think back to the people that told me 16 years ago that I didn't know what love was, I want to tell them all how wrong they were. I loved him then and I love him even more now. And I know that the love we share that started our story 16 years ago will continue to guide us, strengthen us and bind us together for eternity. God has orchestrated our incredible love story and I know this day is just the beginning. I can't wait to see what He has in store for Mike and I and our wonderful new family; Michael, Riley, Daniel and Hayden.

To my dear Mike: my life, my love, my best friend, my soul mate and soon-to-be husband, I love you."

Mike's version...Part II.

When I arrived at CSCS, I found out right away that myself and most of the football players I was around most of the time, were all outcasts in most cases. At Coronado, the “in” crowd was the football team and their friends most of the time. I wasn’t used to being looked at like an outsider, by most students, teachers and administration. I had my comfort zone however, those like the coaches, players and some of the other non-athletic outcasts, but it was very different from what I had become used to over the previous two years. Academically I was in a bad spot also, not being a very good student in public school, set me up for failure as a student in private school. Laziness and an entitled attitude made the academic challenge at CSCS very difficult for me to get used to as well, and as Mr. Boucher will tell you, I gave up on completely a lot of the time. A student who shared my history class with Mr. Boucher at one point came up with Indian names for everyone in that class, and I was, “chief sleeps a lot,” nice one, Trevor. I never really connected with any of my teachers, all except for three, that were not football coaches because I had a natural connection with Mr. Young and Mr. Poirier. I really liked three other teachers though, Mr. Boucher made a great effort to help me at least pass his class, Mr. Shubert was great, and also one of my coaches, and probably my favorite teacher…… Mr. DeKorn. I guess you could say that the teachers that had me in their class were ok, all except for Mr. McGinnis! He was the worst teacher, in my opinion, that I had ever come across to this day, and it was mostly the other teachers in the school, along with most administrators, other than Mr. Babbit, whom I really liked, that didn’t like me very much. But that is neither here nor there, I did ok, and nothing really mattered to me at that point outside of football.

On the first day of school, as I was going through my classes, meeting all the teachers and my new classmates, I was in an awkward mood, due to my academic history I was in classes at sophomore and freshman level. I was especially grumpy at having to be in freshman math, but that all changed when I saw Jennifer Fowler right across the room in Mr. DeKorn’s math class. I was awestruck! I had nothing to say, and it was harder to pay attention than it was in my other classes, and that is saying something because I was a wanderer. She was wearing a green shirt. Her hair was curly, long and flowing, falling over her shoulders. Beautiful.

She was a freshman, and I was a junior, which in some chapters of the, “High School Cool Book,” was a no-no, but I didn’t really act within the confines of the rules on almost anything, so why should this be any different? The one thing, in all my years of school, that was different in this situation was that I was actually scared to talk to her. I don’t know if it was her friends that she was always around, or everyone else watching, or the possibility of rejection which hadn’t been a worry of mine in years past, because I usually didn’t care that much, but for some reason this time was hard, and I never actually talked to her the entire year I was at CSCS. Every time I got the chance I watched her volleyball games, and countless times did I stare at her as she walked through the hallways, never being too conspicuous. I didn’t want anyone to know how badly I wanted to take out this “girl of my dreams”, which is what she was. Instead of asking her out, or to a banquet, or anything like that, I spent time on a couple of girls that I really wish I hadn’t, and I won’t mention any names, but they know who they are. Jennifer actually had to be the one to make contact the first time, because I left my phone number in her year book, and she called shortly after the school year was over. I had made it through the year, almost passing all my classes. I failed Mr. McGinnis’s Biology class, and that changed a great many things for me. I was stripped of my captain hood on the football team because I had failed a class, and going into my senior year, that was enough to make me leave the school. That and a couple of parents that would have taken their daughter out of CSCS if I returned for another year, but I’ll get to that. I got a phone call from Jennifer a few weeks later, and that is where the story really picks up, because it would be one of the greatest and most memorable times of my life.

Jenni's version...Part V.

I think you all get the general idea that I never stopped loving Mike. I chose to put my feelings for him on the back burner, to try and stuff them away because I was determined to give my heart and soul to my husband. For years I wondered why Mike and I didn't work out and what it would have been like if it did. Would he love me the way my heart was begging to be loved? Would our marriage have been happy and full of life and love? But like I said, I put it all away because I wanted to be emotionally faithful to my husband. At the time I felt that he deserved that from me. Of course now looking back I know he didn't, but that's a whole other topic! So back to the happy stuff for now!

