#214 Where We've Been and How We've Made it Extra Special -- Celebrating 22 Years of Marriage

Rachel Denning (00:11.086)
Marriage is what brings us together today. Hey everybody. Welcome to the Extraordinary Family Life podcast. We're your host Greg and Rachel Denning. And today is our 22nd anniversary. Wow. It's been wild, awesome journey. And we are celebrating today. We always not.

We haven't always, but we do now. We get away and go do something cool, somewhere cool in the world. So right now we are in a luxury hotel overlooking some amazing Bay of the Caribbean, not Caribbean, the Mediterranean. So this is my first time traveling. It's not the Mediterranean. Oh, so now we have officially crossed. We drove, we drove north and we cause.

where we are with the kids is on the Mediterranean, but now we are officially on the Aegean Sea. Right, so the kids are in the Airbnb we rented for the month, and we drove three hours north to a place that's technically on the Aegean Sea. We're on the Aegean Sea, in the suite hotel, got spa treatment today. Sauna and massages. I just feel so relaxed. So if you hear me... snoring. Drawling like this, or snoring.

It's because I feel very, very relaxed today. Oh, it's awesome. But we wanted to, yesterday we were just talking, just kind of reminiscing about marriage and the adventures we had, and especially our anniversary trips, and we're like, we should do a podcast. Right. Because we've had such cool experiences. Well, I think because of our unique lifestyle, one of the things we like to do when...

an anniversary or a birthday, whatever comes around is we like to think back like, oh, where were we last year? You know, cause like, unlike many people, we weren't in the same place. Usually, sometimes we were, but usually we're in a different place. And so we love to think, oh, where were we last year on our anniversary? Like, where were we living? What part of the world were we in? And we almost always ask on our anniversary, I wonder where we'll be next year. And of course we cannot predict that. Well, especially this year, I guess that's what brought it up is.

Rachel Denning (02:34.413)
Last year, we had the most magical 14 days, just the two of us in Portugal. And we did a podcast about it because it was so magical. It was off the charts amazing. And I remember, vividly remember saying like, I wonder where we'll be. And we had planned to be officially moved to Portugal. So we took the trip to Portugal for our anniversary, but also to...

It was like a recon trip to see if we wanted to move there. And we decided we did want to move there. And we thought for sure, I mean, I guess we thought for sure, next year we'll be in Portugal celebrating. And here we are. We actually did go to Portugal for five days after doing a three month. 12 country, 12 weeks. 12 country winter travel Europe trip. Then went to Portugal and now here we are. With the whole family, by the way. And so, yeah, we would have never guessed.

last year that we would be in Turkey this year for our anniversary. Never. In some little random place on the coast that neither of us had ever heard of and this part of the world had never been on our radar and we love it. And so there's no way we could have even dreamt, guessed wildly that we would have been here. So to think, where will we be next year? Woo, wild.

Now, I'll just throw this in here. If some of you have been really boring and you know exactly where you were every anniversary for the last 20 years because it was the same Chuck -A -Rama down the road, this is our call to action. Well, if that's you, if you're seriously you're going to some lame restaurant and the same thing every year.

You need more than a call to action. You need me to lovingly slap you upside the head. And like, what are you doing? I think we do it because we feel like we can't afford it. It's not wise to spend the money on something like that. We come up with a lot of reasons for why we don't do it. Let me jump in real quick. I've even heard some crazy ideas like,

Rachel Denning (04:54.925)
people who don't celebrate birthdays or might not even celebrate an anniversary because they don't want to be vain or selfish or yeah, make a big deal. They're like, are you kidding me? Life is about celebration. Like you should be celebrating things. And we are in our family. We look for things to celebrate. We're like, Oh, it's your half birthday. Great. Let's throw another party and celebrate life. And the more we celebrate life and the more specifically like for today, the more we celebrate marriage.

Guess what, you guys? The better it goes. So, I mean, I was thinking about one year we celebrated my birthday and you took me to this little...

It was, because again, it's not like every year has to be huge. Right now we're in Turkey, but it's not like we spent thousands of dollars to celebrate our anniversary because we were already in Turkey, right? So we just, we went somewhere close to where we are. The irony, we don't have to spend thousands of dollars on our anniversary because we're spending tens of thousands of dollars taking our family. Exactly. So my point is you don't have to go far and do something that crazy. Except. It can be, it can be.

Let me finish this story. I know you're the baby steps and I am okay. You're gonna wait You're gonna see that it's not as baby step as you think but what I'm trying to say is you can go local and still kind of go big and here's the story is at this time in our life we were living in Utah and We weren't gonna go away on a big trip And so we went to and this was for my birthday not an anniversary but similar thing we went to a little bed and breakfast and then you took me out to

Lacai for dinner, which was this big fancy expensive French restaurant in Utah. It's like a big thing. We'd already traveled into France and lived in France and we love French food. So we're like, we're going to go to Lacai. And we did. And it wasn't that big of a deal. I mean, maybe we spent $100 in dinner. That's not that much, especially for really good French food. And then we went back to the... It was probably like 150 bucks or something. Okay, maybe 150 with dessert and everything. Even if it was 200. Yeah.

Rachel Denning (07:08.365)
Not that big of a deal, really. And then we went back to the... Yeah, you know what I'm getting at. We went back to the B &B. I forgot about this. And I think I was sick. And the next morning I slept in and you went down to breakfast and there was another couple there that was... It was my 40th birthday. And he was celebrating his 40th birthday and she surprised him. And you were sitting at breakfast and everything and they're talking and they're like, oh so...

