Above is a teaser image from our 2017 road trip, courtesy of the National Aquarium in Baltimore, where my lovely wife Anne and I had the pleasure of spending a few days and not getting murdered despite what you hear on TV.

We’ve known each other for nearly thirty years next month. We’ve been married for thirteen years as of this very Monday. Vacation photos and jazz hands are just two of the many cornerstones of our relationship — not the most important ones, mind you, and certainly not the hardest ones to achieve. But when your never-ending process of maintaining and streamlining the critical factors is kept on track, it frees up your mental space to indulge in the happier shared whims. If the process yields fun tangible souvenirs like this one, so much the better and the merrier.

We returned home to Indianapolis last Friday afternoon from our travels with 1000+ new photos to sort, more shopping keepsakes than usual, less debt than I expected, lots of new stories to tell in future entries, newfound resentment toward a certain auto rental company, sunburn that’s nearly healed, and no time to stop or recuperate all weekend long. So tonight after a work day that ambushed us both far sooner than we would’ve liked, we carved out some time to celebrate the thirteenth anniversary of our very own wedding, which longtime readers may recall was recounted right about here. Rather than pursue our usual annual habit of trying a new restaurant, we agreed to drive less, stay nearer to home, and enjoy the comfort of one of our favorite local restaurants, a Mexican place in Brownsburg called Tequila Sunrise…

…and now we have to prepare to go back to work again in the morning. We’re still drained, still not in the proper frame of mind, still not caught up on all that’s needed catching up since our return.

In the meantime, we’ve much to share in the weeks ahead of the sights we’ve seen and the new experiences that didn’t kill us. Four states. Two Civil War battlefields. Two toy museums. Three Madonnas. Four rivers. Five Pez displays. One gift shop straight out of The Simpsons. One video of shots fired. Much crab. Myriad elephants. Too much water. Eventually we’ll get to those stories once Real Life grants us the time and margin to fit them in here.

But all that’s part of our marriage process — persevering for each other, standing by each other’s side with God’s active help, charging toward the responsibilities rather than away from them, and exercising the necessary self-control to push through our cumulative fatigue and lazier urges to keep on adulting anyway.

We’re the Goldens. It’s who we are and what we do. And not all the snarky background dolphins in the world can stop us.