9 & 10

Getting married in the wintertime makes finding an apartment for a married couple just a little bit harder. It was pretty slim pickin’s. We tried to stay in our price range, but the stars of newlyweddedness blinded me good. I walked into this apartment and saw the cute little kitchen and hardwood floors and fell in love. I didn’t care that there weren’t any walls, that it was grossly overpriced and that our landlord was a jerk. Most importantly, I didn’t pay attention to the horrible feeling I had when we went to sign the lease. Cameron, wanting to please his soon-to-be wife, ignored the same horrible feeling and we signed a two year lease so the landlord would hold the apartment for us until we got married. That was the beginning of our trouble. We loved the apartment for about, oh, six weeks. Then we started noticing the couples around us paying a hundred dollars cheaper for bigger, nicer apartments that were closer to campus. We wanted to move to a better place, but when we told our landlord we were interested in selling our contract, he put forth all of these ridiculous terms. Basically, he wanted over $2,000 from us poor college kids. We decided to man up and make the best of the situation. It was super small, but it was ours. We made it beautiful. I loved cooking dinner and watching Cameron come through the door, just like I’d always dreamed about as a little girl. It didn’t matter where we were. We were together and we were married and that was never going to change. There were a lot of firsts that happened in that apartment. We learned to laugh at having to sit on barstools when the home teachers came over. We planted blackberry bushes on our balcony. We turned the TV around in our makeshift wall to watch movies in our “bedroom.” We painted the kitchen yellow. We bought a grill for the balcony and made burgers all through the summer. We both worked 2 jobs to make ends meet. The most important thing, though, that came from the ridiculous terms of our landlord was that we learned that our Heavenly Father has a plan for us. He knows what we need. We had a hard time being told “no” because we felt strongly that we should start our family in the very near future, but the apartment wasn’t at all big enough for a baby, too. We put our trust in the Lord and let Him take care of us. As it turns out, we were not blessed with a child while we were in that little studio apartment. We still aren’t having a baby, but our trust and patience paid off. We looked at apartment after apartment after apartment. Nothing seemed to work out. Nothing seemed good enough to make the move. Then, out of nowhere the perfect apartment showed up. We found it in October, but couldn’t move in until December. We had to pay a high fine to get out of our studio apartment, but we did the math and it was still worth it to move. We found a beautiful two bedroom apartment for a total steal. Our neighbors and ward are incredible. And now we have room for a baby. It hasn’t happened yet, but the feeling here is a home. And someday our little family will include one more, much smaller member. And just like our first apartment, the baby will be small, but ours.