I am a firm believer in learning the love language of your spouse, and for him to learn yours. My husband and I have similar — and different — love languages. Knowing our differences has helped us communicate better and show each other love in the way we’re wired to receive it. That said, there are things that I do to show my husband love which has nothing to do with his love language.

1. Cook him a good dinner. I am a good cook, and am a food blogger. I love to cook and to bake and my husband loves to try new recipes and eat anything in the sweets department (chocolate is his favorite).

Read the rest of this entry

A few years ago, my husband decided to start hunting. He and a bunch of his friends — and his brother — took a gun safety course that incorporated the basics of hunting skills. Hunting is now a part of our lives, because he harvests game and I cook said game for dinner.

When I post about his hunting (or the chickens we raise) on my personal site, the comments are usually positive. There are a few people who say that they could never eat game or butcher chickens … but they’re happy to buy meat from the store.

We’re doing our best to be sustainable, as are many others. Hunting seems to have a stigma, which seems odd as a wife of someone who hunts. He’s just doing the dirty deed, instead of sending me to a farm or organic market to buy it.

I’d love to hear your thoughts about hunting and eating game. Concerns? Questions? Fears?

*I spared you from sharing the photo of the bear — yes, a bear — that my husband harvested the other day. Bear makes for great sausage.

I will often peruse other sites with relationship columns to see what people are talking about and it’s usually disheartening. If I were a single women reading all of those posts, I would deduce that all men are uncaring, incapable of cleaning anything, and can’t assist in helping to raise their own flesh and blood. I would then give up any dreams of meeting a good man and adopt five cats from the nearest animal shelter.

I get that headlines are what make people click through to read an article, but when I read titles about how a Dad cleaning the minivan is so HOT because it never happens, and how a Dad does the laundry it is a MIRACLE, and how when a Dad cooks a meal is is praise-worthy, I wonder what year we’re living in. It’s 2013, but you’d think it was 1953 based on the stuff being written.

Read the rest of this entry

I left for college at the age of eighteen, and spent two years at college with stints at home during the summer. I decided to finish my education in the big city of Vancouver and moved there at the age of twenty to do so. I worked, I went to school, and I had to balance my budget in order to eat and to pay my rent and to occasionally buy new clothes.

Read the rest of this entry

My husband is a dog guy, 110%. He also loves to manage our one hundred (ONE HUNDRED) chickens and sell the eggs to friends, family, and acquaintances who want farm fresh eggs. We have two dogs, who follow him around like, well, puppy dogs and he kind of likes their adoration.

We have two cats and he could care less about them (or so he says). One cat belongs to our son — The Cat Whisperer — and the other cat, a kitten, came to live with us six weeks ago.  I’ve never been a “cat person” and yet I am completely smitten with her.

(So is our large dog — see above photo.)

How does it work in your relationship? Are you dog people? Or cat people? Or a mix?

This is based on what woos me, of course, but I’m sure that some of you ladies will agree on at least a few of them.

1. Tell her she’s beautiful. See also: smart, sexy, hot, attractive, etc. You probably think it multiple times a day. Use your words and tell her.

2. Encourage her in every way. If she wants to pick up a new hobby or start a new venture, she needs you as her biggest cheerleader.
Read the rest of this entry

Last September, my husband and I enrolled our three kids in piano lessons. Neither of us could play the piano — though my husband is gifted in that he can sit down and tinker and it sounds pretty — but he’d taken one year of lessons back when he was five and that was it.

Once the kids were signed up, he said that he’s like to take lessons as well. They aren’t cheap, but he wanted to learn how to read and play music in addition to his random playing, and so he started taking weekly lessons as well. I told myself that I would learn from helping the kids practice, but without the weekly commitment to be at a lesson, I let my husband manage practice time.

Read the rest of this entry

My husband and I celebrated thirteen years of marriage yesterday. We’re no experts, but here are a few things that have helped us get to here.

1. Always kiss goodbye.

2. Say I love you when you kiss goodbye, and also say it randomly.

3. Laugh together, often and much.

4. Talk about what is bugging you, before it festers and boils into something more than it needs to be.

Read the rest of this entry

This coming Monday, my husband and I will celebrate thirteen years of marriage. Thirteen! Our wedding day seems like it was yesterday and a very long time ago, all at the same time. Our family has morphed from just the two of us to having three kids, two dogs, two cats, and one hundred chickens. Crazy.

Read the rest of this entry

Mother’s Day can be a hard day for many women, for many different reasons. It’s an awkward one for me, because I’ve been estranged from my own mother for three years now. She is an alcoholic, though that’s not why we don’t talk anymore. Three years ago, in our weekly phone chat, she tore into me for three hours while I tried to talk through what she was lobbing at me. It all boils down to the fact that she’s not happy with her own life, because she was angry at me for being happily married and about my “perfect fucking children.”

I forgave her immediately, because forgiveness means that you are free from the anger and the hatred. It’s not about the offender; it’s about you. I have reached out a few times via phone and Facebook, but she’s yet to respond. It’s okay, really. Because I’ve forgiven her and let it go, I will go weeks without even thinking about her. That may sound heartless, but it’s exactly the opposite. She made it clear that she hates me for being happy, and I made peace with the fact that she simply doesn’t love me.

Well, maybe she does love me, but her actions make no sense to me. I have three children of my own and I would do anything — ANYTHING — for them. They are beautiful and they are intelligent and they are loving and they are amazing and they are my heart. I would never (ever ever) yell hatred at them or wish them anything but good things.

My experience with my Mom has made me a better Mother, I think. I want my kids to know how much they are loved, beyond a shadow of a doubt. I tell them that I love them, multiple times a day. I hug them as much as they’ll let me. I tell them that they can do anything that they put their minds to. I schlep them to dance and to youth group and to running races. I do my best to be the best Mom that they could ever have. Not a perfect Mom, no, but the best Mom for them.

Mother’s Day for me was about me a little bit — who doesn’t like the homemade crafts? — but it was also about them. We spent the afternoon enjoying the sunshine in our backyard and then we had an enjoyable (and hilarious) dinner out. I can’t believe that I have these three beautiful beings who I get to be a Mom to.

How was your Mother’s Day? Is it a hard day for you?