Before Kids

I was inspired by a post I read on a friend's blog to write one about the "us" before kids. That coupled with the fact that I have had that damn Katy Perry song stuck in my head for 2 days - "last Friday night we took to many shots . . ." UGH!!!! I want our kids to look back some day and see that we were actually people before we became parents - because let's all be honest, once you hit high school, you're convinced that your parents were never actually people, simply parents placed on earth with the sole purpose of ruining what would otherwise be an awesome life!

So here goes . . .

Before there was you, our children, there was an us - and our names were Jayson and Jennifer (not Mom and Dad).

We were very cool people actually . . . we had time and energy to do things like go to concerts and listen to music that we loved . . . and while we're imparting some knowledge, let's impart some musical wisdom - if you haven't already heard of them, you need to immediately go find music by Pearl Jam and 311 - it just might change your life!

We bought a dog because we thought we were responsible enough to handle it . . .we were . . . unfortunately, he grew to be 110lbs and we wanted to live in another city and couldn't afford a place that would take him . . . his name was Jackson . . . do us a favor and name a child after him! We had fun . . . and lots of it . . . probably too much fun. I would like to say that we travelled the world before kids, but we didn't . . . we will someday . . . we travelled the country a little and decided that life should be a continuous adventure rather than just a week long one, so we moved - A LOT - sometimes 10 miles, sometimes 1000 miles . . . I will go ahead and apologize for the fact that you don't have a childhood home . . . unless something drastically changes between me typing this and you reading this, moving will have been a part of your life as well . . . you're welcome . . . staying in one place is boring :)

Your Dad had long hair . . . I had piercings . . . and we partied our way through the first half of our twenties like it was our job . . . and we worked in restaurants for a large part of that time, so it kinda was our job. If you ever question our ability to hang, we will sit down with you and a bottle of Jagermeister and share some stories . . .when you're 30 of course . . . ironically, you will probably be too old to hang by then . . .us, never . . .

We have seen and done a lot of things . . . most of which cannot be published on the internet (along with the photos that accompany said events) . . . for us, we are lucky to have experienced these things . . . and lived through several of them - did we ever tell you about our first "date" where we had a gun pulled on us?! . . . for you, you are unfortunate that we lived as much life as we did - your teenage years are going to suck when you try to get away with stuff!

Before kids we were cool . . . but after kids . . .our life is pretty damn cool . . . I was young when I graduated college (20) and young when we got married (21) and by a lot of standards, young when you guys started arriving (25) . . . but we knew it was time for a different life. I will tell you, the night we decided it was time to start having kids, we looked at each other, took a shot, and said "don't you think there's more to life than this?" and looked around the bar . . . and we were right, there was . . . 3 months later we found out that Marlie was going to come . . . and while Friday nights have never been the same since kids . . . they have been everything . . .