just because

Growing up some of my most favourite memories are those of family camping. We would most often go to provincial parks a few hours away from our home with a number of my aunts and uncles and cousins. We would spend most of our days on the beach, playing things like volleyball, keep away in the water or riding the waves. We would bike around the camp ground in the evening and sit around the campfires all night. I loved these weeks and think my love of summer started at these events. I never considered that this wouldn't be something that would continue in my life. I figured if I ever got married, we would continue to make camping a priority in our summers. However, when I started dating and began to hear my boyfriend (now husband) talk about sleeping in tents and how nasty sleeping on the ground is, I began to lose hope in this being a forever tradition. As we continued to date, I learned of his love for campfires and then later his love for cooking over the fire and I thought to mys...

Growing up I read some fairy tales. I was a fan of Cinderella and Snow White. When I hit preteens, I became fans of the Hilary Duff and the Amanda Bynes version. I was a sap for a good love story. It was one way I was a typical girl. However, mature adults often told me that life isn’t like the fairy tales and that we should be careful with the romantic stories we read and what fluffy books and movies we watch because it will cause us to have an unrealistic view on life, love and marriage. In fact, it was almost to the point that when I got engaged I was a little scared of marriage and what was to come because of the number of people that said it was going to be hard and the little I heard about the near perfect moments. While I agree, there is truth to this, I would like to suggest that the high emphasis on this view has caused some damage as well. I would like to suggest that there is another way of looking at it and that it isn’t all bad to dream about living a fairy tale life to...