Well, hey there! Fall Break with the fam was another good one on the books. I won’t lie. It did also contain bickering, irritation with everyone’s laziness, and a lot of TOGETHERNESS, but we were TOGETHER, even in those grumpy moments.
It’s funny, something that has come up a few times over this past month have been comments about my marriage and what kind of marriage I must be putting out there in the social media world. Since my husband doesn’t read my blog (no, it’s totally cool, I don’t care at all..really, it’s fine…) I know that he will probably never see this, but I’ve gotten a few questions about how we seem really happy and have a lot of fun together after all these years.
And there have been a lot of years- I’m not even forty and we have been together over 21 years! Wild, isn’t it?
No marriage is perfect and mine certainly isn’t. I won’t tell you that it is. We weathered some hard stuff- moving away from our family, transitioning into parents, unemployment, health issues…the list could go on and on.
I’m sure we all have difficult lists like this.
There are many people that I have met that portray their marriage online in a good way and then you find out that there is a different truth to that story. We can show off whatever we want to on social media and that highlight reel can be REALLY GRAND. I have found in blogging, a “perfect” family is what you are after and, yet, I know very few of us that actually have it.
I can’t give you the secret sauce on this marriage, but I can tell you my adoration for him is genuine and I often wonder how this lottery life moment happened. We had the perfect set-up for a divorce. We were young and blindly in love with no real plan, we married far too soon, we dropped out of college without diplomas, and we are completely different people than when we met in high school.
In fact, I don’t even recognize myself from that teenage girl who had never left home and held those rigid life views.
I actually wouldn’t even like her.
It shouldn’t be this good and I can’t say why that is except that we evolved into people we both really like. No one makes me laugh this hard, no one talks me up like I’m the Queen of England, and no one feels like home more than him.
If I wasn’t with him, my biggest hope would be to still get to hang out with him as a friend. Because he is that. He’s the best thing I got and he’s my friend.
Here are a few other things that are making me happy!
I Had One of Those! Puzzle
We are addicted to the White Mountain puzzles and purchase one for each of our trips for something to do. I usually pick out the puzzles, but my husband picked this one out for this trip and it was SO FUN!! Everyone contributed to this one and worked on different sections throughout the day. If you haven’t put together one of their puzzles before, our favorite has been this one and we also really loved this one too.
Now that I’m trading puzzles with my friends, we are able to really extend our collection to keep us busy this winter!
Hamilton’s America
Our family has recently caught the Hamilton bug and that soundtrack became the soundtrack of our trip (I listened through Spotify or you can listen through Amazon Unlimited Music with a free 30-day trial) as we put together our puzzle and drove from Granger to Grand Haven- singing all the way. We have even been talking about ditching presents again this year (check out our Choose Your Own Adventure! travel idea we created!) and getting tickets to Hamilton in Chicago as our holiday gift. But, dang. $$$!!
PBS offered a documentary, Hamilton’s America, for Hamilton fans that you can stream on their site and our family watched this together. The documentary is filmed even before the show hit Broadway just as Lin-Manuel Miranda is in the beginning stages of writing this. The film chronicles the success of the show and a little behind-the-scenes of these actors that made it so successful. Dictation of lines for each of these characters and rap artists that helped inspire Lin-Manuel were really interesting to me, as someone who geeks out on stuff like that.
If you haven’t watched it yet or listened to the soundtrack, you must! Such good stuff (although racy in parts for little ears- I have a tween & teen) for the whole family. My son said he would be WAY more into history class if it was taught like this and we all learned a lot more history through watching the PBS documentary together!
Did you catch it? What did you think?
The Imitation Game
Netflix recently added, The Imitation Game, to their roster and this was a movie that both my husband and I had been wanting to see. For those of you that love period pieces, this is a beautiful one and the acting is just incredible.
Set during WWII, this story chronicles the real-life story of Alan Turing, a gay mathematician, who invented a machine that saved thousands of lives and had the power to shorten the length of the war. He is one of those unsung heroes in history who only received true accolades after his sad death.
The punishment for being homosexual, at that time, was unknown to me and resulted in a very sad ending to this man’s story. That said, incredible acting and so much meat to this movie that you will have lots to ponder after those final credits are rolling.
If you don’t have Netflix, stream this one on Amazon. We gave it 5 out of 5 stars- definitely worth the price of streaming!
Reading: I finished this book on my trip and really loved the way the book was told through “the mothers” eyes- the elderly women of a congregation. I wouldn’t say this is a fast story at all. This is a slow telling of a secret and how it impacts the people involved. It definitely held my interest!
Giggling: I’m not normally one to enjoy commercials, but these three got me! The first two had me in stitches and the last one is all the AWWW!!
Planning: Our next Halloween couple’s costume with my hubby for a weekend party. I don’t want to say too much, but ELEVEN is a good hint! 😉
Happy Fri-yay!
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