It's your wife's birthday too? That's great. Where did you go for dinner? And you're like, oh, we went to La Cay. And they were like, oh, we went to Chukarama. And it was like, it wasn't like the situation where we're trying to brag about, we went to La Cay, you know? But it was kind of, you could tell that they were kind of like, oh. What?

Yeah, maybe we should have done something more than checker -rama, you know? And so I guess what I'm saying is that even if you don't go far, and it's not like we stay in a super fancy B &B either. It was simple, but we did something that was kind of big because I feel that it's worth doing that, and that's what I'm talking about. Or special or unique. Yeah. Like, there's lots of ways. If the budget's tight, that's for another podcast, and you need to level up that. You need to make more money.

Okay, even if it is a money, a little side note here, you have all year to save for it. Right. Put aside a dollar every day for the whole year and you got 365 bucks for dinner. Right, or whatever. But we picked, we went to that B &B, it wasn't that expensive, but it was thematic and it was old, old, old. It was really unique. Yeah, it was really unique.

It was cool, it was memorable because it was so different. There was one point during the night when I thought maybe it was haunted because the light was flickering and I was like, whoa. But so the point is you don't have to go far but you should do something that you don't do on a normal day. We don't go to La Kaia every day, right? Even if we're in Utah, we've been there one time. But you should do things on special days to make them.

Rachel Denning (09:28.909)
Which, okay, I just got to point out, like, it's not even that big of a deal. That's not even that fancy of a restaurant or that big of a deal. It's like, but it's, I guess what you're saying, it's just different. It's unique. It's a place you don't go normally. Right. And it's worth doing it because… Some of you listening to this, you have to seriously throw down. You have the funds or you can get the funds. You need to throw down and show up for your marriage. Now, I know some of you listening are like, it's not just one day a year, man.

Yes, that like I hear I heard people this year saying they they purposely don't celebrate Valentine's Because a good marriage isn't about just one day of year and I'm like You're totally missing the whole place. Like obviously that's true. It's not just about it's not like the rest of the time we just Ignore each other. Well, we'll get back to that. You should be going on a nice date every week and I threw this out. Um, I

on social media and I've been teaching my guys, I think two dates a week is an ideal. Which includes - A mini date. Mini dates, right? Yeah, a mini date and then a real date. And you should be doing good dates. Like stop with the, let's go out again. Let's go run some errands or let's go to the movie theater again and sit by each other and binge on candy and garbage popcorn. No, man, stop being so lame. Be a little creative. Take ownership of this. I'm kind of speaking to the men here.

Take ownership of this and be responsible and do some good dates. So we go out and we eat good food all the time Yes, like it's been kind of wild because of this crazy trip wrong But for the most part on average We go out and we have good food Weekly right for the most part sometimes a few times a week And sometimes we'll miss a week or whatever because things are crazy Or

You know, we take our kids on dates too. And depending if the week's crazy or whatever. Depending on the child, it's either Indian or sushi. Yeah. So what I'm saying is like, date your spouse deliberately and celebrate every chance you can. Right. But then on top of that, it's wonderful. And we're speaking from experience because this is something we enjoy to have a day of the year that stands out when you're like, oh, remember last year we were in Portugal.

Rachel Denning (11:56.397)
And so it was so fun to do this where we sat down just a few minutes ago and looked through all of our photos and looked, okay, where were we on all of these different anniversaries? And what's fascinating, and I think that this is true to life for many people, Greg and I joke that we have, well, we have more than one life, but one of our lives was the life we had before we started traveling. And it's almost in some ways like we can hardly remember that life because we think, what did we do?

I don't even know, you know? We remember the big things like, oh, we got married, we adopted a child, we had a child, we bought a house. We remember those things, but the day to day, you're just kind of like, I don't know what we did. So I literally can't think of one anniversary we celebrated before we started traveling. And then we have all of these year after year after year. We were in India, we were in Guatemala. We were in Costa Rica, we were here, we were here, we were here.

I got a key in on that because what you just said impacted me. Like it hit. The first few years we didn't do anything special. The first four years of our married life. It's a blur. A blur of memories I don't have. And we were sitting here like what did we do and we can't remember. But here's what hit me. If couples have been doing that for a decade or two.

What if we had just stayed and kept doing that? Then we'd be sitting here on our anniversary, and never mind, we'd be sitting at the same old restaurant. We wouldn't be sitting here. We wouldn't be sitting here. And we'd be thinking, what did we do for our anniversaries? And it would just be this blur of nothing. I guess what I'm saying, and I'll say it kind of bluntly and boldly here, is like, if you make lame decisions, then you have lame memories, and lame memories aren't memorable.

And they won't stay. They're not remarkable. They're not worth remarking about because you don't remember them. They don't stick around. And so, like you guys have heard us talk about this before, and I want to reiterate it here. Good dates weekly. We try to do an overnighter monthly. It doesn't happen every month, but we try to do an overnighter monthly. At least quarterly. Yeah. Well, quarterly, we usually do something that's three or four nights away. Yeah. Maybe two or three. We'll do that. Well, even this one's...

Rachel Denning (14:20.973)
I guess three. So, but then, and this year's a little bit shorter and unique because of where we are and what we're doing. Meaning traveling full time with our family. Right. But last year we went to Portugal for our anniversary for about 14 days. And the year before that was - We went to Thailand for 10 days. 10 days. And the year before that - I think that was when we did the World War II trip and went to Dublin for a night. Okay, well we'll get on the list.

