Life on a Tuesday: I don't have time for this!!

"Babe, thank you for always making my breakfast."

Wow, did I appreciate hearing that this morning!  I had gotten up a little late....fell back asleep after that second snooze and was just moving slow.  In my mind, I contemplated whether he should fend for himself and make his own breakfast, so I could enjoy some extra quiet space and time, which we both love each morning.  

The time was ticking.

 

But, I decided, to fry the egg, warm up the chicken sausage and quinoa ( one of my favorite breakfast

meals from Bread and Wine) and have it all ready for my man once he got done working out. 

And, as I was just about to finally sit down, I rec'd the blessing I didn't expect.  Appreciation.  

Wow, how those few couple of words gave me life.  It  made my heart happy.  I simply felt....well, appreciated!

Appreciation.  It's free.  Try it today.

Mondays with the Maechners: Will Her Happiness Destroy Ours?

Don't tell anyone...The Maechners don't have cable!

I know.  Weird, right?

We love to read.  I mean really love it.  I was an English major after all.

Sometimes I'll be reading a book and see something that really strikes me and connects to my marriage.  Here's one:

Right now I'm reading Les Miserables.  It's abridged-334 pages.  I couldn't handle the 1400 pages of the original!

In the book, the main character, Jean Valjean, has turned his former hardened, criminal life around (though he is still hunted by a crazed policeman), and is now living obscurely and raising an orphan, Cosette.

Life with Cosette has brought him happiness he had not dared to hope for.  However, when she becomes a young teenager, he notices for the first time that she is becoming pretty, and this was the beginning of the possibility that she, one day, would want to leave him and marry a man.

The story says, "[Valjean] felt a deep and undefinable anguish in his heart....He felt that it was a change in a happy life, so happy that he dared not stir for fear of disturbing something....Loved by Cosette, he was content!  He said to himself: 'How beautiful she is! What will become of me?'"

For those of us in a dating, engaged, or married relationship, we are very happy with the idea of our lover finding happiness in us.

But we often fear the happiness that our lover could find outside of us.

I'm not talking about affairs.  What I mean is the things that our significant other enjoys or dreams of.

It might be a dream of theirs, or some activity that they enjoy a great deal, or some passion for or hobby in some subject.  These are especially threatening when they are activities or dreams that make us uncomfortable.  If we let them enjoy and pursue those things will that shove us out of their affections?

But here is what Valjean and I didn't know until later: one of the greatest joys of an intimate relationship is to be the vehicle through which your loved one can pursue their greatest joys.

And life, and I'd say God, made it so that our love is always enriched when we join with and support the joy of our beloved's.

Sexy Saturdays: Sexy Ear Hair

Ok, picture this sexy scene:

My lovely fiancee, sitting next to me in a car looks over and says, "Have you ever cut your ear hair?"

Excuse me?!

She explained that she would like it if I cut my...ear hair.

Cue my offense.  I made some hurt-filled remark about thinking she should love me as I am!

Oh, how far we've come.  It took years for us both to realize "love me as I am" often means "I don't want to change for you."

What used to be offensive to each other is now actually fun!  We want to do the things that the other finds sexy or just plain nice.  Why?  Because we now WANT to bless the other.

So, Beth has learned to wear heels just for me!  For my recent birthday, we even went clothes shopping for her and she bought cute clothes that I liked.

I've gotten myself working out more because Beth likes to see my muscles more toned.  And, yes...I
cut my ear hair regularly!  :)

Each of the above was outside of our norm, but that's one thing love does: it makes you do crazy things because you want to bless the other.

Here's the action point: you've got to take the risk to communicate what you'd like.  Find some time when you're both relaxed and chatty and lovingly, gently say, "There's something I'd really like and would mean a lot of love to me.  Would you mind if I share it?"  Then, and this is key, say, "And after me, I'd love for you to share some ways I could do somethings you'd like too."

-kurt

5 Reasons a Wife Feels her Husband Hates Her

This sounds like a harsh topic, but it happens.

Maybe you saw it in your parents' or a friend's marriage.  Maybe, if your dating or engaged, you've seen slight signs of your guy being angry at you, not just inside an argument, but more generally.

I found this list on a site from Dr. Emerson & Sarah Eggerichs, a husband and wife team that are authors and male-female relation experts.  Here's "5 Possible Reasons a Wife Feels Her Husband Hates Her."

"1. THE HUSBAND TRULY HATES HER   I say this with great sadness, but he has chosen to hate you for reasons having little to do with you. You have loved him and treated him respectfully, but he has become bitter and hateful.

But TO THE REST OF YOU I want to give you hope. It might not be that he hates you at all. There is a misunderstanding.

