Some Family History and Peanut M&Ms

 It's been a struggle to find the right photos to put on the shelves over our couch. Not exactly a life or death struggle. Or even something that I thought of more than once a week, or even made the list of things I wanted to do something about. But my original solution of printing out some random, bright, vintage-y things to put in the frames wasn't quite right. Even though I maintain that these seals are pretty awesome.

Awesome, right? Well, Cory wasn't sold on them. Or any of the other completely weird pictures I had up there. And, while I thought the prints were fun, I didn't have any personal attachment to them. They were meaningless to us. 

We displayed pictures of our parents and grandparents at our wedding reception in July. As a bonus, we got to keep the pictures, and I had spread them randomly throughout the house. They were nice on their own, but didn't really make much of a statement...then it came to me.

Down came the random artsy crap, and up went our statement:

These shelves are pretty much the first thing you see when you walk in the door, and it makes me so, so happy to see these pictures.  To see our parents and grandparents as they were just starting their marriages--before they had kids, or houses, or college degrees. Just two crazy kids living on love.

Cory's side of the family. Now that's what I call a gene pool.

Seeing our parents and grandparents at our age just kills me. I love it so much. It kind of makes me want to invite them all over to play Partini and wear 40's style clothing. I like to think that we all would have been the best of married friends. You know what I mean.

My side of the family. Ridiculously good looking.

It should be noted that our parents were married in the 80's, so their pictures were actually originally in color. When he saw my copies Cory said, "Why did you change our parents pictures? Now they look like they're a million years old." 

Because I like things to match. Okay?

Also, I have all of their love stories for you guys. I was going to summarize them in this post, but they're too amazing to summarize. They involve bike stealing, long distance war time relationships kept alive through letters alone, balls, Frisbee football, Stake basketball tournaments, and so much more. This post is already getting really long, and I haven't even told you about the M&M's yet, which was the whole thing I was going to write about today. So I'll post their love stories this week. I should have done it LAST week, what with Valentine's Day and all (which also happens to be one of their anniversaries. I know. Hindsight=twentytwenty.) but look forward to it this week.

And, about the M&Ms. Cory is a skinny guy. Like, really skinny. His metabolism is like the energizer bunny on back tar heroin. It never stops. This combined with the stress of school and a propensity to eat Honey Nut Cheerios for every meal unless something else is prepared for him has led to him losing weight on my watch. Which is bad. 

I've been working on ways to get him to eat more, but it's hard. Eating just...isn't on his list of priorities. Which is unfathomable to me. I literally cannot fathom it.

So, in an effort to put eating a little higher on his list, I've been trying to make high calorie snacks a little more accessible (I pretty much wrote the book on bad eating habits, so, I'm excited to put these skills to work).

Enter: A dish of Peanut M&M's place ever so innocently on the coffee table.

I didn't think much of it, but within half an hour of putting them out, the M&M's had disappeared! He ate them! I was shocked. He pretty much never eats sweets (Mentos don't count.). I had just hit the jackpot of fattening Cory up snacks. He loves them, and I am not tempted by them in even the smallest way. Win-win.

So, maybe our little friends started making an appearance more often. 

Maybe the dish would get refilled as he played some video games.

Maybe the dish would be on the table next to his dinner plate.

Maybe the dish would slip next to Cory as he watched TV.

Maybe the dish would show up to keep him company during study time...

Maybe I overplayed the usefulness of the dish.

Maybe this is the face he makes right before he asks, "Why are you taking pictures, and why have you been giving me so many peanut M&Ms this week?"

Uhhhmm...well...because... I just love you so much? 

But really, I don't think he noticed/minded until I started taking the pictures.

I'm thinking of buying him his own gallon of whole milk, and lacing it with whey protein. Desperate times, people. Suggestions?