But what I want to invite you to do is to very seriously consider doing the equivalent of a honeymoon trip every year. So like you were saying, like make the day memorable. I'm going to, I'm going to throw down here a little bit and say, no, take a week or more and make the whole thing super memorable. Just do it and stop with excuses right now. You're like, Oh, I can't do this. I can't. Oh, I don't know.

I don't know how and just stop and say well how could we? How could we pull that off? How could we do a honeymoon trip every year to celebrate our marriage? And not just to celebrate but to reconnect. You literally need to do that because in the day to day too often you're doing all the transactional stuff like pick up the kids, do this, go here, get the groceries and it's transactional. You don't get to be a man and a woman who are in love hopefully.

talking, communicating, you know, you have to have that time away to be able to do that. And one of the objections I've heard many times that comes specifically, I think, from the women is like, oh, I can't leave my kids. Well, that's not healthy and it's actually dangerous because guess what? You want your kids to grow up and leave you and when they do, if you're not really connected to your husband, you're gonna feel very lonely and...

You need to have that strong relationship with your spouse so that when your kids grow up and move out, which they should do if they're healthy adults, they're not going to live attached to your umbilical cord for the rest of their life. You need to cut that and they need to go away. It doesn't mean you don't talk to them or whatever. Both sides. They should want to be autonomous adults and you should want them to be autonomous adults. Right.

Rachel Denning (16:44.269)
And when that happens, you need to have that close relationship with your husband so you don't have the kids move out and then you look at each other like, oh, I don't even know you anymore. Because we never took time away from the kids to actually be a man and woman.

And this goes from the big trips down to the small dates. I posted something about dates and I specifically said, don't just go out and run errands and call it a date. And I got a few responses like, well, why not? Like we go to this store and pick up a few things for the house and we really like it. And I'm like, that's great, right? But what Rachel is describing and what I'm talking about, it's a complete...

different experience because you can. You know, Rachel and I, those things are great. That's fun. We do those things too. A little bit, right? We go to Home Depot and grab cool things, walk around, we can go to Deco store. Right before we came here on this trip, we had to go get groceries for our kids because they're in Turkey and they can't drive anywhere. And so we went to the store on a little date to get groceries for all of the kids while we left them behind. And it was nice, but I guarantee.

Even if you think you're focused and engaged on your spouse, there's a little bit of busyness and preoccupation with, oh, what should we buy here? And how much of this and like, oh, if we're doing a recipe, this and oh, would that look cute on this part of the wall? And let's see what else. Oh, I need toilet paper. And so you're not like, none of that stuff is there. Totally set aside. I'm focused on you and how much I love you and let's be together and create memories.

But again, not that that other thing is bad. It's fun to do that together. That's part of the fun of being married. But you have to have both. You have to have that set aside time where we can just, like this morning, Greg and I, we just had a very slow morning. It's our anniversary and we got up and we just sat and talked for like an hour or more. Just talking. It was like four hours, I think. Well, okay. Yes, you're right. We had a slow morning. And it was...

Rachel Denning (18:56.141)
Great, but like you have to have that time because it's... And some of you are thinking, oh, they must have made love. No, we didn't. It was later. We just talked. And then talking and just talking about what we appreciate and what we love. It was just talking. And then we went down to the beach a little bit. I went and worked out and we got massages and then we made love. And it was magic. Okay, carry on.

So anyways, the point is, you have to have that set aside time that's very specific. It's the dating. You have to be dating still and interviewing each other in a way of like, what do you care about? What are you interested in? How are you feeling? How are you, you know? You're really talking about those things.

Fully present fully engaged and not distracted not thinking about whatever like setting aside your to -do list and all your worries and concerns And maybe you got to talk through them all write them all down bring them all out so you can just be right now I Have a couple things to say one of them is then you have to do that on a larger scale, which is the trip away Because last year when we went to Portugal just the two of us for 14 days. It was literally magic

And we did a podcast about it because it was so magical. I think it's something like, something about serendipity. But when you get away like that where you don't have any of the distractions, any of the errands, like we didn't have anything to do except wake up and say, oh, what do you want to do today? What should we go look at? What should we do? We did whatever we wanted, just the two of us, which is a wonderful break to have.

Because as much as we love being parents and we love having kids and we love traveling, like we spend 24 hours a day with our kids as a family. We spend 24 hours a day together. So we love that, literally. But it's so great and wonderful to get away from that and just experience being together, the two of us. Now, we've talked about this before and this is probably actually a good place to bring it up. One of the things men need to realize,

Rachel Denning (21:07.309)
is that when you do this, when you go on the date, or when you take your wife out, she may cry. Especially right at the first. And the reason why is for many women... Well, cry and vent and it seems like it complaining. Maybe she seems like she's complaining. What's happening is in her day -to -day life,

She may not have someone to really talk to about all of the things she's thinking and feeling. And when you finally take her out or spend some time alone with her, she actually now has an outlet and it may cause crying. Now of course the guy is like, oh gosh, I'm never gonna do this again. This is horrible. We talked about this actually in my Be The Man Masterclass in Tribe and it was awesome. We just had a great conversation and...

