Married Life – jesser

October 3, 2017

Essentialism – TV

Essentialism is a concept I’ve thought about for a long time – if not in that exact terminology then at an abstract level. It’s the concept that you have to pick what’s important to you (truly important) and say yes to that, but, perhaps more importantly, say no to other things so that you can say yes to the important stuff.

Recently, one of my favorite podcasts, The Simple Show has been tackling this very subject, breaking things down by categories and talking about what they say no and yes to in those categories for themselves and their families. It’s been fun and interesting to hear how the hosts’ thoughts on the topics are similar or dissimilar from ours. So I thought it would be fun to sort of play along (weeks after the fact as it may be) and talk about how I feel on these.

Topic #1 was TV/Movies – how and what you watch.

The NOs

I say no to watching something just because it’s popular and I want to be included in the discussions. This includes: House of Cards, Walking Dead, Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad and probably the next big thing that features lots of violence and conflict. I do not enjoy violence at all and I really need people to cheer for.
I say no to JUNK. Not to be too snobby, but Kardashians, Bachelors and Sponge Bob are out. I don’t care if it’s not a popular opinion. They don’t add to my life (or the lives of my kids) so it’s out.
I say no TV as a default or background thing. I try really hard to just turn of the damn TV if it’s bedtime and I never (just ask my kids) want TV on in the background as we’re going about our lives. It’s too easy to get complacent.
We say no to movies for date night … at least movies in the theatre. We don’t get to talk enough and it’s expensive with no real justification. We would probably make an exception for a truly epic movie but it’s rare. And since we’re nerds, that would usually be a nerd movie and the kids are now of the age to join us. That’s fun!
We say no to allowing the kids to go zombie in front of the TV. More than a couple of hours and I turn it off. I want them making, not consuming.

The YESes

I say yes to watching TV while working out and folding laundry and sometimes working in my office (crafting or doing mindless stuff like updating our budget spreadsheet). It’s a guilt free way to enjoy a little tube.
We say yes to riding our bikes to the movies for family fun. It’s an awesome fall/spring/summer outing and everyone loves it.
We say yes to a few select shows that we watch together as a couple.
We say yes to family movie nights with popcorn.

September 22, 2017

Here Comes the Sun

It’s a little hard to believe it’s been over a year since I posted. I’ve thought about doing so a few times, but not as many as I thought I would. I miss it, more because I can’t go back and see what was going on than because I miss doing it. If that makes sense.

I am resolving to add some more recipes and updates on the kids and us when I feel like it.

Mentally, I’m feeling better than I did a year ago. Not that it’s always been easy. I miss the special people (and canines) that are no longer with us. Friendships are sometimes less than satisfactory as people move on and lives diverge. It’s not hurtful. But it hurts.

So what’s been going on?

Family Life

We’ve continued our family meetings with reasonable success and minimal grumbling.
We continue to cook good food and eat well. The kids are both learning to cook.
We strive to read together, but it is often a casualty of crazy schedules.
We continue to travel frequently, including camping, and have had some absolutely amazing trips this year.
The kids started at a brand new school this year and it’s been an interesting and exciting change of pace.
The kids were away from us for over two weeks this summer. They went to Flordia with their Nashville grandparents and to camp for a week. We missed them like crazy.
The kids are constantly begging for a dog and for now, we’re holding firm on the no. We just travel too much!

Ben

Ben is doing well at school. He seems to really excel at math, but is reading is really strong too. Penmanship is a challenge.
He LOVES gym and placed 2nd in his class for the pacer test where you run like a maniac.
He continues piano and has recently learned the Imperial Death March from Star Wars.
He is a hilariously funny kid and he cracks me up on the regular with his wittiness and interesting turns of phrase.
He has continued with karate and scouts and started swim lessons again a couple of months ago which he’s doing really well at.

Tabby

Tabby has changed a ton over the past year and is all little lady these days.
She is currently wearing the same size shoe as me. We both view this as very handy and I hope it lasts.
She is super super into music right now, playing really cool pieces on piano (Hall of the Mountain King, Morning, Linus and Lucy) and has just started violin for her school’s orchestra.
She adores being a Girl Scout and doing badge work and having experiences with her friends.
She is not too much into physical activity but enjoys her swim lessons and skiing.

