I don’t talk about this much but with mothers day being last sunday its been on my mind a lot over the last several days. When my oldest two sons biological mother & I split up it was rough. I knew I had done the right thing for all three of us but trying to figure out how to do things as a single dad with two kids, one of whom was just a few months old, was challenging. I had a lot of help from my family while I juggled shifts at the ambulance station as an EMT with grave yard shifts at the police station as a 911 dispatcher. The kids rarely saw their biological mom so it really was just the three of us & a lot of visits to grandma’s house.

A friend of mine from high school was getting married & when I got the invitation I decided to go, I won’t mention that I unknowingly wore all black to their wedding! 🙂 At the wedding I ran into so many people I knew & ended up getting a lot of the ‘How you doing buddy?’ conversations. Samantha, now my wife, & I ran into each other not knowing both of us were divorced as we had been couple friends with our ex spouses years earlier. I just remember it being so nice that someone understood a little bit of what it was like to go through what I was going through. Granted she was 3 years younger, in her very early twenties at that time, & a cool chick living in the city so she didn’t know about being neck deep in kids but she did know all about how it felt to be betrayed &, lets be honest, pretty bitter about relationships. We sat talking about everything from what happened in each of our marriages to what we had been doing the last several years, to talking about the kids. Hind sights 20/20 neither one of us realized just how good it felt to be around each other until on the drive home. I tried to play it cool & wait the appropriate amount of days (according to the sex in the city unwritten rule book) then I sent her a message on MySpace…yeah, MySpace. I’ll spare you all the mushy details but it wasn’t long after that I realized that all women are in fact NOT evil! I know, who would have thought!?! It was a very…very short time later before we both popped the L word it was all over after that, I was done. When you find someone out of your league who you are with out a doubt sure is way to good for you & for some reason they love you back…lock that shit up! 🙂

The reason this has all been on my mind around mothers day is how much these kids have been through, good & bad. They were born to a mother who, without going into it to deep here, just wasn’t equipped to be their mother. I remember having a conversation with her about how I wanted full custody & she replied ‘Take them, I don’t want them.’ After she was gone & I sat on the couch in my super crappy apartment in the ghetto I just remember thinking about how hard things were going to be & how different life was going to be. I thought about how hard growing up with just me was going to be for them & how I would never let another person in to our little tribe. I think back to that time sitting on the couch when I strong but weak, brave but scared, & sure but totally unsure. Flash forward to this mothers day, all these years later, when we celebrate the woman who was a fun loving 20 something who gave all that up to move in with three stinky boys & make a real family out of us. We have a son together who is just as perfect as the other two, we own a successful business, we are together pretty much 24/7 but are still best friends, & despite my adding of several…several pounds onto my midsection over the years I am still somehow found attractive by this woman who remains so far out of my league that every time she says ‘I love you’ its like I won the lottery. How much life changes. No matter how hard things are, if you don’t know what to do or where to go, even if things are broken in your life its crazy to me how everything can be changed by love. I really appreciate her even though I don’t show it enough. I really love her even though I don’t show it enough. I really appreciate her & I’m going to show it enough from now on.

Okay, so you’ve read this far so I also want to say thanks to all of you who have been watching our new web show on YouTube. If you haven’t taken the time to check it out please do! We will be posting them regularly, it’s been really fun. We talk about whats going on in life, we answer questions people leave in the comments for send us, & also I let Jayden talk about a bit of what he is into so there is always going to be some Doctor Who, MineCraft, & Yu-Gi-O talk on there as well.