Twenty-Nine

Twenty nine years holds a lot. Saturday (the 26th of August), Harold and I celebrated our 29th anniversary. I look back and I cant believe it's been 29 years. Years filled with joy, laughter, good times. But also, sadness, heart ache and hard times. I never want to sugar-coat marriage or life. We can look for (and at) the positive, while still being honest and real. Twenty-nine looks like: growing pains-growing up is hard, whether you do it single or married, living apart for work, infertility plus pregnancy loss, health scares, pregnancy, parenthood (lack of sleep), moves, financial hardships, not always agreeing on the next steps for your family but figuring it out anyways, launching kids-and worrying about them a LOT, growing older and reconciling that and all it means, walking through the deaths of parents and grandparents with each other, welcoming grandbabies... And in the midst of all of that there are the day to day things. Joking, laughing, hard work, frustrations, trips for ice cream, deep talks, not so deep talks... If I sugarcoat this, if I make it sound like it's all sunshine and snuggles, I would do a disservice to others. This isnt a social media image perfected with filters. Real life is good and bad, happy and sad. I want my kids to know that we love each other and it's not always easy. But it's worth it. That we don't have it perfected but we won't stop trying. That the bad times will pass if you keep choosing to love each other and work at it. We are just two imperfect people choosing to love each other for better or for worse.

Upper Peninsula Beauty

I love to travel. It is life giving for me. I always say if I won the lottery (not that I play more than once a year), I would not want a huge house, fancy cars or "things". My winnings would be spent on travel. My preference is road trips. I'm not a fan of flying in particular-not because I'm afraid, I just hate the process. It's tedious, plus I like more control than flying allows. So, we try to take vacations with the kids every year. Sometimes close and sometimes far! This year we went to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. I LOVED it! We were so blessed to miss the haze from the Canadian Wildfires-it was an issue before we were there as well as after. Our main activities on this trip were a full day (guided) kayaking tour around Pictured Rocks (Lake Superior) and a Glassbottom Boat Shipwreck Tour. (Believe it or not, the boats we had to power ourselves were way more expensive than the other ;) )

My favorite pictures from the shipwreck tour had nothing to do with shipwrecks and everything to do with the lighthouse we saw. If the shipwrecks had had more human interest stories (people who were on the ships, etc) I would have liked them a lot more. But the lighthouse sparked my curiosity with the story of a family being dropped off each spring.

We went on some relaxed "hikes" (more like walks).

And we ate some great PIZZA (not as easy when you're searching for gluten free)! And this ice cream was as good as you imagine with no nutritional information! :p

All in all, we had a great trip (just don't ask me about traveling with dogs-my answer will not be a happy one).