Matt and Me

Matt and I celebrated 15 years of marriage this summer. We are doing great and love being together and working as a team.
We celebrated with a group trip to Mexico and also took a weekend away while the kids were in Florida to do a little trip to Telluride.
We are both leaders in the kids’ scout troops. I have continued into the juniors’ second year and Matt is an assistant den leader with Ben’s pack. It’s challenging but rewarding.
Matt continues on in his job and is doing well at it. I have recently been promoted and get to take a more active role in company leadership which is something I’ve wanted for a while.
I have been working out for a few months now at Orange Theory Fitness which I really enjoy.
Matt and I also took up tennis this year. We had both played in jr. high and high school and we have a number of friends who play, so it’s been a very nice activity.
Matt has been working hard in his wood shop. We built a console table that goes behind our couch and he is currently working on a large-scale closet system for the master closet. It’s an unbelievable amount of work.

Overall, a very good year. Lots of personal growth, positive changes and some bumps in the road. No complaints.

August 29, 2016

Mug Cake Cook-Off

Wowwie. It’s been a crazy month and a bit. Crazy.

We’ve: 1) gone on an 8 day road trip with 12 people in a 12 passenger van over 3 states, 3 national parks and 2200 miles, 2) started back at school, 3) gone on our biggest camping trip to date, 4) gotten and gotten over colds (or was it the flu?), 5) celebrated some birthdays, 6) done some other traveling, 7) tried some new recipes

Anyhow. I’m breaking my crazy-haze-induced silence to share these babies. MUG CAKES.

Honestly, they’re not that great. But the reason we made them was pretty fun.

Remember family meetings? We’re still doing them! I know. I’m as surprised as you are. But they’ve gone really well! We achieved most of our summer goals. And then we set some more for the fall!

Tonight was a particularly crazy evening, but thanks to planning, which I did last Friday before our crazy weekend, and an agenda I whipped up literally during a meeting at work, we got ‘er done. This was the big hit so far for my family activities – cooking, eating, dessert, all together. Even Matt was impressed.

It was nearly submarined when it was revealed that our grocery delivery hadn’t included chocolate chips, but Matt saved the day with a quick trip to the store. Did I mention he’s the best.

I fanned out the four recipes and each member of the family picked one at random to bake. We had to help Ben a little, but Tabby did hers 95% on her own.

Here are the four recipes we tried:

Chocolate Chip Mug Cake baked by Ben
Cinnamon Roll Mug Cake baked by Matt
Double Lemon Mug Cake baked by Tabby
Chocolate Brownie Mug Cake baked by Jess

The Double Lemon Mug Cake baked by Tabby was declared the BIG winner. Everyone loved this. The others were sugary and kind of cakey, but at least for the adults, pretty meh.

The kids did OK with all of them.

June 10, 2016

Raingutter Regatta

Being as that I am a girl with no brothers, I have little experience with the boy side of scouting. Which is actually part of what makes Ben’s Boy Scout events so much fun. It’s lots of new stuff.

For the uninitiated, like myself, the Raingutter Regatta is the maritime equivalent of the Pinewood Derby. You build a boat, paint it, make it a sail and race it in rain gutters against your fellow scouts.

We (of course) discovered that this event was sooner than we’d thought on Monday right after Matt left for a business trip (that wouldn’t have him home until today), so I got tasked with turning the rectangular wooden piece and dowel we were given into y’know … boats.

Fortunately, I have been paying attention during shop time. And I was able to complete the task with little fanfare.

The kids painted them and off we went.

Ben competed against fellow Wolf Scouts and Tabby was in the “family” (mostly sisters) bracket.

It was a double elimination tournament (I learned how those work yesterday), and both kids won their first 2 races and lost their third.

Which netted them 3rd place in each of their brackets!

Not too shabby for our first go. More importantly, they had a great time!

