The Gameplan is to Simplify.

So, I first met my wife in 1996 at UNC-Greensboro. We have had an ongoing argument about where exactly this first meeting took place. She says that we first met at the Fountain - in the middle of campus. I say that we met at her rented house on Mayflower Street - just off of campus. Either way - since that day (which we both agree was sometime in September of 1996), we have have been crazy for each other.

By the summer of 1998, we were in a serious relationship that honestly took virtually NO effort at all, on either of our parts. We just bounced right through our relationship, with very little friction, enjoying ourselves every day. We met all of the time at Tate Street Coffee House, and built our relationship into something beautiful. And we talked openly about what we hoped to do in our relationship. We had goals. The game plan looked exactly like this:

1. Graduate college.

2. Move to Asheville, ASAP

3. Start our careers (or at least our first ones)

4. Get married.

5. Buy a house.

6. Start a family.

By 2005, we had implemented this gameplan, and we were as happy as we thought we would be. From 1999 through 2005 we had been busy, and had grown closer. But, like most folks - once we started having kids, everything became way more . . . illuminated. Probably because being a parent is such and incredible experience - good things seemed more like great things. Not-so-good things seemed more like really bad things. And in the middle of raising our children, we had stopped giving lots of thought to our game plan, and things like that. Most of our energy has been taken up with simply surviving the successful implementation of our original gameplan - which was (and is) amazing, but had undoubtedly made our lives way more complicated. Jessica actually wrote about it a bit in this old blog post from 2007 here.

And what is the solution to complication? To Simplify.

So now our gameplan in life is to SIMPLIFY, and sharpen our focus on what is truly important, and eliminating what is a waste of energy. To be fair, this entire idea is laid out perfectly in one of my favorite books "Rules of the Red Rubber Ball", and this previous post covers some of the basics about it, but it has changed our lives so much that it is worthy of another post. :)

But over the past year or so, we have started openly talking about the next game plan. So, now we know that Game Plan Part Deux is to simplify our lives. So, we have made (and continue to make) big decisions about what we want to be, and what we do not want to be. And now we know better what is important to us, and we know better what we want to do now.

Game Plan Part Deux (so far):

Every week, we make time to ask each other our Tuesday Questions (that we stole from the Loerkes). We leave the computer off when we are at home (unless we need to blog it). We took a break from Facebook. We practice granting, and receiving, Grace. We are actively spending more time with our extended families. We take walks together after school. We give away the toys that the boys do not play with. We read books more. We hang up more pictures. We are ushers at church. We cook more meals. We set goals. We want a simpler house. The list goes on.

So - do you have a gameplan? tips? ideas? failures? Let's hear it!