13 years ago, things looked a little different. Kyle was teaching percussion and voice at a public school, while also directing drumline and drama club productions, and prepping to get his Masters in music education.  I was taking 3 classes a semester for my MLS while working several part time jobs in different industries (substitute teaching, library programs, serving, and of course, small engine repair). We lived in an apartment/other half of a duplex with Kyle’s grandmother, and we owned a couple of board games. Most of our friends were our coworkers or college buddies, and my favorite wine was Heron Hill’s Eclipse White (Kyle was more partial to the Red). We spent our time playing video games, reading books, building Lego sets and piecing puzzles together, and going out for trivia or wing nights. (And probably watching too much TV.) 

I started to reflect today on how much changes in 13 years, how different our lives must look now, but you know what? Aside from significant shifts and changes in our jobs and careers, everything else has just…gotten bigger? 

We still live in that beautiful farmhouse, but we (Kyle and Dean) have remodeled it and added to it and made it feel like “us”. 

I still count our college buddies and coworkers among our friends, of course, but we’ve added so many incredible people to our lives who feel like they have always known us, and they’ve become part of our family. 

We own and play more board games than I’d care to admit, and we’ve also (happily) made space for Dungeons & Dragons to be a kind of gigantic part of our lives. 

Hattie and Cleo were here 13 years ago, and now we have Eloise, too (and have gone through the love and loss of our other pets, Charlie, Elton, and Tut). Doesn’t get much bigger than Eloise!

We still spend our time playing video games and reading books, building Lego sets and piecing puzzles together, and going out for wings (though we’re more likely to take them to go). We haven’t been to trivia since…maybe Covid? But I think we play enough games with friends to more than make up for it. 

We both still enjoy a solid blended white or red, but our palates and tastes have expanded and grown as we’ve experimented with different cocktails and styles of wines. (Don’t tell anyone, but yesterday I bought a 12-pack of Mich Ultra instead of Coors Light. What’s that about?!)

All that to say that we’re still the Kyle and Rachel of 13 years ago, and the “big changes” I feel when I look at our lives now are more about who we have grown into and become together than anything I could physically put my finger on. It’s not all fun and games, obviously, but I’m so damn proud of who we are and how we live our lives, how we treat other people and how we treat each other. We’ve put in the work to make it possible to keep having fun, and there is simply no one else I could have done all of this with. We’ve built a truly wonderful life together, just the way we like it–what more could anyone ask for?