My Marriage retreat

So, anniversaries are never soon enough! So Rachel and I decided after shooting friends weddings this 4th weekend, that we would take a few days off to concentrate on each other, reading, and being a more unified team. Call it a retreat. Whatever it is, its needed, and more than once a year. I love just re-learning what my wife loves that I do to bless her. We love to camp, hike, fish, cook, play guitar around a fire, and playing "nertz" and "speed" under a lantern till all hours. Rachel is my best friend and I LOVE hanging out with her. we planned our new 08 budget, set some goals, and talked about how we can be better spouses and better friends to our friends. Its so essential. We are both so blessed, on our way home we stopped by and hung out with my buddy Mike Schweene and his new fiance Monica. Mike owns West Coast Wakeboard Camps. He's been doing it for 6 years and is the biggest on the nation. I'm proud of what he's done, but also, stoked about his amazing relationship with Mon. They are a sweet couple and we hung out and talked while eating fajitas under the HOT summer night (it was about 95 at 9pm).

So here are some of the photos from our cheap disposable camera from our camping trip.

Ok, so get out there and block out some time for you and your spouse. Its healthy, fun, good, and is like putting money in the bank. My buddy Jim used to explain this to me. Your relationships are like little banks, you either pour into, or take from. We need to be pouring into our spouses, and not running them down with complaints, criticism, but building up and encouraging, and that comes down to spending time and focusing on what they want to do, and how you can serve them. Other times when we require crazy amounts of time, or in some way deplete them, if we have put in time (not as a chore, but out of gratitude and a serving heart) we build up not only each other, but ourselves. I feel that just being apart from my phone, email and life, I was able to listen to my wife better, everyone knows how pulled in many directions I get, and if I am in front of a TV, I zone out 100%. I know this, and its why I chose to not have cable TV at my house, personally, I have a personal weakness and I know I want to put my wife above that. The coolest part is I am learning and have more ways to continue to look forward to improving. I can't wait until our next retreat somewhere. But our anniversaries, we get to surprise each other somewhere in the country with a trip. big or small, its one way to keep things fresh and fun.

Salmon Fishing

Every Year all the guys in our family go out fishing, we love deep sea fishing, fly fishing, spear fishing, trolling for trou in the sierria's. Its all good. This summer we kicked it off with a trip out of San Francisco, waking up at 4:15 to get to Emeryville and board the boat before its light, Today we are set out to get our limit. Going past the Golden Gate bridge and up the coast towards Stinson Beach, our captain searches for fish. Once we drop our lines, we troll for the best ocean fish in the world, King Salmon! The tender red meat that is OH so good. After 2 hours i caught 1 of the 4 salmon caught, but the deckhand shouts out "green" which means the endangered Coho salmon, so we release them. Soon after the captain askes if we want to head out to the farralon Islands to catch some Cod, he says we can catch our limit. So we do, and we all catch our limit, we keep following the fish, in water about 100-180 feet deep, we drop our lines to the bottom, as we pull the fish out, their eyes bulge out as they come up to the surface, under no pressure. My brother brings up a cod, and then the prized Lingcod bites onto the smaller fish, and the deck hand shouts out, "hitchiker" which means he has to spear the fish, because it will let go once the smaller hooked fish is out of the water and the net will surly scare him away. All in all, we catch 30 fish between my brother and dad. Heading back to port, with our catch and thoughts of fresh sushi and fillet for dinner.