Day #5 – Strengthening Your Marriage – Laugh Together!

Day #5 – Laugh Together!

One of my favorite people in this world, now a grandma, maybe even a great grandma, is constantly bringing laughter and fun to her marriage!!

She’s an accomplished musician, lives in a charming, poetic place, has a super successful husband, children, and grandchildren, she travels frequently to exciting places to learn and grow and has part of a college named after her!  She’s led an amazingly beautiful life, she’s a wonderfully beautiful person but the best part is that when you talk to her she always brings you cheer and joy with her fun-loving, down to earth sense of humor!  I can’t help but wonder if some of these good things came to her, especially her awesomely happy and successful husband, children and grandchildren BECAUSE of her cheerful, happy, FUN demeanor!!

We had rented her retirement home from her before she and her husband were ready to retire.  One day when we were visiting a couple of years after living there she brought me an egg.  A tiny, perfect, artificial egg and said, “This is yours.”  I laughed immediately recognizing surely it was ours, a child’s kitchen play-toy left behind somehow! She said she’d found it deep in the carpet against the wall one day. Then she said, “It’s hard to part with it, it’s come in very handy”. Then she described how the morning she found it she went for a practical joke (I know she’s played these before!)  “Honey,” she called, “You’re breakfast is ready! It’s on the stove.”  Her husband came down to find his breakfast on a HUGE frying pan, it was this tiny, perfect, egg, something strangely odd about it. She grabbed a pan just to show- it looked soo funny!! And so real one couldn’t be sure til one scooped it up with a spatula. Plus, I’m sure her husband is thinking, ‘where in the world did this come from? She’s going out buying pretend eggs just for a joke on him?  She retold the story with a chuckle of glee!

I loved it.  I’ve seen this is part of her being. What a FUN lady to live with!!

That we all could be that much FUN!

My Mom is! I grew up watching her, after a bustling hard working morning getting her exercise in, visiting with neighbors on the way, cleaning and shining the house, answering phone calls as she scrubbed (she was the Relief Society president while I was a teen), doing the laundry, always with zest and vigor, grab an orange or two and wisk into my Dad’s work office (nice he worked from home) for a vivacious mid-morning LAUGH!!

She’d tell him some funny event of the morning like nearly tripping over a stranger in our garage that morning!-  some jogger who had decided they could not resist the temptation of our drinking fountain that was just outside the door, or she’d tell him some funny aspect of a phone call she’d received, or a funny joke off Good Morning America that morning (which she kept running in the background as she worked).

I appreciate now more  than ever the effervescent, cheerful JOY Mom brought/still brings to our family with her appreciation and cultivation and sharing of FUNNY!!!

I LOVE hearing her and her siblings together – the LAUGHTER!! And last night my favorite part of a quick ice cream trip with my husband and two brothers at the end of a long, hard put-in-the-back-yard day was the LAUGHTER!!!! It’s a policy in our family!! It’s something I hope naturally carries to the next generation!!

Mike and I are pretty serious people sometimes dealing with some serious issues that swirl in the world around us just like all of you, but wow, I’m soo glad for FUNNY that lightens any load and reminds us that life is REALLY GOOD too!!

Make sure your funny is ALWAYS kind, not derogatory, otherwise it’s not funny, just mean and hurtful and damaging is NOT FUNNY. It’s easy to make a mean joke, but it shows real intelligence, wit and charm to find funny that uplifts, strengthens and warms!!!

SO…. CELEBRATE FUNNY!!!! Bring the FUN to your marriage  –  Laugh together today!!!!

And we’d love to hear some laugh worthy material on here!!! Comments below please!! 🙂 Love, The Hoffman Crew

PS. This is our funny from yesterday!! Only funny of course because EVERYONE ended up SAFE!!! But once we got it upright  my brother just did it again, then when my brother Clark was telling my husband about the incident, my brother Spencer said, “I meant to do that” in a completely sincere tone! Of course he meant that he meant to go down the path that we couldn’t see (it just looked like a drop off!) but it came out wrong and of course we thought that was FUNNY!!!                                                                                                                                                         Lots o’ Laughs, The Hoffmans

 

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