Just so everyone knows, nobody got thrown under the bus. We weren't bad mouthing women or our wives, nothing. We were just talking. And it was interesting. They were like, yeah, there was this pattern at one point where every time we went on a date, it was just this cry fest the whole time. And he was like, I just got sick of taking her out. I was like, why am I going to go pay for an expensive dinner and take her out just to sit there and listen to her cry? Like.

So they actually, it was really great. They came up with some strategies to have more regular processing and they created this little paper form and they would write about it and then they would talk about it and the processing helped. So the date was the only time away, the first time to take a breath and they're like, oh, all this stuff needs to come up and out. Yeah, exactly. So there is a way to prevent that in a way by...

doing regular processing. But it's also good to be aware of it because if it's the first time she really gets to talk about these things that are weighing on her, because that's essentially what it is. We use the metaphor of the ocean, like a woman's like the ocean. And it's not just the thing she's crying about, it's all of the things. It's everything she's been thinking, and it's the earthquake in Turkey, and it's the refugee crisis, and it's worrying about her kids.

Rachel Denning (23:25.741)
future spouses, you know? I mean, it's all of these things. And when she gets a chance to finally talk about it, there can be some crying. And so as a man, you have to be aware that that's a possibility. And if you help her process through it, then the rest of the date or the vacation is really wonderful and special. And I've been aware of this because it took, I was a slow learner. It took a few years of marriage to be like, ugh, why are you crying?

I don't cry, why do you cry? It was funny. But then even being aware of it, last year in Portugal caught me off guard. We get there, and we didn't know if we were gonna be able to get in, because it still had COVID restrictions and all this stuff. Plus before that, two flights had been canceled. You were gonna go to Colombia and then Costa Rica, and they'd got canceled. We were just so frustrated. And we were thinking about...

Into Portugal. Well, we are thinking about moving there but also Ukraine had just been invaded and we're thinking is it a good time to move to Europe because maybe it's gonna be World War three I don't know. I mean, this is my side of it what I'm thinking and so when we get there and it feels so real like oh my gosh We're actually in Portugal. We got out of the airport. I was sitting there and I told Rachel I'm like don't get excited about Portugal until we are literally outside of the airport in Lisbon Then we have arrived and we got our rental car and I was like we start driving to the highway like

actually be excited? Like are we allowed to like shout and yell and say we made it like we're here this trip actually worked and I just feel the elation start rising like yes we're back in Europe this amazing like I'm just I'm going off the charts and then all of a sudden. Did I cry that soon? She starts crying I'm like DAAAHHHH and instead of realizing what was happening I was like DAAAHHHH man this whole

I'm so stoked and here she is crying. I don't know what like how could you be crying in like the best moment ever? But in my mind I'm thinking this is really real like we're in Portugal looking for a place to an area to live like it suddenly became so palpable and I'm thinking about and

Rachel Denning (25:44.589)
that means I'm going to have to go home and pack up everything in my house, and we're going to have to leave, and we're going to, you know, I'm thinking of all these logistical details, and what about the war, and... And so I'm like, ah, it's so real. But after, at most, two days of crying. No, it wasn't, it was mostly that day, really. It was mostly the drive. It became a very solemn drive. I was like, let's turn on some music, this is the best! And I was like, okay, let's just...

Let's process. But then after that, it was great. It was great. Oh, it was amazing. But I think if you're not aware of what's happening, what ends up happening... And if I had resisted and pushed back or made it bad or had I gotten upset or resentful about you crying, like... Then I can't process the feelings because now I turn into defensive mode. And so instead of those feelings being processed, I'm just defending myself or I'm...

fighting back or whatever. Stuffing the problems down. So then it does become a miserable experience. Like the whole trip is ruined basically because we're butting heads saying, why are you crying? And so upset. Oh, you ruined the trip on the first day. You're not even understanding. You never listened to me. So we just need to point that out. That's the thing. Sweet. But it's still worth it. So worth it. Oh, it's amazing. Okay. Let's share the list.

Cause there's some awesome stories here, you guys. And we hope the list, this isn't bragging. We're, we're just sharing because we couldn't have planned this. There's when we went over this list, I was like, what in the world? There's no way in the world we could have planned this, even from where we are right now with our, with our mindset and our abundant mentality and our planning skills, our business, our planning skills. We couldn't have planned this trip, but to these, all these trips, this whole lifestyle we've created.

But to think of this starting back in 2007, like where we were then, to think, oh, this list is gonna be epic, right? Well, there wasn't even a list. We weren't even thinking like this back then. Well, and that reminds me of the other thing we were talking about is that when we think back to the people we were when we got married, we're not even the same people. We are.

Rachel Denning (28:08.173)
totally different people. And if we met those people now, they probably would be very judgmental of us. And we would be embarrassed for them. We would be embarrassed of them. And in fact, we were talking about how embarrassed we were of some of our passion and zeal and just, I guess it's that, passion and zeal. Well, and orthodoxy and like whatever. We just would grab onto something.

We were trying to just really live. That's one thing we had to go on. Well, but that's what we ultimately summarized or concluded that even though we were embarrassed of those people or maybe were judgmental of their passion and zeal, but it was the zeal that was sometimes offensive and...

We're misdirected. Misdirected, embarrassing, and yet without it we wouldn't be the people we are now. And so what was that quote from Thoreau? I think it was Emerson that just said, why are we so afraid of making mistakes? Why do we feel like we just can't be wrong? He's like, just be fired up and passionate about something and take a side and stand for it. If you realize that you're wrong later, like, okay, switch sides.

