Major milestone in our house today. This guy? Turns eighteen today. EIGHTEEN. His coming of age means all kinds of things for him, of course. Among other things, he is eligible to vote, and as he pointed out at the dinner table a while back, he can now sign himself out of school “should he need to leave early for any reason.” Ahem. This birthday also impacts Jim and me, of course. It’s a little stunning to realize that on this, our younger son’s eighteenth birthday, we are no longer legally responsible for anyone except for ourselves. Bizarre, even. I casually mentioned to J two weeks ago that he only…
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- Amazing People, Best Thing Ever, Blessings, My Friends Have Mad Skillz, Working On My Fitness, Zumba
Zumba-versary
The first time I ever took a Zumba class, it was at a fitness conference called Midwest Mania. I loved it so much that I came home and immediately looked up a local instructor on their website so I could try a class close to home. I took the class, and was officially hooked. I have always loved to dance. I still do: I have a dance floor radar and if I sense one is nearby, I make a beeline for it. I am *that* woman who is out there for any group dance at a wedding or Bar Mitzvah reception. I am a quintuple threat (1. Cha Cha Slide,…
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Totally Worth Your Time
Having blogged for more than five years–which, face it, is like twenty-five years in internet time–often I come up with a great idea for a post and then realize that I may have written about it already. If it’s something worth repeating, I put a new twist on it and present it to you again*, sort of like re-gifting, but better. And with that… I received a card today from a friend we haven’t seen in a while, and when I opened it I was pleasantly surprised to see that every inch of the inside was covered in handwriting. It was a note describing how much she and her family…
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Old Friends
It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson As we have for MANY of the last twenty-six years, Jim and I rang in the new year with our oldest friends, Dawn and Scott. Scott and Jim were in Navy boot camp together back in 1985 and Dawn and I became penpals shortly after that. We married only eight days apart in 1986 and grew close when the guys were both stationed in Norfolk, Virginia. I could tell you lots more about our history but I already wrote about it extensively four years ago, HERE. (You’ll want to…
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Twenty-six
To my love on our twenty-sixth wedding anniversary: Every year when we go on our anniversary dinner date, you ask me the same question. “So…where do you think we’ll be in ten years?” Though I love the idea of verbalizing our ideas of what life will be like a decade from today while enjoying a meal together at a romantic restaurant, I never feel like I have a good enough answer: you always seem to have a more specific picture in mind than I do. I’m an excellent planner on a day-to-day basis but life has so many twists and turns that it’s hard for me to imagine what it…