bloggy friends week! prince charming.

Welcome to Nugget On A Budget's Bloggy Friends Week! 

This week I'm in Arizona with Hubs and Baby Girl for our friend's wedding {having a fabulous time!}. I've rounded up a few of my bloggy besties and two other awesome ladies to guest post on here while I'm gone.

I hope you enjoy getting to know these lovelies as much as I did!

Meet Georganne! She blogs over at Mom to Many Girls. She has five beautiful daughters, three of which she homeschools. On her blog, you'll find topics such as parenting and simplifying life in a world that is anything but. Georganne was sweet enough to write a guest post for me at the last minute :) It's a good one!

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There was a time I believed in fairy tales.  Where a dashing prince came and swept the princess off her feet and they lived happily ever after.  Reality is seldom as romantic, I learned as I dated a string of boys through high school, college, and thereafter.  By the time I reached 30, I had mostly given up the idea of a husband and family, much less a prince. 

Then I remember the day “He” walked through the door.  He was a new technician at the animal clinic where I worked part time.  I followed him to the back to get a second look.  I can't say what I saw, but I knew there was something different.  Something I liked.  Not just a physical attraction, as in “he's a cutie,” but a spark in his eye that made me want to be around him. He made me laugh, and his laugh made me laugh harder.

As I got to know him, I liked him more and more.  He was someone I could be with all the time and never get bored.  We knew we wanted to spend the rest of our lives together, and we talked about getting married and having children.  That almost stalled our plans because he wanted ten children.  Do what?  While I had assumed I would have children one day, I had never put a number on it, and certainly never considered double-digits.

One day in the mall, we wondered into a jewelry store and perused the engagement rings.  I mentioned I liked baguette diamonds, and the sales lady pulled out one ring with a center diamond and a  baguette on each side from the case.  It was beautiful, and he said he'd take it.  I wore it out of the store thinking, “what just happened?”  In the parking lot, he got down on one knee and asked me to marry him.  Not exactly writing in the sky, but I took it and haven't regretted it a day since.  Okay, well maybe once or twice I've considered how to dispose of his body, but only for a minute. 

Now, more than fifteen years later, we have had our share of disappointments and struggles.  We are halfway to the ten kids mark, but we have also suffered three miscarriages.  We are both gainfully employed, but we have gone through a few career changes.  We are able to pay our bills and enroll our children in a few activities, but we have had financially hard times.  We are now healthy, but we (mostly me) have had several health scares.  The fairy tale cleverly leaves those parts out of the story, but they are inevitable in the average marriage. 

So, we have written our own fairy tale ending.  One in which we grow old and gray together, well he's balding and I'm graying.  Instead of a horse-drawn carriage, we drive a beat-up minivan.  No castles or glass slippers or talking teapots.  We raise a whole passel of princesses and teach them that Prince Charming isn't all he's cracked up to be.  The real prince is a normal guy with a great laugh dedicated to his princess when life gets rough.