All of you know that last summer I found out that my husband of 10 years had been cheating on me in some form or another for 10 years. I knew of one that happened the week before we got pregnant with Riley and I had made the decision to stay with him and try to make it work. Long, long story short and lots of blog posts later, our marriage did not survive and there were many more affairs than the one he told me about. It's amazing how God chooses to work in mysterious ways. Obviously I was devastated and sickened by the news of my ex-husband. Things had gone downhill a lot since the news of the first affair about 6 years ago. Those of you that know me can testify to the fact that I gave my marriage everything I had. To the point that there was nothing left of me when he moved out. I knew who I had been as a wife, I knew who I was as a mom, as a friend, as a preschool teacher...as everything but my true self. I had given so much of myself and my happiness and the things I loved to Mike to try to make him happy, to try to make our life better, etc., that I had nothing left. It was terrifying.

Then one day I decided to see if Mike Roe was on facebook. This is something entirely out of character for me! Lo and behold, he was! For weeks I debated about contacting him or not. I was terrified, I was confused, I was hurting, I was lonely, I was angry. I was a bunch of things. But I finally got enough courage and I emailed him. I waited a long time but finally got a response back and he gave me his phone number in case I wanted to text. Again, completely out of character for me, I did! So at first we began texting. One of his first questions was how my husband was. So I told him that he was no longer and I told him why. We began talking about that. He was in total shock that someone would cheat on me, I was in total shock that he thought I was worthy of not being cheated on. (See, your mind plays some pretty cruel jokes on you when you've gone through something like I have.) We went back and forth for a couple days just texting. He confessed that he still loved me, all these years later. I confessed that I still loved him too but I also wasn't in a very good place with men and what I was going through. But Mike was there to listen to all the things I needed to say as I sorted through my heart's mess. It's funny how we hadn't talked in person or even through email or a phone in so many years, yet I was immediately comfortable with him. It was like years hadn't passed and I was at ease around him. He understood what I was feeling and he asked me a lot of hard questions that I needed to sort through in order to figure out what my heart wanted and what direction I was going. He was there for me, and even though he loved me, he was there to be my friend, to help with the hurt, to listen to the pain and to make me laugh in the midst of it all. I had a lot of fears though..."what if we were in love with the memory of what we had but the reality is that we don't know each other at all?" I was so afraid that I had put him up on this pedastool and the real Mike was a completely different person. I was afraid that we had both blown up the memory of our relationship so badly that the reality wouldn't hold up. I was of course afraid of being hurt again. But there was just something about him, like my heart had finally found home after so many years. As terrified as I was, he was safe. He was comforting and familiar, even though I hadn't really known him since I was 15 and even then it was only for a few months! We exchanged texts for quite a while and I didn't get a chance to save mine before they were deleted, but of course I saved his. Here's some of them....

"Jen, you were the greatest thing that ever happened to me, and I dearly wish I had you in my life."

"Jen, I would take you right now if I could. I have dreamed of that happening! Really. I loved you so much and I'm not sure I ever stopped."

"I hurt not being the one who got to be with you. I never would have cheated on you. I wish to God there was a chance."

(This is when I was still very cautious and very scared about even thinking about a new relationship!)

"Being with you was always just a dream. My heart is racing right now. I wonder if dreams come true?"

"I have loved you most of my life. That will never change. Whenever you are ready, I am here for you."

This next text is his response to me asking him if we were just in love with the memory of each other and what if there was nothing there at all.

"That's something that we would have to get together and figure out. But I know that the feelings I had for you never went away. I know my heart."

"Jen, it has been hard for me to talk to you over the past few days b/c I've thought you were gone from me forever."

"Do you think it's meant to be now?"

"I'm here for you, Jenni. I always will be. I really hope that if there's a chance and it is meant to be, we don't wait too long and then it doesn't work again."

"Jen, there's no need to cry. Everything will come out the way it's supposed to."

"Jen, in all reality, I never tried to find you again because it hurt. Your parents were the ones who split us up the first time. My life would be drastically different if they hadn't because I would have never left you! It is hard to talk to the person that I wanted to share my life with, and didn't get to. I would stop everything in my life for the chance to be with you! Only my kids do I hold in higher regard, and I know you are a good person, that's why I left you alone, but if ever I have the chance to be with you again I would and am taking it!"

"This is really hard but I might never get to say it again...I have always and still believe, that I would change any job or school, leave everything but my kids behind to be with you. You are my dream girl, high school sweetheart and everything else and I have loved you for as long as I can remember. All I would need is for you to ask. And that is all the truth of it."

