Marriage Rocks!

When I was 10 years old, my dad was employed as an AOC at the Air Force Academy. My dad was the commanding officer for the 5th squadron of cadets attending the academy. Because he interacted with the cadets in nearly every portion of their lives on campus, he was blessed with some pretty sweet tickets to watch the Air Force Falcons on the gridiron. I remember him taking me to a football game one sunny afternoon. In my little mind we were sitting on the 50 yard line, perfect view, perfect day, perfect game. But there was one problem. I knew absolutely nothing about football. It was then that my dad gave me one of the greatest gifts of my life: an understanding of the game and a new-found love for this sport! He taught me about the downs. Four tries to get 10 yards. I loved that idea. Something I could keep up with. Here's these 11 guys--some big, some fast, all wearing blue--who all had the same purpose. Get that pigskin from where it's starting to where it needs to go. As I g...

When I was a teenager, Laser tag was just becoming a teenage hot spot. Likewise, it was just headed out as a teenage hot spot, but for the 13 days that it was relevant--we jumped on that bandwagon! I went with a group of friends to the local arena and was basically a nervous wreck the whole game. I was not confident in my running-around-spying-on-people-and-then-laser-blasting-them skills. I tried to hide as best I could and sneak around until someone better at sneaking around would find me and blast me before I even had a chance. Thank heavens for regenerating lives! I credited my obvious failure to my kind and non-confrontational heart...but that was probably just a cover-up for my inability to spy. Fast-forward to present day. And the best time of the year: Christmas! My favorite part of Christmas is watching Christmas movies. One of my favorite movies is "Elf" starring Will Ferrrell as a human raised by elves on a quest to find his human father. In his first experience ...

Marriage is such a beautiful action word. A wedding is a one time occurrence. The reception after is a short lived party. But the marriage--that is something that happens everyday, over and over again. Like a muscle; condition it, tone it, strengthen it. Like a second language; use it or lose it. Like a seed in the ground; nurture it, water it, tend to it and it will grow and bear beautiful fruit. Sometimes it takes trial and error. Sometimes it comes naturally. Sometimes you need a little spark.  Eric and I were newly weds. Our honeymoon phase was going strong. The bliss and happiness was endless. My best friend had come to visit us. She had already been married for 3 years. THREE YEARS! I still remember as a newly wed knowing that they were basically experts, because THREE YEARS! She was in her phase of marriage in which newlyweds were kind of disgusting. She was forcefully and reminiscently tolerant of our ever ebullient mushy-gushy. She counseled me that marriage was wonderful...

Usually when talking about marriage, people mention the need to date your spouse. For a moment, I need to date myself. Just chronologically. When I was a freshman in college, my friend Vincent Fagiolli III--who we all believed was an Italian mob boss--had his own corvette…and his own CELL PHONE. Whereas most of us only had 5 digit phone numbers (on campus phones all started with the same 2 digits, so you just had to remember the last 5), he could make and receive calls anytime, anywhere. He embodied the future! As I moved through my college career, others began to own cell phones. By my senior year, you didn’t even have to be an Italian mob boss to own your own digits; however, cell phones were still novel enough that nearly all apartments had landlines as the primary line of communication. Regency #56 where I lived with my 5 best friends was a home with no cell phones and one landline. As such, we had a white board next to the cordless phone for flawless message taking. We had it ...

I was in the 9 th grade. Living out of town on 2 ½ acres afforded our family the opportunity to raise chickens. And raise chickens we did! We started with a handful from the local feed store in the spring. Then that handful produced another handful, and that handful doubled for us again. Pretty soon we had 30 chickens running free range around our yard, always climbing up the little ladder we had placed against the tree in the backyard to roost in the evenings. We loved our chickens like most people love their dogs. They had names (Silver the rooster--well named; and Stephanie the rooster--not as well named) and pecking order (Silver on top; Stephanie, not so much) and liked when we held them (Silver regally accepted love and adoration; Stephanie maybe hated us a little). And they had their own language. As loving owners, we became adept at understanding all of the clucks and peeps and cock-a-doodle-doos our chickens made. So much so that when Mr. Tinguey, my 9 th grade science t...