Finally Recovered

Big Weekend last weekend, culminated by me reaching the Big 40.  My wife and I headed over to the west side of the state, dropped the kids off at the Worlds Greatest Nana's house, and proceeded to party like it was 2002.  We spent a night in the suburbs, then a day and night in Seattle, before swinging over to visit some of our friends on the Kitsap Peninsula for a  nice group dinner and an evening of karaoke.

It was a pretty great weekend.  I mean, the things we did were fun(and several of those deserve posts of their own, like seeing Mad Max: Fury Road, Seattle Underground Tours, TheatreSports), but more important, the bout of melancholy that I expected never really showed up, and I think that is because, other than 5 years less sand in my hour glass...things are better than they are when I turned 35.

My job, while not 'better', is more family friendly.  The girls, while they were great little girls, are turning into great people.  The house is doing good, and we might actually get some fruit from our trees, and good vegetables from the garden, which I was able to work on improving, after deciding it was big enough and didn't need more expanding.

As for my wife and I...the last 5 years have been good to us both.

That was 5 years ago in Vegas, versus this last month:

Obviously, I still have more progress to make than my wife...but, given my wife as motivation, by my 50th Birthday we might look like this:

picture from the daily mail