Tag Archives: marriage

Be Married for 26 Years

May 3, 2023 Be Enough Leave a comment

May 3rd, 2023

Today is our 26th wedding anniversary plus two days of me being 49 years old. The best part is that Sexy Neck’s birthday is two days from now, yes it is a fun week of celebration, at least this is what we thought when we were university students on our semester ended in April and Steve was getting ready to head to the National Team.

When Sexy Neck and I got engaged in November of 1996 at the West Edmonton Mall we were talking about a possible wedding date. We thought it would be hilarious if May the 3rd fell on a Saturday in 1997 so that could be our wedding date! Well, God knew that our brains would think like that and yes, you guessed it, our wedding day was on Saturday, May 3rd, 1997.

Sidenote: Sexy Neck was going to propose at the top of the rollercoaster at WEM, but we ended up getting in a disagreement because I didn’t want to go on it. He ended up putting the personally-designed ring in an ice cream, which I thought was the sweetest thing ever! I was shocked.

May 1

May 3

May 5

The beginning of May is a week of celebration!

On top of thinking about the date in which we decided, or God decided, for us to be married, I have been reflecting on being married for more than a quarter of a century.

It’s all about “choice”!

Yup, choice.

Not sex, love, infatuation, coercing, settling, changing someone, manipulation… it’s simply about a personal choice made daily by each person in a marriage.

I remember in the pre-marriage counselling that we did before May 3rd, 1997, the counsellor talked about marriage as being about a “daily choice”. As I sit here today, I couldn’t agree more.

My personal choices that I think about often are:

Do I bring out the best or worst in my husband?
How do I listen and also feel heard?
How do I show love even when I don’t feel the emotion of love?
How do I support my husband’s personal life journey even when it adversely affects my own life?
Do I want to be my husband’s biggest cheerleader or the “bring him downer” in his life?
How can I share my needs and also consider my husband’s needs?
How do you live with someone who has very different standard of timelines and schedules? (We shared a computer when doing our Bachelor of Education degrees. It worked beautifully because I always finished my projects a week ahead of time and he did everything the night before. And guess who always beat me in the marks department, yup Steve! Probably because I always stayed up with him and proofread all of his work. HAHA)

Choice.

Love.

Partnership.

Best friend.

Marriage.

Choice.

26 years baby!

Have a wonderful Wednesday folks and love what you do!

xoxo Joanna

author, blogger, Family, friendship, musings, radical sabbatical, time, Wordsmith

Be Having No Time

February 20, 2023 Be Enough 3 Comments

I don’t have time to talk about you because if you are an important person in my life I am talking TO you.

I don’t have time to worry about if you have lost or gained weight, I am 100% focused on my own health.

I don’t have time to ponder what you are doing with your life, but I am praying that you would have a life filled with love, joy and peace.

I don’t have time to wonder why you left my life and want nothing to do with me as I am completely enveloped with love by the people who choose to spend time with me.

I don’t have any time to think about who you love or want to marry, I am focused on making my own relationships better.

I don’t have time to wonder why my family of origin has fallen far apart since my mom died. The rich relationships that have filled this Grand Canyon gap from my mom’s death and the ‘chosen family’ who shower us with encouragement are greater than any gift I could imagine.

I don’t have time to judge what you do with your money, your time or your relationships because God is showing me all the good He is doing through knowing you.

I don’t have time. I don’t believe in busy. I don’t believe in missing anyone.

I create time.

Busy is a swear word.

If I miss you, I reach out to you. The only people I miss are dead. They definitely don’t have any time.

Make time for what’s important to you folks.

Have an epic Monday and love what you do.

xoxo Joanna

Family, God, Parenting

Be Introducing Sexy Neck

September 9, 2014 Be Enough 5 Comments

This is Sexy Neck, aka Steve, one year before we got married. (1996)

We met playing volleyball, living 785 kilometres apart, then dated long distance for four and a half years living 298 kilometres apart. We had never lived in the same city until we got engaged.

Sexy Neck is first and foremost kind. Also very athletic. Intelligent. Loves God. Witty. Sexy. Artistic (most people don’t know he can draw and learned to play guitar by ear). Hardworking. Dog lover. Gardener. Handy. He’s an idea guy. I think he tells me about a new idea every day!

And he is incredibly “cool”. He loved taking “Selfie’s” before selfies were selfies.

Here we are back in 1996!

Full of gratitude for this man.

His strong shoulders.

The love for his boys.

His passion and care for me.

Sexy Neck, are you blushing?

P.S. We ran into a friend’s mom that we had never met before, but she had been reading the blog. She giggled when she saw Steve, called him Sexy Neck then asked to see his neck. It was one of the sweetest moments in our new neighbourhood with an old volleyball friend’s mom!

