The Monkey Barrel

Archive for April, 2008

These are just snippets of the amazing photos that Scott from our church took of our boys. He did an amazing job capturing their little personalities. I am in awe. Take a gander.

http://www.scotthayneblog.com/


var man = 'fred';
var woman = 'emily';

Marriage we = man + woman;

while ( we.areAlive() ) {

  we.live();
  we.love();

  if (we.hadFight()) {
    we.forgive();
    we.makeUp();
  }

if ((we.kidsTotal() < 4) && (we.lastKidAge > 2))
  we.haveKids();

}


{grin}

I recently read a post by Dan Crabtree from our church talking about his marriage to his wife. Wondering if she realized when she said “I do.”, all the stuff that she would have to deal with in their years together. Like all of Dan’s post it is both elegant and beautifully written. Aspects that I don’t feel I can often produce in my writing (which is why I don’t post on our blog often). But that doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t occasionally try even if it falls short.

Tomorrow will by Emily and my 11th anniversary! Hard to believe we have been together this long already… it has not seemed like that long to me. That’s a good thing right?

Emily and I often come back from some event or engagement and have had male or female group discussions that, at some point, lead to a discussion on various marital problems or frustrations with their spouses that the group is having. We often come back and share how neither of us had much to contribute to the discussion. That usually leads tous talking about why we think our marriage relationship seems to be so easy compared to some of the couples we know.

While Emily and I generally agree that our marital ease is mostly due to our agreed philosophies on marriage and raising children, like our common belief and practice of putting God first in our lives and of our acceptance of our God ordained roles in our marriage; I believe that the most prominent reason for how good our marriage is is Emily’s love, understanding and her self-awareness? constant introspection? Where is a thesaurus when you need one!?

What I mean is that I have never known another person who more stringently inspects their lives, actions and behaviours for signs of flaws or missteps and then actually takes some action to correct or make up for that behavior when something is not right. I have certainly not known anyone (including myself) who is more willing to admit to both herself and others when she feels she has acted in a mannor that is less than Christ like. This ability to admit her own shortcomings is not only one of the things I treasure about her but also one of the main reasons we have had such an easy marriage.

Dealing with the kids and me (the big kid) can be trying for certain. I know that I am not always a peach to live with but Emily has dealt with my ‘man-ness’ like an angel. She is patient with me when I certainly don’t deserve it and hard on me (usually) only when I need it. She supports me like no other, builds my confidence when I need it and cares for me in a way that should make every married man out there green with envy.

I’d write more about not only her great qualities but the reasons that I love her but it takes me so long to struggle thru even this short text that I will have to save it for another time. Code is so much easier for me to write.

Our life together, like most endeavors in life, have had moments of both incredible brilliance and stunning crappieness. (elegant eh?) Though we are not yet as far along as the Crabtrees, I hope that someday we can look back and see a long road behind us and agree that we would not have had it any other way.

Emily is my chosen partner in this voyage of life and I love her dearly.

Click here to see what started it all.

Here is a better image of the baby.  Enjoy!

I mean, clearly by nature potty training stinks but the actual act of doing the training is such a drag. And potty training a dog and a toddler at the same time is a double drag. One refuses for hours on end to poop and then poops in her crate and finds it an acceptable munchy and the other finds pooping in the potty completely unnecessary when there are perfectly good pull ups that follow your behind anywhere your butt desires release. Sigh. And just for added measure it’s a beautiful sunny day and I go out to enjoy it on my patio and am driven back indoors by the unbearable scent of baking, soggy, puppy poo. GRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!! The pregnancy nose, also a drag.