{"id":370,"date":"2010-05-16T16:20:58","date_gmt":"2010-05-16T22:20:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/esmithy.net\/sparks\/?p=370"},"modified":"2010-05-16T16:20:58","modified_gmt":"2010-05-16T22:20:58","slug":"sweet-sixteen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/esmithy.net\/sparks\/2010\/05\/16\/sweet-sixteen\/","title":{"rendered":"Sweet Sixteen"},"content":{"rendered":"

This week Shannon and I are celebrating our 16th wedding anniversary. We currently have the advantage of some live-in adult supervision, so we took a few days to just be us, without the kids. This doesn’t happen often. In fact, it is dangerously close<\/a> to being a unique experience. The kids love vacations, and we love building family memories through outings, but sometimes Mom and Dad need to be Shannon and Eric.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

We drove down to Saint George, just talking as we went. Believe it or not, I somehow kept up my end of a four hour conversation. I think Shannon let me talk about technology occasionally so she could have a break. When Shannon and I first started dating, we were driving from Salt Lake to Provo when I suddenly realized we were coming up on Springville — a whole city too far. Missing the right exit is now a measure of good conversation for us, and while we made it off onto St. George Boulevard this trip, the time did go by pretty quickly.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

We looked forward to being together, instead of splitting up to meet the demands of a typical family vacation. For example, a couple of years ago, I took the boys on a hike while Shannon stayed in the car with an overtired Afton. Later, I stayed with Afton at the hotel while Shannon took the boys to a play. This time we even went together to get ice at the hotel. There was such a lack of hurry. In Zion National Park, we sometimes just sat and enjoyed the peace, or meandered along the banks of the Virgin River without any particular destination or planned distance.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

We went to the temple, to a Brian Regan show, read by the pool, shopped, slept in, ate out, and watched a movie in bed with popcorn. And, OK, we missed the kids a little, too, and soon we were back with them, sharing a few little presents we bought them.<\/p>\n

Life starts again. A ward choir number that needs to come together, a last minute request to teach primary, groceries to buy, broken sprinkler heads to deal with, decisions about braces, karate camp and summer programs. It’s not all rainbows and butterflies, but on the balance, definitely sweet.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week Shannon and I are celebrating our 16th wedding anniversary. We currently have the advantage of some live-in adult supervision, so we took a few days to just be us, without the kids. This doesn’t happen often. In fact, it is dangerously close to being a unique experience. The kids love vacations, and we … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Sweet Sixteen”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-370","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-familynews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/esmithy.net\/sparks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/esmithy.net\/sparks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/esmithy.net\/sparks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esmithy.net\/sparks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esmithy.net\/sparks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=370"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/esmithy.net\/sparks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/esmithy.net\/sparks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esmithy.net\/sparks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esmithy.net\/sparks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}