Family, health & fitness

Be Having a Trophy Husband

July 20, 2014 Be Enough 1 Comment

As I sell Green Tea Hawaii in ECity, Sexy Neck is at home with our wee boys.

This is the first time in five years (since CC was born!) that I have done any type of paid work and the first time I have ever sold any product in my life. I am completely out of my comfort zone, humbled, confused at people’s purchasing choices and having a great time. I have met incredible people.

A Tibetan monk who is giving insight into the health of the Green Tea Hawaii owner.

A wonderful woman selling deep sea lotions and body scrubs.

A mom selling tights for her daughter’s new company.

Kind.

Authentic.

People.

Try to sell their wares.

Thirty year veterans of the fair.

Newbies like me!

Sexy Neck, my trophy husband, has been holding down the home front.

Here is the text I got about their day today:
Tried to get haircuts,
costco,
ate cones,
built a pulley system for the fort, worked a wee bit on the side yard, cleaned blown done branches,
swam,
couple movies,
dinner,
magic show, books,
power outage…

I wonder if all these wonderful activities caused the power to go out?

Doesn’t that sound like a fun day?

Side note: Praying for safety for everyone fighting the forest fires to the west of our city.

Boys, Family

Be Marrying Your Mommy

February 6, 2014 Be Enough Leave a comment

Sweet moments with our middle guy.

CC video:

Who are you going to Marry?

I have already been praying for my boys’ partners. I feel that who you chose to marry is one of the biggest decisions a person can make.

I chose one pair of my mom’s ear rings for each of their partners. I pray that they can feel mom’s love, kindness, thoughtfulness and adventurous spirit.

Lots of interesting conversations here as we row our boats of grief together.

It is a beautiful, rich family time.

Boys, Family, men, Parenting

Be Laughing at What Your Husband Says

December 13, 2013 Be Enough Leave a comment

Happy advent – day number thirteen! Can you believe that there are less than two weeks until Christmas? I love this simple time of preparing.

Today, I have decided to focus on laughter, amidst the vomit (see tomorrow’s post!)

Sexy Neck has a wonderful sense of humour that produces great big belly laughs in our house.

Over the next few weeks leading to Christmas, I hope to:

– be in my body, not a mind with a body trying to follow it.
– breathe
– notice
– laugh*
* I am going to use Sexy Neck to help me with the last one.

Here are a few ditty’s from my hubby to start us off:

“It’s official JC knows more French than me!” (JC is six and we live in a ‘bilingual’ country, French/English)

“I could see buying it if we had two more children to use it afterwards.”

” “You guys look great, but Ron couldn’t you at least comb your hair for the event? Jeesh! Not that I’m jealous you got Gramp’s hair gene or anything!” (To his brothers Christmas work party photo)

“I guess you can’t yell at a child lying in bed singing about Jesus!”

“Boys you need to behave.” says dad while wearing his school bear mascot head.

Boys, health & fitness, men, Parenting

Be Doing A Seven Minute Workout

October 21, 2013 Be Enough 2 Comments

Last night Sexy Neck and I started a twelve week challenge to try to get a tad more healthy and “move or lose it”.

I have gained thirty pounds in the last five months. Sexy Neck has been nursing a sore back and trying to recover from Achilles surgery. Here is the story. It is time. The clock is ticking.

Back in May, the New York Times picked up a story from a health journal talking about the benefits of a structured seven minute workout. You do each exercise for thirty seconds, you don’t needs any fancy equipment and after seven minutes of ~~pain~~ um hard work, you are done!

Sounds good? I will let you know.

Here we are last night after day one:

Summary: There was a lot of groaning, sweat and muscular fatigue. Today, I am having difficulty lifting my tea mug and walking up stairs. It was incredible to workout with my man, like the ‘olden’ days. It was worth every one of those seven minutes.

*We decided to do it twice! Who’s idea was that? We also included a warm-up, stretching and some kegels and Achilles exercises for each of our individual programs.

Here’s the boys working out with dada doing squats. CC exclaimed: “Look at my muscles I just got!”

Family, men, Parenting

Be With One’s Kinsmen

September 16, 2013 Be Enough 1 Comment

Kinsmen = One of a person’s blood relations.

We have been fortunate to move to a city where many of my husband’s kinsmen live. These cousins are interesting, diverse, hilarious and extremely supportive. It also helps in the hand-me down and parenting department that they have older children. Yeah for great ‘experienced’ parents!

Last week, we asked the cousins to come over for a swim/sundae party with the ulterior motive that we needed a very heavy workbench moved out of the house.