Like take the other side and be passionate about that. And when you like, it's okay to change and make mistakes and go on because the alternative is we're so afraid of being wrong or making a mistake or being passionate about something later we'll regret that. Then we just are like this lukewarm, and you don't, you don't grab onto anything. And so then you just kind of exist. So in order to live a passionate life and have a passionate marriage,

You gotta lean in. And sometimes you're gonna do embarrassing things. And you're gonna be... You're gonna be the fool. ...missed directed energy or whatever, or focus. But if you're willing to grow and learn and progress, then you'll get dialed in. Right. And I don't think it's at all possible for us to be where we are now, physically, mentally, socially, financially, all of those things, if we had not have...

Rachel Denning (30:33.357)
had been those passionate zealot people. Now, in a lot of ways, that passion and temper has...

Wisen or maybe tempered. It's been tempered a little but It's what got us here. And so I don't know. There's a lot of passion. Gratitude. Try things, experience things, learn things. Because it took us on this journey of all these places we've been. So again, like we couldn't remember really what we had done before our travel life started and our travel life started in 2007 and

It started in, wait, it started in April. It started in April of 2007. So, March, that year. Wait, you just had a baby. I just, our baby was probably two or three months old. Yeah. So we probably went to a restaurant. Yeah, we probably went to a restaurant. Maybe we went to Chuck -A -Ram. I don't know. But then in 2008. And that was our fourth little one. So we had four little ones. So we had four children under the age of four at that time in 2007. Dates look very different when you have an infant. Yes.

And so do trips. In fact, as we've mentioned, there was a couple of these anniversary trips where we took our baby with us because we had to. So 2000. Which, I gotta throw this in here.

It didn't like disrupt the trip. Maybe this is just me, but I think back on the memory. I'm like, wow, that was awesome. And then I'm like, oh yeah, we took the baby. Like I have to be remembered. I look at pictures like, oh yeah, the baby was there. Like it wasn't, it wasn't like, oh, the baby ruined everything. The baby. The mama had a trip with the baby. And I like, it's not that like, and, and there's a lot of tact.

Rachel Denning (32:27.373)
and a lot of strategizing and systems that help with all that, even for getting on dates and taking trips when you have littles. Right. Okay, so we moved to Costa Rica in 2007. Basically, we drove there from Utah. 2008, we were still in Costa Rica and we were celebrating, but this was after the crash, the stock market and real estate crash. And essentially we had lost all of our income. We were dead broke and

pretty much depressed and we had some friend I guess or someone from our church or something that had a house on well close to the beach and said hey go stay there and we went and stayed with our kids at a little house near the beach that had a pool and a gigantic beetle flew and landed. I've got huge hands I got these big bear paw hands and this beetle was as big as my

whole hand. It was legit. This rhino beetle is amazing. But that happened on our anniversary. So that was on our anniversary. So, you know, that's nothing to write home about. There was a beetle on our anniversary. Happy anniversary, babe. Right. So it's not like we did anything particular to celebrate per se because we had small kids and we were broke. But we still... We did what we could. It was super memorable. Yeah, we did what we could.

with what we had when we went to stay at a beach house that someone offered. So in some ways it's just getting creative and doing something, right? The next year was 2009 and we were in the Dominican Republic because we had moved there. And again, I don't think we did anything specific, but we were there. We probably went out to get something to eat and walked along the beach holding hands. It was paradise there, man.

Wow. And in some ways, I guess this is where the uniqueness of our life makes things stand out because we did. We moved to all these different places. So we were able to go and do something local that was still international because we were international. And so, you know, it can take some creativity to do this at your level, but it's still possible. There's still, because what we're doing is we're being tourists.

Rachel Denning (34:52.845)
in the place we're living. Does that make sense? So wherever you're living, you have to be a tourist in that place. Gotcha. So go see the cool things. Do the cool things. Especially on special dates. If there's a boat tour or there's a fancy restaurant, like where did the tourists go? If they came to your town, where did they go? What did they go see? What did they do? Do that thing, right?

If nobody comes to your town for any reason, you might need to move. Or maybe that's how you like it, so stay. But go somewhere. But go somewhere cool. Because you need to go somewhere. The next year, 2010, we were living in India. And so this was, I remember, where our kids were a little bit older and we did have some help because we were living at a school for...

Children of Leprosy affected, it was a whole organization, a humanitarian organization, and we had some help that could, you know, we could hire help to help with the kids. And we went and stayed a couple nights in a different city. Here in Mahabalipuram. Right. Mahabalipuram. And we went to the Crocodile Preserve and we saw them milking, milking cobras. They would capture the cobras and then they would milk them and let them go. They had dozens.

dozens and dozens of bags, little white bags tied with knots, filled with snakes. Exactly. And I was like, oh man, you get all the venom and then you kill them? He's like, no, we just let them go. Because that's against their religion. You don't kill snakes. You don't kill the snakes. So they just... I'm like, wait, you capture all of these deadly poisonous snakes and then re -release them? And they were milking them because they make an anti -venom. Because they desperately need the anti -venom. Because having all those dangerous snakes out is dangerous, so they make plenty of anti -venom.

So that was that anniversary. That was a great memory. The next year we were in Alaska and that was another challenging year because we had been in a car accident about six months earlier. We had a six week old baby when we got in the car accident in October. It was Halloween. And our three year old broke her femur. Snapped her femur in half and spent. And was in a body cap.