2. THE HUSBAND MERELY ECHOES “I HATE YOU” AFTER SHE SAYS IT FIRST   In an argument you were the first to yell, “I hate you!” and he echoed, “I hate you!” right back.  He no more means it than you do.

3. THE WIFE HATES HERSELF AND PROJECTS THIS ONTO HIM  He does not hate you, but you hate yourself and wrongly assume he feels about you the way you feel about yourself.

A wife can see herself as fat and ugly, and so assumes her husband sees her as fat and ugly, too. She feels that she is a horrible mother and concludes her husband views her as a horrible mom, as well.

When we do not like ourselves, we find it next to impossible to think anyone else likes us.

4. THE WIFE ASSUMES HE HATES HER DUE TO HIS LACK OF APOLOGIZING   “But, Emerson, I know he hates me because he never says he is sorry.”

“He never apologizes to me. He closes me off for hours. Admittedly after our arguments he approaches me, tries to tickle me to make me laugh or invites me to watch T.V., but no apology. This has been his mode of operation for years. I question his love. I would never treat him this way and I love him. If he loved me, he’d seek my forgiveness. I can only conclude that he secretly hates me.”

I hear your womanly heart, but many men apologize by making loving gestures, even though they may not use the words, “I am sorry, will you forgive me?” 

As unacceptable as this method is to most women, it shows that he does not hate her.

5. THE HUSBAND DOES NOT HATE, BUT FEELS DISRESPECTED AND REACTS  Because you have shown him disrespect, he reacts in ways that feel unloving to you; thus you feel he hates you.

The truth is your husband loves you, but he thinks you do not like him or that you feel disrespect for him.

In my book Love & Respect, I address the Crazy Cycle–without love a wife reacts without
respect, and without respect a husband reacts without love.

Before you claim your husband hates you, reconsider whether you have been spinning on the Crazy Cycle.

As one gal emails, “He acted like he hated me. But after reading Love and Respect, I apologized for not giving him respect and not acknowledging he deserved respect for working at a job he hated in order to support his family all those years. His eyes teared up and he just held me tight. When I told him that I apologized to the girls (ages 28, 23 & 18) for not respecting him and for setting such a bad example, it was like I let the air out of a balloon. He just didn’t seem to have any nasty things left to say.”

Does your husband hate you? I don’t know your situation. What I do know is that if he does not, the best way to find out is move toward him like this wife did.

Let the air out of his balloon."

See the original article and an accompanying video here.

Welcome to Married Life

I happened on this guy and this song while looking for some new worship music.  This song is both hilarious and tender.  Engaged, married, or single, I think you'll get a kick out of this and be touched.
(It would also be a great song for a wedding ceremony!)

-kurt

Brad and Alexa 2015

I know it's getting a tiny bit warmer, but oh for warm, August days like the one that we'll have the privilege of filming Brad and Alexa's wedding on!

Life on a Tuesday: What's for dinner?!

What's for dinner?

Does that stress any of you out?  

For a season of our life, I felt like that was all I was doing - being in the kitchen, planning for the next meal.  I started to become a very unhappy woman - and as the saying goes 

"when mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy".  

So, we made some crazy changes and now we do this crazy once a month shopping & cooking extravaganza thing.  Our dear friend Rachel, even joins us on our outings!  She must be crazier than us!  

The bottom line is:  we have a found a system that works for us to allow us to eat healthy, help us stay within our budget, takes away the stress from meals, and helps us really enjoy being around the table together.  

So, last night we had Back Pocket Taco's - a new found favorite.  Quickly made up some rice, warmed up some tortillas and threw some cheese, avocado and greek yogurt in bowls - and VIOLA!  Dinner is served.  Tonight, black bean burritos and salad with apples and walnuts.  

Both of these recipes I got from a new favorite cook book called - Dinner:  A Love Story by Jenny Rosenstrach.  

And now mama is happy and that's make us all happy!  

By the way, your man really just wants you to make you happy, so gals - do all that you can to do that for yourself!  (or tell him what he can do to help you do that!  When I was all crabby about spending all my free time in the kitchen, Kurt came to my rescue and helped me figure out how to make some changes.)

-beth

Monday with the Maechners: How come they never teach you this stuff?

Relationships 101.  

Where do they teach this class?

How come we spend 4 or more years in college to prepare for a job, but get almost no prep for the relationship that will hopefully outlast your career.  

So, here come the Maechners, the crazy family with me, my hottie wife, and 5 little ladies.  We want our kids to buck the trend!  So, each Monday evening we teach our own Relationships 101.  

Sometimes it's about friendships or dealing with sisters.  We watched Frozen in segments and talked about the goods and the bads in the relationships there (i.e. it is quite shocking just how bad Anna and Elsa's parents were at parenting, by the way!)

