Who would have thought that 11 years could go by so quickly? Just 11 short years ago I was a young kid of 21. I’d only been home from my mission for about 6 months and I had myself a brand new Valentine. I’d met her through a blind date and even though she lived half way to Reno (it seemed like it at the time) I was willing to make the long drive cause she was hot and she had a beautiful smile. I wasn’t too sure what her family thought of me, but they hadn’t tried to run me off yet so I figured I’d just keep hanging around until they did. Fortunately for me that never happened and now here we are 11 years, 7 or 8 moves (depending on how you count them), 3 jobs and 4 kids later. During that time we’ve had our ups and downs, but one thing has never changed… my Valentine is still hot and she still has a beautiful smile. Not to mention the fact that she’s a great mom, a great wife and my best friend. One thing that has changed over the years is that we’ve sort of gotten into the habit of being pretty low-key when it comes to celebrating holidays (and birthdays), but I hope she knows that even though I don’t always make a big deal about it, I would be utterly lost without her. She’s the yin to my yang and she provides balance to my universe. Many things have changed in the last 11 years but no matter what other changes might come our way in the future, I will always need her and love her with all my heart.

Thanks for being my eternal Valentine Em.

Well, I’ve been jobless for about a month now (technically longer if you count the 3 weeks of paid leave they gave me) and I have to say, its driving me nuts. I suppose it would be fun to be jobless as long as you were independently wealthy so you could do something with your free time, but when your whole existence revolves around looking for a new job, it gets old quick. It has been nice spending more time with my kids, but I think my wife is ready for me to go back to work (as am I). So until then, I’ll just keep looking and I suppose maybe I’ll follow the twins example and just DANCE!!!

So this year’s Halloween activities weren’t exactly what we had planned, but we still ended up with more candy than we know what to do with. This year the kids dressed up as Sharpay from High School Musical (Hailey), Dorothy (Mallory), Little Bo Peep (Annie) and Jack was a Sheep. We had a couple days worth of Halloweening including a party at Grandma’s house and a pretty crazy round of trunk-or-treating at the park.

Well, nobody else was going to eat em.