Stay away from the dark side!

My boys recently discovered that my in laws owned all of the Star Wars movies. They have been playing Lego Star Wars on the Wii so they wanted to watch them. Saturday night we finished the 6Th movie, which for us was Attack of the Clones. We talked through the whole movie about good and evil, The Force vs. The Dark Side. The kids without much prompting from me pointed out that fear, anger and revenge lead to the dark side. We talked for about 15 minutes on the subject after the movie was over. Yesterday as we were leaving church, my 2ND child was complaining because she wanted to stay there and come home with her dad. I made her come with me anyway. She started whining and complaining on the way out and I was not in the mood to deal with it. I just turned to her and said, "don't go to the dark side! Stay away from it young Jedi!" She started telling me that I was not funny even though she had a huge grin on her face. I kept at it until she was laughing and of course it spurred another conversation on good and evil and Satan's influence that can pull us to His side, or now in our house, The Dark Side! I love it when movies can help inspire conversations and encourage teaching opportunities.

14 years!

Sunday was our 14 year anniversary. Part of me can hardly believe that we have been married that long and the rest of me feels like it seems a lot longer. We have had a lot of ups and downs, laughs and fights, but we have made it this far and keep on going. I see in the news almost every day that some famous couple is getting a divorce. Some have been married just a few years some for decades, but they all seem to act as if marriage is something to just throw away if it doesn't suit you anymore. I know that there are some real justifications for ending a marriage, but most just let go because it takes too much "work". I went into marriage knowing that it would be a lot of work, but if I gave it my all and so did my husband that the good would far out weigh the bad. I remember when I was still single that a friend of my Dad's told me to stop waiting for the knight in shining armor or the house with the white picket fence because they just didn't exist. I told him that I knew that I could have what I wanted because I had faith and knew that I was willing to work for the life that I wanted for my husband and family. I am glad to say that fourteen years later, I still believe that and that I still am working on it. We both are working on it. Life has changed recently for us and that change has made me appreciate the things that Steve has sacrificed to provide for our family. I think that he has learned to appreciate my role in our family as well. It has been humbling for both of us but a good building block for our marriage. You truly can not appreciate what someone else does until you really walk a mile in their shoes. I think that we have come to appreciate those quiet moments that are a rare occurrence more too. Life has been good to us because we have the same goals and the same desires and that is to be together through it all, to spend quality and quantity time with our children and to work hard for the future that we want. It has been a great fourteen years and here's to many times that!


1996

14 years and 4 kids later.