(I was still unsure...)

"This hurts worse than I thought. I have needed you for so long. I pray it works the way I've dreamed."

"I hope you get it in your mind that I would do all I could to make you happy Jenni. Never forget it. I pray that you give me the chance to love you!"

There were a lot more text, but I think those sum it up pretty well. I was still terrified...terrified of opening my heart again, even more terrified of the judgment I would receive from a lot of people (which I did), terrified for my kids and the amount of change they were already going through...terrified. But he was a friend when I desperately needed one and I was the friend he desperately needed but didn't tell me until I discovered that for myself. So we decided to start slow, get to know each other first and take our friendship a baby step at a time. One of the best parts to me was to spend time with and talk to someone who knew me "pre-destruction" as I called my marriage to Mike Unrau at that time. Mike was safe...he loved me unconditionally and that was something very, very strange to me. I began to let myself out again, actually, I began to rediscover myself again. There's something that happens when you're a wife and mom and most of the time it's a good and natural thing...you lose yourself in your identity as wife and mom. But I let it get out of balance. I co-founded the CSPD Wives Association to try and support Mike, to try and understand why and how this job had led him to affairs. I was desperate to figure it out, to emerge myself in his world as much as I could to try and understand it better, but also to support him. I hated his job, hated what it had made him become, but knew that being a cop was his identity, so rather than fight it I decided to embrace it. I don't regret it by any means, I loved the CSPD wives with all my heart and made friendships there to last a lifetime, which was something I wasn't expecting. But I did the wives association for the wrong reasons...I so desperately wanted Mike to love me more than his job, so I figured if I embraced it maybe that would help. The reality, that I learned later, was that being a cop wasn't what caused Mike to become the person he became, it was his own doing and his own problems that started with the way he was raised, way before I came along. Obviously with Mike and I separating and him losing his job as a cop, I was no longer a CSPD Wife. Literally in one week I went from being a cop's wife and mom to losing everything in my world...my husband, the Wives Association, a lot of friends and basically my whole identity. I was still a mom of course, but I was a single mom. Oddly enough, it was actually a relief. Mike was so uninvolved with the kids anyway that I had felt like a single mom for years. Now I only had to take care of my kids and I and it was surprisingly refreshing. All of this left me stripped and feeling very naked, very alone...unsure of who I was and what this new future would be for the kids and I. I will briefly interrupt this story to say that I was also amazingly surrounded by people who showed me unbelievable love and support and for that I am forever grateful and incredibly blessed. But there was no one around me that had gone through what I was going through. No one who knew the pain of not only being cheated on their entire marriage, but had it publicized within the entire Police Department, desperately trying to protect my kids from the effect of it, fight off the media, go through the intense and long hours of interviews with CSPD about what I knew, and still try, somehow, to not completely crumble and fade away in the midst of the pain and the questions and the confusing turmoil.

But then there was Mike Roe. Both of our lives were amazingly complicated yet together was just pure and simple and wonderful. The truth is that I didn't know this man, I knew who he was 16 (almost 17 now) years ago, but neither one of us was even close to being the same person we were back then. It's incredibly hard to describe my love for him and our relationship. He was the immediate best friend that I had always longed for. I was blessed, I am blessed, to have many women in my life with whom I have fantastic friendship with. But this was different. Immediately I asked God if this is what it was supposed to be like?! Was this the kind of friendship and trust that He created for a husband and wife to have? We were friends first, which is something I will be forever grateful for. His life was pretty complicated as was mine...we both had two kids that were working their way through the loss of a parent in their home. Mine was a lot fresher, but Mike was going through a bad divorce as well, for reasons eerily similar to mine. And even though Mike was the husband and dad, he also knew what it was like to be cheated on and betrayed. He also knew what it was like to be treated the way I had been treated. He knew what it was like to be the one in the marriage that loved the other spouse more than they loved you. He knew the feeling of deep loss and he knew the feelings you get when your marriage fails, regardless of how or why. From the very beginning we both have said and have seen that this moment of us coming back together, 16 years later, was truly written and orchestrated by God. There's so many things that could have only happened at this time. Mike and I had run across each other so many times in the last 15 years but it wasn't the right time. We both believe, without a shadow of a doubt, that God had to mature us and prepare us for each other and even though we missed out on 15 years of each other's lives, we both had to walk our own roads to prepare us for when we could be together. I know that sounds disgustingly like a romantic notion, dreamed up in the head of a 15 year old in love...but it's the truth. I'm not saying that God's will was for us to marry the wrong people and His will was for our spouses to cheat on us, etc. But I do believe that we both chose our own road, made decisions based on what we wanted at the time, not necessarily what was God's perfect plan for us. But God took the broken pieces, He used what we had decided with our own free will, and brought them together and worked it out for His plan and purpose in our lives. It stinks that we both had to go through so much pain, but sometimes our own free will will lead us to that. God took the wreckage and used it to prepare us for what He had in store for our future. I believe this with my whole heart. And if I could do it all again, if we could do it all again, we would. For the incredible miracles that came from our choice to marry the wrong person were Michael, Riley, Daniel and Hayden. And those sweet, amazing little souls make all the pain and betrayal worth it. I would do it all again in a heartbeat if that meant they were created and I know Mike feels the same way.

