Claire and Phil

After my last post, some of you may be thinking, “Uh oh, there’s trouble in paradise.”

But no one ever claimed this was paradise.

Today is our 26th wedding anniversary. The marriage got off to a rocky start when both of us caught a stomach bug after the wedding. Me, on the plane out to Hawaii. Him, a couple days later while snorkeling in the Pacific. (Don’t spend too long visualizing those two statements. They are not pretty.)

96% of our married life has been spent as parents. Anyone who thinks having children makes marriage easier is sadly mistaken.  In our first year of marriage, we used to go grocery shopping together. Isn’t that cute? I think that’s the last time we had date night.

There is a significant age gap (5 1/2 years) between Heather and Nicole. That’s because in the middle of that gap we almost called it quits. What turned it around for us? I’m not sure, but I think down deep, we both thought it was worth salvaging.

I know my family wonders about us. They are not sure what we are going to do once we have an empty nest. My brother has previously stated that if anything happens, the family is keeping Moody. I’m actually good with that, as long as they keep me too.

We do have our differences. He looks at the Instagram posts from our NC family members in amazement and envy since he would like to golf as much as they do. On the other hand, I very much enjoy moving bushes and rocks.

Watching the local teams is something we both like to do. However, I tend to be optimistic overall and accepting of losses. He, on the other hand, is non-stop critical.  For example, one year all I heard was “Varitek can’t hit. We need to get rid of him.” And the next year, “I can’t believe we got rid of Tek. We need him.” And Pedroia was never going to make it as a big leaguer. (He won another gold glove yesterday.)

We’ve been compared to Claire and Phil Dunphy of Modern Family, and I would have to agree with that comparison. For instance, there are a number of scenes from the recent Marco Polo episode that hit home:

Yes, he tries to get us to play games that are far too young for the kids.

Yes, I would rent my own room to get away from the chaos.

Yes, he would fall on a grenade for us.

Yes, from time to time, I will call out “Marco”.