What is a mom worth?

What is a wife and stay at home mom worth? That’s the question that has been raised in a couple of venues I have been in recently. Now, I am not talking about the love aspect, because love is priceless. I can’t and won’t put a price on my love for my wife, that just IS.

My beautiful wife and I both worked when we were first wed a couple of months ago, but due to totally opposite and conflicting schedules, money that wasn’t worth the time, and just her physical well being, we decided it would be best for the family if she stayed at home. So now she is a stay at home mom and housewife and I absolutely love it. Money is tight, but the girls have their mom all day, which I believe is important. She isn’t taxing her body like she was before, which always worried the hell out of me. Also, she doesn’t have to stress and worry about her safety being a waitress working a graveyard shift.

To me, this is all priceless.

Lately she has shown some concern over money as things are tight, to which I have this to say: Babe, you are contributing more than you think. I don’t worry about things like I used to, we will get through the tight finances and debt and we will be okay. Don’t worry about not bringing home a paycheck. You do things that are just as important, if not more so, on a daily basis. I love you.

This article says these things in a much better way than I can, so I will share it for your reading pleasure: http://www.focusonthefamily.com/parenting/parenting-roles/value-of-stay-at-home-moms/the-value-of-stay-at-home-moms

Now, if some of you disagree with me and this article and think that this is all easy and stay at homes mom have it easy, I say try and do it without one. See how hard it can get. Better yet, hire out to other people. Get yourself people that do all the things a stay at home mom does and see how much it costs you. The average stay at home mom puts in 96.5 hours of work a week according to Salary.com and Forbes. Imagine paying a housekeeper, a cook, a launderer, a driver for errands, (etc.) for all of this and then having them on call for nights too. Yup, it would run you a huge bill.

In the end though, as I already said, it is all priceless. You can’t put a value on what a mom and a wife does, it will never come out right. Just love them and help them when they need it.

Birthday

Today is my birthday, I am 34 years old. I don’t really know where the last ten or so years have gone, they are very much a blur. I know much of my early through mid twenties was spent in a haze of drinking my way through nights and spending my days working for peanuts. Mid to late twenties was getting myself together and going back to school, getting my heart broke, starting a job that has become my career (at least currently), moving out of my codependent mothers apartment, and just being me without someone there trying to tell me how to think and feel. Late twenties to early thirties was becoming more established in my career, reconnecting with old friends, losing old friends, getting my heart broke again, and then finding the woman and girls who would become my wife, daughters, and the loves of my life. I gained 20lbs, lost my dad, gained ten more pounds, and then got married.

My life has been easier than many other peoples in this world, but I know people that tell me I had to grow up way to fast and that I had it hard. All I know is that the preceding 34 years made me who I am as I sit here, killing time at work, writing this, and wanting to go home to my family. All in all, the 30’s have probably been the best part of my life so far.

Maybe it just gets better from here?

She…..

She is beautiful, but not just physically. She has an immense inner beauty from being loving, compassionate, big hearted, a wonderful mother, a friend, a confidant, and a genuinely good person.

She has an inner strength that she doesn’t realize. Overcoming many personal obstacles and working to overcome more.

She has more intelligence than she gives herself credit for.

Her eyes change with her mood.

Her eyes and smile light up a room when she is happy.

She hates my Challenger, but buy’s me new parts for gifts.

She lets me buy parts for her Explorer, on the condition I show her how to install them.

She lets me have control over the remote at night.

She is hard as a rock when her mind is made up and soft when she holds me during times I need comfort.

She is my shotgun rider in the Challenger and I am hers in the Explorer.

She is my fiancée, my Queen, my lover, my best friend, the mother of the daughters I have taken as my own.

She is Love.

Moments of Beauty

Ever have those moments that stick with you? Ones of incredible beauty?  The ones that take your breath away because they are so beautiful. I have been lucky enough to have a handful in my short life, and I would like to share a few of them with you.

The earliest one I can remember is a sunset. I don’t know how old I was, I just know I was very young and it was in the summer time. Desert sunsets and sunrises can be things of beauty, and this particular sunset has always topped them all for me. Their were clouds in the sky, but it wasn’t totally overcast, and as I said it was summer, so it was hot. That sun was mostly down, and it turned the whole sky a shade of red I can’t even describe. The clouds became a deeper red, almost scarlet. I have never witnessed one like that again.

The next one I can remember, was somewhere in the Mid West, but I do not remember where. I went on a road trip with my dad the week after high school graduation to Michigan, and then to Washington D.C. My dad has a tendency to drive as much as possible, and only sleep in the car at rest stations. At one point in the evening I fell asleep, when I woke up I looked out the car window I saw a big field that went on for a long time until it became trees. Firefly’s where dancing all across this field, while lighting was flickering in the background. I will never forget it.

The next moment came not too many years ago, at a bonfire on the beach in San Diego. I remember looking at the stars over the water, the fire, and some of my closest friends around the fire, and just feeling that it was a thing of beauty.

The wedding of djmatticus and his lovely wife.

The first time I realized I was in love, not falling in love, not what I thought was love, but actually in Love.

Which leads me in to this; the first time I saw love in my beautiful Jennifer. I saw it in her face one day, the depth of her feelings….and it and she, was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.