Fourteen years with Lorena

Homeschool day 32 of 180

Fourteen years ago today, Lorena and I got married at a wedding salon called “El Tio” on Avenida Garza Sada close to ITESM in Monterrey. It was a grand wedding. That Lorena and I found each other was a work of God for which I will always be grateful. I cannot imagine what my life would be without her. In many ways we are very different from each other, but in the most important things we agree. The funny thing that many do not understand is that the for the most part, our culturals are the same even though Lorena is thoroughly Mexican and I am thoroughly gringo–and Northwestern gringo at that which about as far removed as it is possible to get from Mexico in the United States.

Last night, Lorena took Christian to his cubscout den meeting after she returned from her calculus class. That left Kelly and I home alone. We decided to run down to Staples and get a new pencil sharpener. Our drawing class based on Mark Kistler’s Draw Squad demands a very, very good electric pencil sharpener. It does not demand it explicitly, but without it we find ourselves distracted from drawing and talking about life, so we believe it is essential. We wore one pencil sharpener out last year and bought a new one for this year, but it just was not cutting the mustard (or pencils), so Kelly and I went down to get a new one. It has to be the plug-in kind because if you really get the urge to draw, you do not want to risk having to hunt down batteries or, worse, run all the way down to Ray’s to get new ones.

At any rate, Kelly and I ran down to Staples. We really did not find what we needed there, so we went on to Costco and found the exact Panasonic pencil sharpener that served us so well last year. We bought it. Then, we decided we really needed to stop at Wendy’s to get some chili and a baked potato. We had a super grand time together. We really need to do that more often. We looked at books at Costco, talked about life, and just enjoyed each other’s company very much. I am going to make a point to do more one-on-one time with each of the kids. I normally get quite a bit with Christian because of cubscouts and other guy things, but my time with Kelly was good for both of us and we need to start in on some more dad-daughter stuff.