Shane Life

Alli and Ashley were on the local news last night as a part of a special story about one of their graduating senior dancers. It’s a very cool story about a great dancer and an amazing young woman who has overcome a lot to get to where she is. Thanks to Phil Witt and Fox for doing the story on Merit. It was really well done and captures her very well.

Alli is quoted saying about Merit:

“it’s not just the package as far as her talent. But she has the character and the leadership and the kindness. She really is the complete package.”

The supporting story can be found here.

Love you, Alli. So glad you ignored the movie and said yes anyway.

I’m not going to go so far as to say that I HATE cheerleaders…

But after spending a day cramped in the bleachers of a high school gymnasium (because my wife and her sister are the coaches of a high school dance team) and hearing:

Goooood job good job!

Goooood job good job!

Goooood job good job!

A VERY GOOD JOB!

over and over and OVER again…I will say that the level of hate that I have for their CHEERS is immeasurable.

I’ve never been shy about my adoration for the cooler months. The changing leaves, snuggling up under a blanket when your house is 62 degrees, scarves, football, the holidays – all of this and more makes late fall and winter my favorite time of year.

Another thing that makes this time of year great is soup.

Soup is warm. Soup is tasty. Soup is even healthy. (I refuse to say that it’s Mmm Mmm Good).

Tonight, Alli put a soup in the crockpot before she took off for practice and when I got home, I walked into a house that smelled like her tasty Mexican soup concoction. Corn, beans, stock, tomatoes, onions, peppers, garlic, cumin and some other awesomeness topped with some cheese and corn chips…are you drooling yet?

So good.

I love soup and I love my wife for making it.

My lovely wife celebrates another turn around the sun today. Let’s have fun!

Love you, babe. Hope your day is awesome.

Now that our official anniversary is over, I wanted to just take a quick crack at what the next 8 years might bring…

1. A trip to Hawaii to celebrate our 10-year anniversary.
2. A trip back to Europe – at least to revisit Paris and Venice and check out new places like Prague, Germany and London.
3. New cars. I somehow don’t think that our cars are going to make it another 8 years (as much as we’d like them to).
4. New careers, although that one might just be for me…we’ll see what happens.
5. You finally getting recognized for the brilliant artist that you are.
6. Welcoming more nieces and nephews into the world.
7. I hope that we get to counsel and marry more couples…I’ve had a blast doing that with you.
8. Changes to our house – new carpet, landscaping and more!
9. I predict that in the next 8 years that blogging will fall by the wayside somehow. It’s totally jumped the shark (or nuked the fridge, whichever you prefer).
10. And much much more awesomeness…

I’m constantly questioning whether our lives can get better – whether we can be more insanely happy than we already are – and I’m always amazed that we manage to be happier and more blessed. I can’t imagine the next 8 years being better than these first 8 have been, but I’m going to expect the best because I’ve yet to be disappointed.

Love you.

…I married my best friend.

Happy Anniversary, Alli.

Today, People Magazine posted a story online (I got the link from CNN, I swear) in which Vanessa Hudgens (she of High School Musical fame) shares the “secret to her great relationship with co-star Zac Efron.”

There are so many things wrong with this story, but I’d like to tackle her “secret.”

“If you really love someone, you shouldn’t have to work at it,” the actress tells Cosmo Girl! for its July/August issue, reports Entertainment Tonight. “You finish each others’ sentences and have the same sense of humor.”

First of all, it should be assumed that we all know this is a 19-year-old talking about the secret of her great relationship with her 20-year-old co-star. It’s beyond ridiculousness. Hudgens and Efron have been dating since October of 2007. For those of you that are bad with math, that’s less than 12 months.

While a great relationship should not feel like work, you still have to work at it. If I’m going to take a celebrity’s sage advice about relationships, I’ll stick with my boy Will Smith who said:

“Counseling, individual learning, books, conflict resolution,” Smith confided. “It is a full time job to try and be happy. People tend to think that they can go to work for 50 or 60 hours a week and then come home and their relationship is just supposed to work.”

That’s the truth. Why would you spend less time working at your relationship than you do on your career? I know that People’s business is selling magazines and driving traffic to their site, but it’s really irresponsible for them to prop up this lackadaisical attitude toward relationships, especially from a teenage pop star who has been in her supposed “serious” relationship less than a year.

Over the past several months, Alli and I have been doing some pre-marital counseling for a couple that I will be marrying in late July. It’s been a terrific experience because out of all the things I’m good at, I think I’m probably best at being married. It’s not a skill that will necessarily lead to a long, illustrious career, but it sure makes my life a lot more enjoyable.

One of the things that I’ve found is a constant in the couples that I look to as relationship mentors in my life is that if you want to make a relationship or a marriage work, you should work harder at your relationship than you would in your career. When you do, it won’t feel like work. You’ll be happier, your significant other will be happier, and you’ll find that working at a relationship can be the most rewarding thing that you’ll ever do. If I had but one piece of advice to give to couples, that would be it.

That, and don’t get relationship advice from 19-year-olds in People Magazine.

Some people have the ability to take time away from their spouse in stride. Whether it’s business or pleasure, some couples don’t have a problem spending time apart. Some say it’s healthy for their relationships to take a break and others have jobs that require travel.

Me…I hate time away from Alli. All I do with my free time is watch bad movies (this week’s was Semi-Pro), spend PayPal money and try to win an entry into World Series of Poker on FullTiltPoker.com. Yeah…I’m that guy.

This week was one of those guaranteed times that we spend apart every year. It was the dreaded week of drill team camp, where Alli goes to Emporia State with her sister and the high school dance team that they coach and is basically incommunicado.

She got home today and it was like my body felt normal again. It’s amazing when you find that person who actually has a physical calming presence on you. When you find it, you don’t want to let it go. So I won’t.