May 20, 2016August 29, 2016

Family Meeting

A few weeks ago, I told Matt that I wanted to start having regular family meetings. I said I wanted to have an agenda and a family credo and snacks. This is exactly the variety of corny/cheesy stuff that Matt instinctively rolls his eyes at and internally GROANS. We’ve both been through way too many corporate team-building sessions with mission statements to be wary of this sort of thing and I get it. But to his credit, he heard me out.

I made the following argument: The kids are getting older. School, activities, friends, devices, etc. are encroaching more on our nuclear family and while that’s not wholly bad, it’s important that we are deliberate about protecting family time. We need to also be deliberate about communicating what values, activities, lessons, etc. are important to us and teaching the kids a few things. To his credit, he saw what a fabulously great idea it was and got on board. 😉

Continue reading “Family Meeting”

May 18, 2016May 17, 2016

A Weekend in the Shop

This guy had a birthday last week.

It was a pretty fun affair if fairly low key. He got new sheets and a new backpacking chair (which hasn’t actually arrived yet) and he got to hang out with these weirdos and drink homemade lemon cream soda (delish).

But my other gift to him was taking a whole Friday off to hang together. And it was pretty awesome.

See we needed a new patio table. We had one from our old house, but it was just a little too wide to really fit our somewhat narrow porch. And as “luck” would have it, a crazy windstorm picked up the tiles that made the top of the old one and smashed them into the railings and floors, breaking all but 2 of them. So while the table frame was fine, it needed a new top and we were ready to say bubye to that table.

I designed this new one sometime last summer before the other one was destroyed. It’s almost 12′ long and as we plan to have 4 benches (2 per side) and 2 chairs on each end, we can comfortably seat 14 people. Not too shabby.

Matt and one of his friends have been working in his wood shop by night, toiling on our new patio set and on our friend’s new coffee table. We had friends coming over that evening and had created an artificial deadline of having the table done when they arrived, even though the forecast said it was supposed to be cold.

But artificial deadlines are great and we got down to business making the table. The guys already had the frame built, so we just had to add the top. It seems easy, but it was quite a bit of work, let me tell you.

I got a real appreciation for the work Matt puts in in his wood shop, that’s for sure. Each board has to be properly dimensionalized (made perfectly square and into the correct thickness) which is quite a lot of work, running it multiple times through two different machines since each pass can only take off a fraction of an inch at a time.

Then you have to cut it to size (on one of 2 or 3 different saws) and attach. The attaching part on this is actually “simple” compared with his normal work. He regularly uses complex joinery (not screws) to attach pieces. This one has carefully hidden screws instead since it’s less “fine” woodwork.

Finally, you must finish – that’s at least 3 rounds of sanding (everywhere!) and then using some variety of finishing solution on it – stain, sealer, oil, etc. then sanding again, staining again and sanding again. You can do this a couple more coats if you want to depending on the finish. This is the part I regularly help with, so I’m very versed in it.

We didn’t get past the first three rounds of sanding (still not done) but it was fine to eat off!

You might notice the middle looks kind of strange – that’s a trough that runs up the center. You can put ice in it for drinks (like so), or add river rocks and sterno cans (like so) for table top s’mores. Also, if we end up hating the idea, we can pretty easily run narrow boards down the center and just finish it off.

Anyhow, that was day 1. I fully expected to be done, but inclement weather caused our friends to cancel the hike we had planned and so we decided to get going on 1 of the 4 benches.

So we did. More dimensionalizing, cutting to size.

And then gluing! It seems so strange that something that we sit on (several of us, actually) could be held together with glue, but that’s the deal. I suppose there’s also some dowels and strategic structure choices, but mostly, it’s glue. Crazy.

But it turned out great! Check it out!
This guy actually required even more sanding than normal because we were sanding several disparate pieces of wood to perfectly flat and it’s not much difference (less than 1/32 in most cases), but it’s a lot of sanding.

Love how it looks though!

And here’s the other little thing I worked on … a little sign for Matt’s shop. My woodgeek. 😀

January 11, 2016

2015 in Review

2015 was in many ways an excellent year for me and mine. The second full year following Mom’s death had it’s own pitfalls and moments of sorrow, but it went on and was definitely more happy than sad.