Rachel Denning (37:14.093)
14 weeks in full body cast. She maybe just recently got out of her body cast. And we were broke again. We were broke again. This is... It was a theme. This is a theme that I take full responsibility for. I was failing as a provider. We also had a unique life that made it challenging, especially starting out. So it was an early fame as we...

We've got our travel aids. It's a very long theme that shouldn't have been that long because I didn't know what I know now. That's part of what we were talking about. If you're stuck in something, if you're stuck, whether it's your money's stuck or your mindset's stuck or your heart's set's stuck or your relationship, some of you are listening to this and your marriage's stuck. It literally is because... You don't know what you don't know. Yeah, exactly. You don't know how to create it up.

the strategies and systems or to get access to the tools and the tactics that just make it work. I wish I obviously wish I had known all this, wish somebody had been a mentor to me. I wish I would have understand this whole concept, but now this is what I do day in and day out. And you give people the tools and the tactics, the strategies and the systems, and then it just works. It works like a champ. And so you've, if you're struggling and have been struggling, especially,

you've reached the current limit of your skillset and knowledge base in that thing. So the key to success in that thing and in everything is to invest in getting the knowledge and skills and tools from people who have the caliber of life you want. Actually, I'm going to a little tangent here. There are so many like,

mentors and coaches and whatever out there, you know, gurus, experts, that they're telling you how to succeed in one thing. But if you're careful, you don't realize that their success in that thing cost them the success in all of their other things. Or at least a couple of other things. Yeah. And so maybe, you know,

Rachel Denning (39:34.893)
The big one obviously is finances, right? You get this guy's like, well I did this and I did this and I did this and all these things and I'll teach you how to do it too. You give him tons of money and he teaches you things like, well that's great. And his formula includes you selling your soul. Or neglecting your family. Well that's what I mean. Like you just literally are handing over all your time, all your everything. His strategy was like,

let everything else go so you can succeed at this. And there's some guys that blatantly say it like that and they're guys like, no, no, uh, the reason you're doing this is for your family. It's important. But then they literally work a hundred hour weeks. Cause like, if you want to win, you got to grind. And then they neglect their health and they neglect their mindset and their spiritual relationships. So get, if you're getting, don't take advice from people who don't have the holistic life you want. And people you wouldn't want to trade.

Yes, exactly. Okay, keep going. Back. The next year, so we actually, for our anniversary, I don't know that we did anything that year, we were in Alaska, and then in April, we left Alaska and started driving, and we were driving on our Alaska to Argentina trip that never actually turned into Argentina, it just went to Panama. So we began driving in April. Then we had made it to Guatemala by 2012, and we celebrated our anniversary. We...

Again, broke and we just did simple things. We went shopping and went out to dinner on our anniversary in Panahatchel. The next year we were in 2013. I'm willing to share this and I'm actually, I want to point out the embarrassment here. That year after year after year we're like, oh broke again, we probably went out to dinner. Broke again, we probably went out to dinner.

broke again, we probably went out to dinner, broke again, this on and on, like this is so lame. And I have to own that failure. We were living a ridiculously awesome life. Well, that's the other thing though. We were having epic adventures. We were living an incredible life while being broke. So it doesn't have to stop you. So we went from Costa Rica to the Dominican Republic to India to Alaska to Guatemala. That's awesome. And we're still broke the whole time. Okay. And in...

Rachel Denning (41:59.821)
kind of in our defense, but I'm still, I take full ownership and responsibility for this. It was expensive -ish to do all those things. So, like we were doing all the things, right? We were taking our whole family and going to all these places and doing all those things. So that's where our money was going. And so there wasn't a lot of extra for something special, but I guess that's my point. I am responsible.

for the extra.

Yeah. Anyway, just throwing that out in case it's helpful for someone. Okay, 2013, we were still in Guatemala and this time, I remember, we had more money and we went and stayed the night at the expensive hotel on Lake Atulant. Well, it was actually really nice. It was a nice hotel. It was boat only and this fancy dinner and this unbelievable view. That was a nice place. That was a great, that was great.

And then the next year we were in Costa Rica and we had actually, I had just had a baby like three or four weeks before. So we didn't do anything official because I was recovering. That's understandable. So we're not saying at all costs, you know, if you've just had a baby. Is that, is that when we went down to the coast on the mango farm? It would have been around that same time. We went down, we spent.

I can't remember, six, seven weeks, you guys, in a mango grove on the coast. It was magic, man. With the whole family. That whole family, wow! Yeah, that was pretty cool. It was so awesome. I remember Sage was teeny when we went. She was. So, we might have been down there. It probably would have been right after our internship. 2016, now we had moved to Europe. So,

Rachel Denning (43:55.853)
Now this is when financially things had changed. Like it really shifted for us in 2014 pretty much. And we moved to Europe in 2015, no 2016, yes, no 2015 we moved to Europe. And then 2016 it was actually our 15 year - You forgot this one, we took a trip to Peru. Oh oops you're right, I skipped that one. So we moved in 2015 to Europe but in March -

for our anniversary, we were still living in Costa Rica, a different place, and we took a trip to Peru. And the kids were just getting old enough to leave them, and we had some friends nearby that we totally trusted. And we had a maid that came every day. Yep, and so we're like, let's go to Peru, babe. And so Rachel and I, and we took the baby because she was one, you couldn't leave her. So we took our one year old and we went to Peru for a week.

