In June Andrea and I celebrated our tenth wedding anniversary. We celebrated by taking a trip to Aruba for a week. We had a blast creating memories. We met other couples from Los Angeles and Chicago while we were there and just generally had a good time. We took a four wheeling adventure with a crazy tour guide named Ralph through the undeveloped northern coast of Aruba. Doing 60 KM an hour on some of the sorriest excuses of roads you've ever seen. Bouncing and laughing the whole way. We drank a coconut milk based drink that was mixed for us by a local affectionately known as 'Doctor Coco'. We snorkeled in the open ocean over a wrecked ship. We dined at the finest dining places imaginable in an island setting. Fresh seafood and steak. We generally had a blast.
Rewind a few years. November 11, 2011. It was set to be the happiest day of our lives. We went in to start the process of having our daughter on November 10. If we'd known then what we know now, we would have understood why she ended up waiting until 1:41 in the morning on November 12th. Our daughter wanted to come out facing this world head on. Anyone that knows her can understand why. But, because of her stubbornness, a C-section was required. The anesthesiologist had difficulty getting Andrea completely numb, so she made the choice to be put under. Since Andrea had to go under, I wasn't allowed to be in the operating room. As soon as Madelyn was in the recovery room, I was brought in. Big, beautiful brown eyes and bottom lip poked out. I was ecstatic. I was terrified. I could see Andrea through the window as they were closing her up. The lasting image I have from that moment was my wife laying there with tape holding her eyes shut. I was terrified because Andrea is the planner. She had the plan laid out for how everything would happen once Maddie was here and in that moment I realized that Andrea wasn't there. I would be responsible for taking care of this tiny baby by myself until my wife made it through recovery. Which, of course she did, and quickly too. We were allowed to take Maddie into the recovery room to meet Andrea. It was a joyous moment. One that I'll never forget.
Exactly two years later, along comes little brother. Gabriel was a scheduled C-Section, so there were no surprises with him. Well, other than him being a him. Andrea had chosen not to have the sex of our second child revealed. She wanted that surprise. She's like that. Impulsive. Fun loving. Anyway, back to Gabe. Our big man came into the world without a name. We had a couple of names that we had picked out, but were still not sure what we wanted to name him. After we got back to our room and were able to have visitors, we brought Maddie back first to be the first to meet her little brother. She was smitten. Soon, we brought back our parents and other visitors. We still hadn't chosen a name. We presented the options to Madelyn and she chose Gabriel. So, that's what we went with and I couldn't be happier.
Somewhere during all that, we had trips to the smoky mountains a few times, our second trip to the Bahamas, Destin, and to see our friends in South Carolina. We had innumerable fun times, including our first encounter with a bear on an auto trail in Gatlinburg and Andrea yelling at me 'DON'T GET OUT OF THE TRUCK!' because I slammed on the brakes to stop when I saw the tiny 20 pound cub right beside the road. We thoroughly enjoyed Cades Cove and all the wildlife we spotted during our trips there. As with all of our trips, we also enjoyed some of the best food imaginable.
Destin was a different trip. It was our kids' first time seeing the ocean. We also brought along Montanna Ford to help wrangle them. Once again, we made life long memories playing on the beach, digging in the sand, and running in the gulf.
The scariest moment of my life happened on December 11, 2012. I've previously written about that day. I wrote about it from the waiting area as we waited to hear how my wife would pull through invasive brain surgery. She pulled through just fine. She is a warrior.
We had a wonderful split level home outside of Advance that we realized wasn't meeting our needs, so we sold it and moved to a beautiful piece of property with a single wide trailer on it. Not the best living conditions, but definitely not the worst. The end goal there was to build a home with more practical space on that property. That home will be complete in two weeks. We hand picked every detail about that home. Part of hand picking those details meant many trips to Menards, Lowes, Home Depot, and trips to St. Louis to shop at Cabinets To Go and Lumber Liquidators. During one of those trips, which we were fortunate enough to get some alone time on, we made a stop in Clayton at Pastaria. Highly recommended. We sat on the sidewalk, eating and talking and watching some construction workers use a crane to position a large beam. Then we watched some oblivious teenagers walk right through the middle of the construction. You should have seen the looks they got from the workers. Not that they noticed. They were too busy looking at their phones.
One of my favorite memories of our new house will be this: during the Perseid meteor shower this summer, our basement had just been poured. Madelyn had never seen a shooting star. So, we took her up, laid on blankets and watched shooting stars from our basement floor. A memory etched forever into our minds.
I say all of that to say this: My wife is very important to me. She completes me. I've taken advantage of her being our planner, our organizer, our engine and not taken the time to publicly or privately acknowledge her for what she does for our little family. I've not taken time out of routine to plan things for her, to show her how much she means to me and how much I need her. For that, I'm sorry.
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