Family

We soaked up lots of family time, skiing, hiking, camping, backpacking, cooking, walking, reading, playing and just hanging together. It’s odd – I thought things might get quieter as the kids got older – I think because I thought they’d take less of my time to manage, and they do! – but we do so much more together.

Tabby is turning into a young lady right before our very eyes. She’s worked hard at school and at home and generally has a great attitude and work ethic. She reads like it’s breathing and impresses me constantly with her artistic abilities and insights. She got her ears pierced over Christmas break after working hard for this all semester, and it makes her look even more grown up. She’s enjoying learning piano and getting pretty good and has fun with karate and swimming.

Benji is still our darling little guy. I’m so glad he’s not too big or cool to give me lots of hugs and kisses and snuggles. School can be a struggle for him with all the requirements to sit down and concentrate, but he does well academically and we’re grateful for that. At home he’s a huge ball of energy. He spends his freetime building either with legos or in Minecraft. We’ve also gotten him interested in running on the treadmill and we’re hoping to help him beat some winter blahs that way (fully supervised of course). He’s a force to be reckoned with on the slopes and so so much fun. He also had a major puncture this year, but it was of the unscheduled variety – he had his finger slammed and badly injured in a door at school and a few hours at the emergency room later and minus a fingernail, he is much improved.

Matt and I are doing our usual balancing act, making sure everyone’s fed, bills are paid and the house doesn’t look like too much of a disaster zone. We bought a second treadmill on a crazy sale in early December so we can workout together in the evenings … important because we’re training for another half marathon in April! We sneak away just the two of us whenever we can manage it – date nights when dad takes the kids or sometimes a day off when the kids are at school and occasionally, we hire a sitter to watch the kids so we can go for a run or a bike ride. It’s a nice little luxury.

Work

Matt took on a new and extended role about halfway through 2015 and it’s making him happy and keeping him busy! He goes to the office about once a week and traveling more (none of us loves this, but it’s good for him and his career).

Work has been going great for me as well. I work long hours sometimes, but usually it’s very manageable. We’ve picked up a ton of work this year and really gotten our “hit rates” up – that’s marketing speak for how often we win work. Some of it is the improving economy, I’m sure, but I fancy that some of it has to do with some cool new things we’ve been doing. Cheeeeeers!

Travel

It was a fun travel year. The coolest trip we took, was probably the surprise trip we took in May! It deserves its own post (which it never got), but I won (!!) a trip to San Francisco to go to MakerFaire! So Matt and I took off while my dad watched the kids and we flew to CA and did it up right! It was a blast!

We also had a few ski trips throughout the winter and filled up the summer with camping trips and our first ever family backpacking trip.

Our longest trip was from Denver to Nashville, with some stops along the way. We pulled the pop-up to Missouri and dropped it off at my mom’s cousin’s house. Then we went onto Nashville, spent a few days there, including a great trip to Mammoth Cave in KY, and then picked it up, took it to family reunion and came home. Exhausting, but wonderful!

We finished off the year with an amazing trip to Big Sky, Montana over Christmas to ski!

Home Improvement

We did lots of little projects around the house throughout the year. We organized our laundry room and some kitchen drawers. We did a bunch of yard work. We planted a garden.

But probably the biggest project of the year finished up right before Christmas when Matt installed our new barn door!!! He and a family friend worked for HOURS on it and it turned out so amazing. And trust me, it’s even better in person.

There are probably another load of things I could and maybe should talk about, but those are some of the highlights. It was a good year.

May 9, 2014May 11, 2014

This Guy

My partner in crime turns 34 today. We were realizing recently that we’ve been together over 15 years and are rapidly approaching the point where we’ve known each other for longer than we haven’t! WOW.

We have had quite the year with a lot of firsts – some good and some pretty terrible. Through it all, we have weathered it together with a minimum of arguing and a whole heck-of-a-lot-of team cooperation.

Continue reading “This Guy”

August 20, 2013

The Haps

So … a mea culpa on continuing to suck at blogging. I’m trying hard not to give up. But a LOT is going on!! Tons!

We went to family reunion. Where we did things like … hike to a waterfall.