Really that Peru trip was just going from Peruvian restaurant to Peruvian restaurant. It was amazing. That was super cool. So we did that. Then later that year in June, we moved to Europe. Actually, can I pause on that? We keep pausing and interrupting the story here. Interrupting ourselves. We set an alert for flights because we knew we wanted to go to Lima because I love Peru. I can go back to Peru again and again and again. I love it. And had you been yet?

No, that was the first time and I'm like I want to take you so Rachel just found this way to set an alert on some I can't remember what So you can do it on basically any you do it all the time now So I'm like just send an alert and what they do is if whenever there's a discounted price or cheap flight or something And they're trying to fill seats they'll just do this fire sale and you can set up alerts and so you got to be able to pull the trigger like whenever and We're sitting there one day and she's like, holy cow. They have round -trip tickets for a hundred dollars. I

from San Jose, Costa Rica. I was like, what? Are you sure? Because it just sounded too good to be true. She's like, yeah, San Jose, Costa Rica to Lima, Peru, 100 bucks. And I was like, pull the trigger. And so it literally cost us, and our baby was free, went on a lap. So it was $200 round trip for that. That's not true. The baby was not free. Because I have cried at airports before. And that was one of the times I cried at an airport because we showed up.

Rachel Denning (46:14.381)
And I thought, oh, the baby will be free to sit on my lap. And they were like, oh no. What? Yeah, I remember. She was only one. They're like, no, you still have to pay for her. And it's 10 % of the cost of the flight. And because I hadn't booked it when I had booked the flight, they charged me 10 % of the current price of the flight, which was $99, which was the same that we had paid for our flights. And I was like, what? That doesn't make any sense. And because she had been born in Costa, we're just reminiscing here, guys.

Because she'd been born in Costa Rica, she was a Costa Rican citizen, we'd also had gotten her US birth certificate and passport, and so we were using that, but they were like, well, she's a citizen of Costa Rica, so that means you need to check her out of the country. And so we almost missed our flight. You can't leave this country without getting permission from the government to take your baby. I know. I was ready to punch someone. I'm like, I am taking my baby. If you try to stop me, you'll regret it the rest of your days. So we had to run around the airport.

Trying to take, we had to take like a passport photo of her and like get copies and like all of these things so we could leave the country to go on this trip. Then there was another fiasco to try to leave Peru, but we won't get into that. We won't get into that. We've learned so much about things that go wrong while you're traveling. Okay, so then that June of 2015 we did move to Europe and...

2016 was our 15th year anniversary. And so we thought we'd do this big thing and we went on. Well, at that point, we rented a cottage on the moor in England, in Devonshire. It was magic. We all loved that place so much. The kids were like, can we go back and rent that same place? They loved it. So we left them there. They were older now. Well, we had grandpa come stay with them. Oh yeah. Well, let me, I'll throw this in here.

Train your kids, teach them, train them, educate them, give them the skills. The sooner you do that and the better they get at it, the sooner you'll be able to leave with confidence that they can take care of themselves. A lot of times, I can't leave my kids home. I'm like, well, then that's your fault. Whose fault is it you can't leave your kids home, obviously, if they're old enough? It's like it's yours. You haven't trained them. So train them so that this can become a reality. Well, our kids always joke.

Rachel Denning (48:41.389)
Because when we took that trip to Peru from Costa Rica, our oldest at the time was 12. And the youngest that we left behind was probably, I don't know, four. And they always laughed because obviously it's unique that we left them alone when they were those ages. Now, on our side of it, we also had the maid coming in every day. We literally had the neighbor that was - She was like part of our family. We could see his house right from us.

We were living in a community of people that there was houses all around. And we trusted them and they were super helpful. Yeah, and it was a very, it was an organic farm with this very community community, like everyone was friendly and helpful and trusting. So, and we had other friends nearby that came over all the time. So it wasn't like we just totally left them alone. But as I thought back on that, I'm like, we felt we could do that.

We knew that they were capable enough even at those ages, like my 12 year old, my oldest daughter, she was capable enough that she could take care of whatever needed to be taken care of, you know? And so I'm sure plenty of you are like, that's just insane, I can't even imagine doing that. But there's also this thing where I think in the US, children tend to be a little bit younger in their capabilities because they're not.

required to have and we learned this through our travels because we started leaving our daughter home alone with the younger kids at a younger age when we were traveling because everyone around us was doing that too. It was necessary. Now it wasn't as necessary for us all the time, but we saw that they were able to handle more responsibility than usually given because they were given the opportunity or you know, it was required of them.

Don't make it a burden on them though. So it's not a burden, it's like most kids like they want to level up, they want the skill sets, they want to feel responsible. And so the only reason we were even at all comfortable with taking that trip that we did was because we felt like our kids are responsible, safe, capable, even at that young age. Now since then, of course, it's only gotten better. And if we hadn't have had that support,

Rachel Denning (51:01.005)
system in place in this unique area in Costa Rica, we wouldn't have done either. It's not like at that age we would have just left them totally alone. That's not safe. We always had a really solid - There were at least 10 other adults living within a stone's throw from them. You could see their houses. We always had a really solid backup. Again, there's a lot to this, right? In order to have this awesome marriage life we have -

Like you build relationships and you teach your kids. It takes a village in a way, right? Right. And you always have these backups. And I talk to people all the time, they're like, we just don't have, we don't have any watch the kids. I'm like, do you not have any friends or neighbors or like you connect with people? Like, what do you mean? And you just, most of the time we just, we take something at face value and we're like, well, I can't do it.

