Ok, Ok, Ok, yes, I’m still alive!!!! I’m sorry I haven’t posted in a month---but that actually reflects a good thing. You see, I have been so involved with celebrating 25 incredible years of marriage with Jomay, taking kids tubing, entertaining company at the Nook---that I just haven’t spent much time on-line. Jomay and I just returned from a Bed and Breakfast in Saginaw, Michigan where we celebrated our 25th. The B and B is a restored 1920’s mansion and we rented the biggest suite they had. Jo Jo had talked to a friend about it before we went and she asked “so are you prepared?” Jomay took that to heart and brought champagne, chocolates, my favorite snacks and even bought a new very soft pink nightie that she wore. Needless to say we enjoyed the hot tub and I enjoyed the nightie very much. But more importantly, really, were the long walks along the river, in the gardens, the dinner together in the dining room which we had to OURSELVES. The executive chef came out twice just to talk and asked how things were. We really re-discovered how much we love each other, more than ever. I’m reminded of several biblical references about “preparing”. How the room for the last supper was prepared, how many years and experiences it took Moses to be prepared, how many years the Hebrews wandered in the desert before they were prepared to enter the promised land. It is a tremendous blessing to be prepared to meet my wife and celebrate our life together. I feel as if I am prepared for another 25 years. I certainly pray and hope for that. This move has not been easy, being away for days at a time. However, the absence has only strengthened our resolve. Yeah, maybe absence makes the heart grow fonder thing applies, I don’t know. But Jomay has just always been the gal that gets better looking inside and out the more I get to know her. Just when I think I have discovered everything about her, some new turn of her face, or thing she says, captivates me as if for the first time. There was a journal in the Suite we stayed in that previous guests had entries in. There were many stories of hoping the stay at the B and B would re-kindle romance, heal the pain of an affair---many guests were not married, they were living “in sin” so it goes. As I read thru the pages of people saying they were married there at the B and B, or came back to stay where they were married---most were married for 2, 5, or the longest, 7 years. Wow, I thought to myself, 25 years is long by today’s standards. Sure, I know couples married for 50, even 70 years. Unfortunately, that is the exception anymore. That is a good word for us, the “exception”, in love more than ever after 3 kids, career changes, drama and trauma that we all experience living this life. Thank God we were prepared in some way for all of it, Thank God we are prepared to make this move and weather every storm. Thank God he gave me my soul mate. Thank God he prepared me to move to Florida and go to college there and find the most beautiful woman in the whole world.