And take family photos… most of which my kids managed to screw up by being goofy.

We celebrated other stuff too. Like Matt’s and my 11th anniversary. We mainly goofed around and played video games and stuff like that. Simple.

We celebrated my dad’s b’day! Tabby made him a chocolate cake.

Then the kids started school yesterday!! Technically nothing changed for Ben. He moved to the next class at the beginning of the summer, but we made a big deal like he was just starting too. The super good news is that his best buddy has now moved back into his class. Yay!

Tabby started first grade! She’s in official specials classes (art, music, PE) and having a lot of fun.

Her first day was made that much more special because she lost her very first tooth!! During story time. She wants to keep it forever and has refused to surrender it to the tooth fairy in return for the cash reward. Ah well.

So that’s the haps!

July 9, 2013

Down but Not Out

I’ve had nice little emails and texts from people who have been missing the blog – family from far away who only get to see us regularly through this medium and friends from afar who enjoy catching up on my life as I do theirs (even though I haven’t had time lately). I’ve been missing it too, along with other things. But work is the time bandit right now, stealing what precious time I used to use for blogging. It hasn’t been unusual lately for me to work 11 or 12 hours in a single day without a break. I know it won’t always be like this, but it is going to be different. Anyhow, let’s play catchup:

The Kids

The kids are having a great summer. Tabby is at school with Ben and both of them LOVE IT. She also has a couple of friends from school and other venues (a family friend, soccer) in her class and that makes her very happy. Ben was moved up to the next level at the beginning of the summer. This was bittersweet because he and his best friend, Cruz, were separated. However, it was in some ways for the best as they are a wild comedy duo and his behavior is improved.

We have been going swimming at least once weekly and traveling tons which the kids LOVE. They are both looking forward to our cruise immensely and Ben keeps asking to “see the Disney Cruise stuff!” whenever he sees Matt or I at the computer. Tabby is reading everything she comes across and has really stepped up her game big time. There’s not much now she can’t read, at least with a little help.

Matt and I

With me working so much, it’s been hard not being able to spend as much time with Matt. He’s also been picking up some major slack that I’ve dropped lately and doing it with grace and generally good humor. Since the weeks have been so crazy, we’ve been trying to get out for date nights whenever we can. We’ve tried out some new restaurants, gone to see some movies and been pretty lazy. It’s nice.

Training

Another thing we’ve been doing together is training! I am signed up for my first triathlon near the end of August and so I’ve been training with one of my friends and then sometime with Matt. It’s been some early morning swims in the pool and some weekend bike rides. A few weeks ago my friend and I did an open water swim. The best thing I can say about it was that I didn’t drown. Still, by the end of it, I had new confidence in my abilities and I feel like when I attempt it again later this week, I will do much better.

Aside from tri-training, the rest of my working out hasn’t been awesome. I was going to bootcamp only once or twice a week and since I’m going to miss the last two weeks of July anyway (since we’re traveling), I took the month of July off. The lack of fees alone paid for me wetsuit. Yay.

Travel

What’s probably compounded this whole work situation immeasurably is all the travel we’ve been doing on the weekends. A couple of weekends ago, we had our third camping trip of the season, to Cow Creek (above). It was wonderful, but it’s also been exhausting. In addition to camping, we went to Vail for the holiday weekend (and got back around 11:30 on Sunday night). We’re heading off for our big summer trip with Matt’s family in less than 2 weeks.

Still, we’ve had a wonderful time, and I want to share some of our adventures.

Work!

Despite the fact that I’m working hard, overall, I am really enjoying my new role. It is definitely not all rainbows and sunshine, but we’ve won a few projects since I’ve started and that is a really really awesome feeling. I get to do a lot of stuff I’m good at and enjoy, like laying out pretty marketing materials, managing databases and organizing things. It’s also an excellent challenge, which I really thrive on.

But my vacation in 2 weeks is going to be very very well deserved.

So that, in a nutshell, is life right now. I hope to make at least one more post this week and slowly get back to doing 3-5/week and also reading some of my other favorite blogs. Life is good. It’s just very very busy.