Obviously, there is so much more. But for tonight I will leave it at that!

Jenni's version...Part IV.

Apparently Mike and I ran into each other again in 2004, but I didn't remember it until this past year when he told me about it. It was August 2004, according to my journal, it was August 16th! Believe it or not I don't actually journal every single second of my life, but I always journaled about Mike because I had no one else to tell! When we ran into each other I was pregnant with Riley and really, really sick. I was on a lot of medicine at the time to try and keep the pregnancy and apparently it affected my memory. When Mike and I started talking again this past year he told me about meeting Mike Unrau, how I introduced them in the store when we ran into each other. I had no idea what he was talking about! But as we were reading through my old journal we came across this little note I had written, dated August 17, 2004.

"I dreamed of Mike last night and dreamed of our meeting again after 9 years. The dream was so real and so vivid I woke up emotional and now can't get it all out of my mind. And again I wonder, "why?". Why is the attachment so strong? Where is he? Is he home safely? Has he been home and redeployed again? Why hasn't he ever emailed again? That makes me think it's because something happened. Or is it because I told him I had to be careful because I do still love him but I'm married? If that's the truth then I have immense respect and admiration for him. It's driving me nuts! I feel like a 15 year old all over again...left with all these emotions and questions, aching for some sense of closure or some sort of goodbye. Instead I sit here and wait, yet again, like some form of torture. And I can't help but wonder again how I can love someone so deeply who I hardly knew and only had a couple of months with."

I could never explain the pull that Mike Roe had on me. It was literally love at first sight. I used to get angry when everyone in my life at 15 years old told me that I was too young to know what love was. They told me he just wanted to sleep with me and didn't care about me and I was foolish for claiming that I loved this boy. But oh how I loved him! I knew that my 15 year old heart wasn't experienced and didn't know a whole lot about love, but I knew I loved him. I loved him from the moment I saw him in math class and on the football field. See, when we spent all those wee morning hours together, I got to see the real Mike. I didn't see all the pride and arrogance that everyone else saw, or maybe I just saw through it to the real stuff. What I saw was a very gentle and caring person, what I saw was a boy who cared deeply about a lot of things but didn't want to put his guard down to show it. What I saw was a passionate heart that loved me beyond anything I had ever experienced up to that point. I saw someone who was hurt easily and had some past hurt in his heart that he didn't know how to deal with yet. I saw someone who just wanted to be loved for who he was, not because he was this incredible football player (though I sure loved to see him in uniform...giggle, giggle!) and because he was a smooth talker and knew how to talk to anyone. I saw someone who wanted to be loved as much as he loved, who wanted someone to care for who he really was. I remember thinking that I was the luckiest girl in the world to have this boy love me, choose me. I knew he had so much to offer and a heart bigger than I had seen in most people in my life and I knew that I wanted to be the one to love him for the rest of his life. I've always been thankful that he let me in, that he opened himself up to me with things that he didn't allow anyone else to see. You know they say that you can measure a boy by the way he treats his momma. And Mike loved his mom! They were (are) very close, that was one thing that really impressed me about him. Even though I didn't see them together much (she was always sleeping in the middle of the night!), he talked about her a lot and you could hear the love and respect in his voice. So even though I was 15, I knew that I loved this boy beyond what my heart and head understood and even though I didn't know a lot about love, I knew what this love was. I had an inkling in my heart that it was rare, but it wasn't until I left home and went into the world on my own, and had relationships with other men, that I realized that this kind of love does not come around all the time. Most people never get the chance to be loved like this and to feel love like this and I was so grateful I had, even if it was only for a couple of months.