Happy Birthday, Marcus

Today is our son-in-law Marcus' 37th birthday.  Marcus lives in Nebraska with our daughter, Lori, and her children.  He joined our family back in 2002 and was a perfect fit from day one.

I spoke with him a little while ago to wish him a happy birthday and conduct a little phone interview.  Here's how it went:

Happy birthday, Marcus.  Are you having a good day?  Yeah, I'm having a very good day.  I love Fridays.

Do you have any special plans for your birthday?  Yeah, tonight Lori and I are going to go out for dinner and tomorrow we are going to a wine and balloon festival out in the country west of Omaha.

I know that you're away a lot during the week for work but you always make it home for the weekends.  Do you feel like your weekends are better just because you appreciate your time at home more?  Most of the time they are.  The time is so limited that's it's really special to have those 48 hours on the weekends to do things together.  Even simple things like going for a walk together are special. 

I know you work for a radio station in Iowa and that you've done some sports announcing.  Do you enjoy it?  Absolutely!  The best part of my job is getting to broadcast games.

And is it harder than you thought it would be?  Ummm no.  The part that everybody hears is not hard.  You just have to be yourself .  It's the technical part and learning how to use the equipment and edit audio files and things like that that are a big part of my job.  I produce a lot of commercials so production part is an important part too that I really enjoy.

Do you like being a step-dad?  Oh, I love it.  It's the best job I've ever had and I don 't consider myself a step-dad I consider myself a dad.  The highlight of my day so far was when Lori texted me a picture of the boys together this morning.

It seems like you're a just-about-perfect stepfather - always supportive and offering guidance but never overstepping you're role.  Do you find it a difficult balance?   I did at first but we kind of developed our roles as parents early on and the last 8 to 10 years have been no problem at all.

For a long distance relationship, you and Lori seem to have a very close, loving marriage.  Does this require extra effort on both your parts or is it a natural progression because of your love and respect for one another.  It does require extra effort and I think if this were the beginning of our relationship it wouldn't work.  It just wouldn't be possible to start a long distance relationship like this but having been together for 11 years we have enough trust and respect that it does work.... at least for awhile until we can be together all the time.  This is not the end game right now.

What can you tell us about yourself that we might not already know?  Well, today was day 30 of streak2sept for me.  That was something that Lori's been wanting me to do - be more active and start to run and this was a great way to get started.  I still do a lot of walking but I've started to do some running as well.

There's a lot I'd like to add about Marcus.  First of all, we don't see nearly enough of him.  On the occasions when we've been to Nebraska, he's been in Iowa and even those moments are few and far between.  It's our loss because Marcus is one of the sweetest, most agreeable, personable people you could ever know.

He's always so willing to help out, talk about what everyone else wants to talk about, play whatever everybody else wants to play, and smile agreeably every time I decide to take a picture.

He's not only loving to his step-children, but enjoys and interacts with his many nieces and nephews.

Ask him a favor and he never hesitates.  He's one of our most important sous chefs on New Year's Eve, a wonderful and attentive bartender, and helps out anywhere and anytime he is needed.

He knows more about sports of every kind than any ten people put together and most importantly, he's unfailingly kind and considerate.

We love Marcus and we're so happy that he's part of our family.  We're wishing him an amazing birthday and a wonderful, successful year.

And for ourselves, we're hoping to see more of him in the coming year!

Happy Birthday, Marcus!