Instead of, I've just never done that. I'm like, well, now I want to do this. So how can I create the situation and circumstances? How can I get the resources I need so that this happens? And there's been multiple times where we've flown in family members to stay with our families so that we could get away. We made it a priority. Which, so on this trip, you know, now back to 2016 when we celebrate our 15th year anniversary and we took a Mediterranean cruise with, we were the only Americans on this cruise.

It was mostly British and Scottish people. And grandma and grandpa came that time and stayed because we didn't have the same support community in place. So leaving them totally, there was no, we were in the middle of the moor, right? So we're not going to just leave them there. And so we had them come to help out then. And I was actually pregnant with our seventh on that trip. And it was kind of the joke when we got off the,

that we survived it because I was sick from morning sickness and then you had gotten sick so we were both sick otherwise it would have been you know a decent cruise we went to Turkey went to Greece went to Israel went to Cyprus it was nice next year 2017 we were touring Europe with our family and you and I took a trip with the baby this time again to London

Rachel Denning (53:17.517)
So we left the kids in Italy, again with friends. We were traveling with friends. We left them with the friends. We went to London for the weekend, came back, and then you were actually leading the World War II trip. So on our actual anniversary, and this is another point, you don't have to necessarily do it on the day. We went earlier, and then on the day of the anniversary, you were leading a trip, World War II trip in Berlin, and I was with the kids in Italy. And then when you came back, we continued on our trip. So I think even like...

We went to Florence. We'd already been to Pisa, I think. And on the 16th, we were in Venice. And then we went to Lake Bled in Slovenia. So it was all part of a trip. Then the next year, we had moved to Utah in 2018. And I don't know. I don't know that we did anything then. We were in Utah. Got nothing. But then the next year in 2019,

We led a World War II trip again. Together. That's a popular trip. And we led it together. But then the actual day of our anniversary, we stayed the night at a hotel in Dublin. Ireland. Which was very nice. Yeah, it was great. 2020, we went to Thailand and led a couples trip. That was an incredible experience. Unbelievable. Elephants and beaches and... Fancy restaurants. Yeah, the Ritz -Carlton restaurant. Oh, magic.

and came back with COVID. But in 2021 we chartered a private yacht with...

Six other couples, and sailed the Galapagos and had basically had it to ourselves because a lot of people weren't traveling because of COVID. Wow, that was so good. Yeah, that was an amazing trip. So, and you can see from our own story as the finances improve, well, obviously the trips improve as well, right? That's a great thing. But...

Rachel Denning (55:20.717)
If we had already had the habit of trying to do something, again you see that it's not perfect either, we were intentional about it as much as we could be. And that intentionality created the habit so that when you have more money, you're already in this thing of like, okay, what are we doing for our anniversary this year? And you're thinking about it, you're planning for it, and all of that. And that swills over to everything. Right, exactly. But.

I do want to point out that's not the determining factor of the quality of your marriage. Would you say that the marriage just got better because we got on more expensive trips and better restaurants? Absolutely. 100 %! So it is the money! No, absolutely not. Well, I think the marriage gets better just because of growth and experience and...

increased wisdom, all of that. Which leads to more money. Right. Exactly, right. Everything affects everything. But it was the intentionality that helped the marriage to be strong even when we were totally broke. Because we've had people tell us, especially people that have had a divorce or different things, and they're like, how did you make it through that? How did you make it through that rock bottom low point of being completely broke or this or that or the other? And...

It's because we did have the marriage that was strong. And I've been accused of being overly optimistic that I only wear rose -colored glasses. And I look back, I'm like, low point, schmo point. I'm still married to this babe here. We had awesome kids, and we were doing cool stuff. Like, I do. I look back and...

Even the quote hard times and we do we do win through some tough times Not not we in our marriage. I don't think I don't think like I and again, maybe this is my rose -colored glasses I like back my this has been 22 years of bliss and joy. It's been amazing I don't think I don't think we've struggled like a lot of people It's not that we haven't had any disagreements or challenges or just I already said disagree disturbances in the force, right?

Rachel Denning (57:44.749)
We haven't always seen things eye to eye. We've certainly misunderstood each other with the crying or with sex or with different things that we've had to work out. Count on my hands though, like the times we went to sleep upset at each other. Yeah, maybe. Maybe five times. In 22 years. We process things, we work things. And again, the reason this works is because we were committed from the very beginning.

making it work. Now if you didn't start with that kind of commitment, start right now. Start right now. Be that committed to having an extraordinary marriage and work on it. And even if your spouse isn't there, so what? If you level up and you invest in your marriage, guess what? It makes your marriage better. It doesn't take two people. If you invest in your marriage, then your marriage is more valuable. There it is. Done. So lean in.

and make it special. Obviously we're talking about the big trips and the anniversaries and all this cool stuff, but lean in on the daily and... And lean in on the big trips. Yeah, and the big trips. All of it. Lean in on all of it, but set and achieve goals together. Express gratitude and love daily.

Do fun, make your life exciting. Become, you become exciting. Be enticing, be attractive, be your best self. Like succeed all around. Like really make the marriage magical. And you can have an absolutely extraordinary marriage. And if we can do it, you totally can. So make that commitment.

Make it happen, get after it, and watch how wonderful married life can be.

Rachel Denning (59:44.589)
Hey guys, thanks for listening. Share this with friends, family, colleagues who might need to hear it. If you haven't subscribed to the podcast, do that now. And if you like this episode or any episode, leave us a review. Love you guys. Reach out for it.