BEST $40 I'VE SPENT IN A LONG TIME

Shortly after Dan and I were married, we bought our first house. We spent three years doing projects together. Re-landscaping the yard, building decks, and re-modeling the kitchen. We even pretended we were on the hit show ‘Trading spaces’ and tackled our downstairs rec-room. We loved spending weekends working together on a project, we would go get a coffee from our favorite barista, go to the hardware store to get supplies (always planned out ahead of time by my husband, the perfectionist), then go home and get started. Sometimes we would pick things that would only take one day like buying planters and plants, other times it would be an entire weekend project like painting and re-decorating a room, and other times it would take a couple of weekends to complete (that darn front deck took 6 months!). 

We always had so much fun doing those things together… just spending time together completing a shared vision. 

Then….we had kids. 

When the kids were toddlers, I would watch Dan go outside and do yard work, or paint a room, or whatever needed to be done. You see, you can’t just set a small child down to get things done. You know the first thing they will do is something dangerous like go toddling off toward the street, or dive head first into the paint can. So my job (only because Dan is WAY more handy than I) would be to follow the children around while Dan worked. 

Now that the kids are a little older, going to our favorite barista gets expensive (no, my kids don’t drink coffee! But they do love smoothies.) And the hardware store is a completely stressful venture when your children think everything is a jungle gym (I have boys). Not to mention actually getting to the project…let me narrate:

“Mom, he wont give me that toy! Mom, I’m Hungry; Mom, he’s doing <insert something he shouldn’t be doing>; Mom, watch what I can do; Mom, I hurt myself;

Mom, he hurt me; Mom, I’m still hungry; Mom, he said my hair is blue!...”

Yesterday God led me to do something I wouldn’t normally do to get work done… I got a babysitter.

Dan and I needed to do a clean-up project at our rental house (the first house we bought when we were married), Admittedly, I was thinking that this great idea was to spare me from having to hear all the noise that I typed above, but as we worked together it hit me how much I missed just working next to him. Having that shared vision and accomplishing it. Just me and him…getting things done in record time with out really having to orchestrate anything. 

It was better than date night! At least it triggered an emotion in me that was better than any dinner out could do.  

Thank you God for knowing who I am and what I need. Thank you for helping me find new ways to re-connect and keep things new. 


ADRIAN KASHPORENKO