Team work

Running a household and a business, along with raising two little kids is not always easy. We have a budget, business expenses, household expenses and so much more to have to figure out. When you first get married, things are wonderful and looking long term at all the joys of budgets, parenting, and general grown up stuff is really not in the forefront or our minds. Yet, 7 years later here we are in the midst of it all. There are days when its hard and months where we go over budget. There are days when we look at each other and wonder how in the world are these two kids going to listen and mind when we, ourselves, are still trying to figure out parenting. But with all that said, I wouldn't want to do it with anyone else.

Sure, you can think about what it would be like to have your own money, live alone and spend what you want on what you want and not have to share with anyone. But I wouldn't have it any other way. My life is so much more complete now than it was 10 years ago. Even though living within a budget has its good and bad months, I still would rather share that with my husband than do it alone.

There is something to be said about teamwork. We often say around here "Team Ray!" We do it with our kids and with each other. We want our kids to know that we operate as a team during hard times, good times...all the time! Its nice to know that you can talk to someone who will help you work through the problems. Its awesome to have someone that you can look at and say, "I don't know how to deal with X's attitude" or "O's continued lack of listening skills". I love that we can sit down and talk, be frustrated and be upset at the situation, but still love each other unconditionally through it all. Its not ever his fault or my fault, its our fault and our solutions that get us through the rough patches. And they aren't all rough patches. We have a lot of confused patches and questionable patches. We are constantly having new patches of "what do we call this one?" Our kids are entering different stages in life. We are moving out of the toddler years and into big kid years where attitudes, opinions and questions have become a daily part of our lives. And we don't always have the answers. But we have each other. To me, that is the best tool we have.

We don't always agree on the solution, but depending on the problem and who's more invested in it, we have found that we surrender, we follow and we back up whoevers solution is the one we are going with. We even have times where that solution didn't work and we say, "ok, what was yours? Mine failed. #parentingfail!" (another common saying in our house) But I constantly thank God for the person He let me marry. I am in constant awe of His grace and the blessing I have of getting to spend the rest of my life with someone who will help me tackle life's problems. I love that we are apart of something bigger than bills, parenting, and the daily grind. We get to raise two beautiful, smart, independent thinking children who are funny, creative and just pure awesome! We get to share in life together! My husband and I are constantly laughing, trying to be goofy for each other and finding common interests together as we age and find new things we like. We aren't the same people we were when we got married. Our lives have changed, our interests have developed and our priorities are different, but our hearts for one another are bigger, our passion for each other is stronger and we have a much firmer stance in what we want in life together.

Life is messy, not easy, sometimes down right unfair and hard. But having a companion, a soul mate, a friend, a teammate to go through it with you, makes all the difference in the world. It makes the dark times brighter, the bright times better and overall, makes life worth living!

#TeamRay