Camping, Berries and Summer Marriage Challenge

Busy, busy, busy! I love summertime, even through the busy-ness :) We had a wonderful weekend camping with my parents! Of course the kids absolutely LOVED it!! (sorry I don't have pictures, I have to get them from my parents) It was SO warm - enough for a water fight! I was so lucky to have my parents there, because on Sunday my Dad watched the kids play at the park while me and my mom picked strawberries. I made my first batch of strawberry jam with this recipe, I tasted it on fresh bread on Tuesday and it is SO yummy!! All week I've been struggling with sore legs, not really sure why until I realized it was from squatting to pick berries. Guess it's not a position my legs are used to :)

I would like to thank Glimpse. I won tickets to Sesame Street Live through Glimpse and I took my kids to the show this month and they loved it! I was pretty impressed too. I love the quality of the show! They had brilliant colors, impressive light shows (my kids LOVED when the lights hit the disco ball and there were 'stars' moving everywhere!) and catchy songs that had most of the kids (and parents too) moving.

I know that I am late this week with the Summer Marriage Challenge, but I did get it done. Here is the challenge for this week: Make a list of 5 things you currently do and ask your husband to prioritizy them for you of what is important to him. I'm not going to put my list on here, but I will tell you I was a little surprised at the results. For one thing there were two items that it seems I have to push, pull and drag to get him to participate in - those two items were at the top of his list. Another thing I want to mention is a statement from the Challenge this week. The statement was: A lot of quarrels can be kept at bay if we are willing to ask our husbands their preferences and then be mindful of them. I agree with most of the statement - we can minimize quarrels if we have better communication of priorities. The part that kind of rubs me the wrong way is that we, as wives should find out our husband's preferences and 'be mindful of them'. Now I suppose it depends on your definition of 'being mindful'. Yes, it is good to know what is considered important to your husband because it does make things easier when you are on the same page, but the insinuation I sense is that his priorities are the ones that are important and you need to then just do what he thinks is important. I am more of the view that marriage is a partnership, not a one man show. If my husband's number one priority is one thing, than he should also show that it is a priority by helping/encouraging/participating in that. Also what of a wife's priorities? Should what is important on her list not matter? Can one not take two lists of priorities and combine them in a compromise? I know this can be a controversial topic, what are your thoughts? **please be nice**