Slice of Life #68: Beautiful YOU

This seems to be a tough one for my wife. Then again, it could be a tough "Slice of Life" for me as well on most days. A lot easier it seems to do what you do great and think of what you do wrong. So you see your faults and what makes you great is just lost in the clutter of life.

"How are generations later going to know about your terrific-ness if you never tell them?"

I must answer this first question with a simple answer. So the first thing that makes my wife beautiful is that she is a mother. A mother of four beautiful children. When I look at our children, I see evidence that they have a beautiful mother, even when she does not see it. From how they treat each other with please and thank you (when they aren't fighting like children do), to their beautiful eyes, healthy hair, and active bodies. And for each of those pregnancies, she has been quite healthy. For example, during the twins pregnancy, I suspect the doctors may have been willing to let my wife go to term without any panic, except Ruth was breach as the first baby. Some law or regulation or whatever dictated that they deliver a breach baby c-section.... So other than a breach baby, my wife had a very healthy pregnancy with twins no less while others we knew were being monitored closely with risk of bed rest. I think that healthy pregnancy speaks volumes, but that is just her loving husband writing here.

"What are your best features? Your eyes? Your legs? Your hair?"

If you ask me, I would say all of the above are great features of my wife. Sometimes I like to smell her hair. I realize that is the perfumes in her shampoo or conditioner, but that still speaks of the care she gives her hair. Not just a dandruff shampoo and done like I do. As for the other two features, please just take my word on it....

"What makes you stand out in a crowd? Is your laugh contagious, your smile warm, or your hugs sincere? Your ability to quiet a child in a grocery cart?"

Does four children in a grocery cart count? That does tend to stand out when so many others have only one or two.

"What tastes do you have? Is it your taste in music, your love of art, or picking good books to read?"

Romance. Definitely romance. Though, you must add in Harry Potter. We read those together. My wife had read the books that were out before we dated and married. She was collecting them. We then read them together as a couple, and it was a great experience to read the books as husband and wife. She also listens to books on CD. One such that isn't quite the romance is centered on some characters that are supposed to be Navy Seals. And, yes, there are some of her romance books on CD that I have enjoyed listening to. But I don't think I have ever listened to the entire one of her books from beginning to finish. So I mostly recognize the stories by fitting the characters and current plot line into the puzzle pieces I have previously listened to.

Almost forgot the LDS themed series, such as Faith of our Fathers and The Work and the Glory.

"What talents have you acquired (or would like to)? Cooking? Running a business? Home decor?"

My wife has her bachelor's degree in accounting. She is creative with preparing our meats with spices and marination, it doesn't always work out tasty but her successes far outnumber her failures. Soon as it becomes available, we are planning to purchase her a special cutting printer for crafts--I cannot think of a better way to describe it. It has a blade. It cuts out shapes. And it looks a lot like your desktop printer. And thinking of things she wishes to learn, my wife would like to go back and get a Master's Degree in accounting. Being the big, bad, mean husband that I am, I have a couple stipulations on that, the first being that we actually pay off her current student loans. For some reason I got this get out of debt bug, and I am grateful that she has been very patient with this different way of thinking. In fact, if I were to include another skill in here because her accounting, she has been very good at learning and applying a different method of money management. Under her improved skills in sacrifice, patience, and financial management, we paid off her car early and have not had a car payment since (even though we sold her car and bought a mini-van). We are paying off her grandfather. So we almost to the point that the loan we have left to tackle IS her student loan. Even when we hit a bump in our finances and I asked my wife to stay with it, that I believed she could fix the error, I was so pleased to be proven right. Not just because it brought us back current with our financial plan, but because I was pleased to be proven right about my wife. I believed she could and she DID. That was a great feeling. Now I realize that managing personal finances can be different for many of us as opposed to managing business finances. We can be great at one and terrible at the other. So I am hoping to learn to build a business. Why does my goal matter here? Because my wife told me once that it was her dream to teach future generations to be the business builders of the future (I forget what the organization was called that excited her so as a youth). See, that is the other part of why I am such a big, bad, mean husband. Not only do I insist that we pay off her student loans, but I remember her dream and I will hold her accountable for it when we have the means to make it reality. And since I envision her accomplishing her dream, I want her to be the best person possible to share and teach the entrepreneurs of the future. So I want her to achieve that Master's Degree and I want her to have experience. If I can build a business, then she wouldn't even have to wait for the kids to all be in school to start on that personal experience. Of course, being such a meany, I have no compunction against sharing one of my wife's dreams online for all to read. That way I can build a team of people to remind her that she has a beautiful dream, and to encourage her so that she holds on to her dreams.