Other times we teach them about differences between guys and girls.  It's working too!  It's not uncommon for them, when they want something from me, to ask, "Mommy, is Daddy focused right now?" :D  This is all because Beth has explained how guys only focus on one thing at a time!  

We love that we can give our kids relationship tools.  Beth and I have sought out tools for ourselves too in lots of different ways, but one huge one is: books.  

We read relationship books all the time.  It's like our perpetual Relationship 101 course for ourselves.  You can never study too much for making your marriage or dating relationship better.

Here are just a few books that we've loved in recent years

The Birth Order Connection
His Needs, Her Needs
The Queens Code
Keys to the Kingdom
The 5 Love Languages
Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands

Sexy Saturdays: Put the Kids First...

Put the kids first.

Maybe you don't have kids yet.

Yet.

Here's a story.

So, Beth was at this exercise class and she was being her sweet, social self.  One woman she worked out with shared that she and her husband divorced.

Why?

They put the kids first.

Wait.  Doesn't that bring couples together?  For this woman there was a very gradual distancing that happened between her and her husband as they, presumably, ran around to birthday parties, soccer games, gymnastics classes, parent-teacher conferences, and on and on over the course of those kid years.  And somewhere in there the gentle touches, the moments to talk about things on a heart level, the sex, the dates, the walks, the sweet-nothings went by the wayside.

Finally, that woman found herself in an empty-nest household with a man she didn't really know anymore.

They decided to call it quits.

Ask the kids now if they were glad mom and dad "put the kids first."

You want to love your kids (or future kids)?

Have sex (even if you have to put them in front of a video while you pull a quickie in the shower).

Want to love your kids?

Pay a babysitter so you can go out on a weekly date and actually talk (ideally, not about the kids).

Want to love your kids?

Stay up after they're in bed to play games, watch a movie, or plan a trip-whatever taps into the things you love.

There's a legacy you will leave your kids: showing them what it looks like for two adults to not just stay together but who will love life together, work through the tough stuff together, keep the hotts for each other, and "put each other first."

That's one of the greatest gifts you can give each other.

-kurt (that's me, Beth, and all our little ladies!)

Top 5 Retro Wedding Songs

Need a wedding processional song and want to buck the 'typical' trend?

Go retro!

Here are some popular wedding processional songs from the past:

1960's
"Here, There, and Everywhere" by the Beatles

1970's
"Annie's Song" by John Denver



1980's
"Here and Now" by Luther Vandross



1990's
"Over the Rainbow" by Israel Kamakawiwo'ole

Who would have guessed marriage could bring this?

When we first got married we were so excited to build into our relationship and we still are!  But one of the many riches that flows from this, that we never could foresee, has been all the other meaningful relationships that have come from our togetherness.

As illustrated, our dear and hilariously fun godmother to Mary Ella, Carol.  Here are Carol and Mary Ella going on a special date!

-Kurt

Michael and Jaime 2015

Very excited to be filming Michael and Jaime's wedding in September!

Michael and Jamie's engagement photo courtesy of Imagine It Photography

Help! A Moody Woman!

So, today, my wife got up late, feels tired, has a sprained ankle, and feels behind on laundry.  Needless to say, she was not a happy camper.

What do you do when your girl is in a mood?





Tell her to cheer up...X

Give her space...X

Change the subject...X

These are common male responses.  The middle one in particular is really good for us.  When we're bothered we need space before we can engage.  We don't want someone to ask us questions and probe our thoughts right away.  Eek!

But your girl is different.

So, today, I prayed in the car before I came home for strength.  I entered the house with joy and was greeted with a low-toned "hi."  I responded with, "Where's my sweet, amazing mom, teacher, wife, & lover?!"  And proceeded to give her a nice, long hug.  Then...I let her share.

Guess what?  After a while she rose out of the well.

It's not a formula, but the heart is there.  Try it next time.

-Kurt

Find money in your backyard!

Money!  

What a stress it can be right?  

Especially when it comes to a wedding!  

Kurt and I get married young, right out of college, so being dirt poor, our parents took pity and amazingly paid for our entire wedding!     

With 5 lovely girls of our own now, people already comment to us about saving now to pay for their FIVE weddings!  YIKES!  

I have already started to feel that stress..until my husband tells me to get a grip and well…we simply can’t pay for FIVE entire weddings!  

So, what do we do?  Or, more pressing, what do YOU do?

What do you do to stay within a budget and still have the wedding of your dreams?  

Well, a dear friend shared with me one of her favorite blogs and the cover story hit this perfectly.  Check out Style Me Pretty for how this sweet couple does a amazingly beautiful backyard wedding.  

Far from being a dull BBQ, this backyard wedding was...gorgeous.