That's us, having our cake and eating it, too.

Four years ago, I married my best friend.

It was an unusually warm day for January — about 70 degrees and sunny.

The church was full of friends and family, many of whom were moved to tears before the ceremony even began. Myself (Jeff) included.

It was beautiful, fun, and unforgettable.

They say you can’t prepare for the best things in life. This certainly has been true for our marriage. Despite our best efforts to plan, so much has been unexpected.

For instance, I didn’t expect Ashley to change the song from “Canon in D” to “Hold On,” a song I had written for our first date.

As the doors to the sanctuary opened, my heart leaped into my chest. I nervously watched Dustin, my best man, walk up to the altar and pick up the guitar. I just about yelled at him to stop.

This wasn’t what was supposed to happen, I thought. He was supposed to play during communion. This was too soon. But then, he started playing the familiar tune. And I turned to watch my bride walk down the aisle and completely lost it.

I knew in an instant this would be the best day of my life.

The surprises continued at our reception when my wife surprised me with a song-and-dance routine of “Signed, Sealed, Delivered” by Stevie Wonder (with the help of her bridesmaids and close friends).

We then surprised our friends with the first dance — a choreographed mash-up of ballroom and the styles of Michael Jackson.

One day on our honeymoon, we made plans to visit the city and got snowed in. So instead, we baked brownies and made snow angels.

When we started looking for houses, we ended up buying the first one we saw (because it was perfect — “the best deal in Franklin,” our real estate agent told us).

When we were tired of looking for dogs and just about to give up, we found Lyric at the local shelter. We brought him home the very next day.

I’m grateful for the surprises. They make our story feel exciting. Our marriage has been full of wonderful, unexpected moments that we’ve learned to embrace. Some have been great and others hard. In all of it, we’ve learned to trust God and each other more. I’m a better man for it, and we’re a better couple.

Tonight, we will go out to dinner, exchange gifts, and see The Civil Wars in concert. And we will celebrate four years of surprises, and hopefully, many more to come.

It’s time for a “Life with the Goinses” update.

La Casa de Goins

What’s new with us

• We are buying a house in Franklin, TN. We close in a week. No big deal or anything!
• Lyric averages a couple of ticks per day. We’re becoming experts at pulling them off. (Well, at least, I am).
• My sister Marissa recently graduated high school and is planning on attending University of Alabama at Birmingham in the fall. We gave her a George Foreman grill. In the same weekend, Ashley’s parents celebrated their 30th wedding anniversary with a surprise party that Ashley planned. It was a blast.
• Ashley’s photo business is doing well; she recently shot a wedding (with a little help from her assistant) and did a family session.

In other news

• The movie Bridesmaids was better than I expected (don’t tell anyone I said that).
• I ran a half marathon in April, finishing 30 minutes sooner than I thought I would. Not bad, if I may say so myself.
• I’m leading a mission trip to Puerto Rico with my very good friend Dustin.
• We’re headed to Ireland in August!
• We have a lot of packing to do (Ashley is making me get rid of a bunch of books — can someone say, “Kindle?”)
• Ashley beat me at Jenga last night.

And just for fun…

Caught in the act!

Here’s the most pathetic picture of Lyric I could find. I took this after he was sniffing through the groceries, trying to find something good to eat. His collar got stuck, and he started to panic. I watched with sadistic joy. Serves him right.

If you were lucky enough for me to bare my soul to you and admit that I was selfishly heartbroken by the fact that my dog disliked car rides, then you would know how much I dreamed of my dog sticking its head out the window, tongue flapping in the wind.  And you would also know that when Lyric came along, he just laid in the backseat and slept, never once trying to stand up and look out the window.

Well something changed around February.  And I wonder if it was his new-found-friend Monty.  I wonder if he looked back, saw almost three-foot Monty with half his body out the window riding in the car behind us to the dog park, and thought it looked fun.  Who knew that all this time all I needed for him to try it was to see a dog (I may or may not have stuck my head out the window once or twice to get Lyric to do it with no luck) do it to know what to do.  Regardless, he got a taste of it that day.  And there is no turning back. Lyric loves car rides.

Everytime we take him out and stop by the car to grab something, he jumps in.  If you announce a car ride and let him out the door without his leash, he’ll run out of sight in a heartbeat, only for you to finally make it to the car and see him sitting at the backdoor.  Yes, he knows both of our cars, which sometimes means he’s at the wrong car, but he’s always sitting at one of our cars nonetheless.

His favorite thing to do is perch on the console between the two front seats*.  At first you might blame it on his slight height disadvantage and wanting to see outside, but he can fit his nose out the backdoor windows.  The real reason behind his perching is, in fact, he is part mountain goat.  No joke.  We have witnesses.

So to celebrate my uncontainable joy, here are a few more Lyric photos.  I would be concerned that my faithful audience would be turned away by us doting on our dog… however he is the cutest thing to walk this Earth, so I know you love it.

Doggy see...

Doggy do!

The ONE time outta upteen that Lyric got the ball.

Doggy roll!

Check out Lyric's paw-o-death!

This pup loves his tennis ball!

*Lyric has a seatbelt that he wears on any trips longer than five minutes, so he gets lots of car rides to McDonald’s and Redbox just for fun (and maybe for our benefit).  We do practice puppy safety in this house!

Yes, we’re proud pup parents.  Lyric is a one-year old border collie mix.  We’re not sure what else he is, but whatever the mix, he got the best of both worlds.  He’s adorable, has soft fur, doesn’t really shed (well, until you feed him a corn diet), is super fast and quite the jumper (this may be a con…), a lover and a lap dog.  We may not know what other type of dog he is, but we do know he is also part mountain goat (he loves to climb to the highest point in the room and just stand there) and part raccoon (he uses his paws like hands, seriously).

The day Lyric came home, he was pitiful.  It was September 21st, and he was so sad and emo, totally out of his element.  But day by day, even week by week, we started to see more of his personality.  There are still surprises, months later, that just crack us up.  We have laughed until we have cried, we have awed and melted, we have almost eliminated our need for tv because he’s way more entertaining to watch play and we have had our fair share of disciplining as well.  But the big picture is:  we absolutely adore him and could not be more pleased with the choice we made.

So here’s a little “In the Life of…” blog.  Our favorites are Lyric in the snow, because he absolutely eats it up. Literally.  He loves the snow.

Common Occurrence: Beggin' for Belly Rubs

Lyric's FAVORITE ball (if you find another, we need a replacement!)

Lyric: Seatbelt Supermodel

At Lyric's First Play Date

The Boys: Best Buds

"I'm cute, right?!"

Merry Christmas 2010!

Love that face!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from the Goinses!  We are so glad that you have stopped by, so please say hello (that’s blogish for “leave us a comment”)!  This year has been pretty amazing, insane, eventful, wonderful and just down right crazy busy. And unfortunately, that has meant this blog has been neglected a lot. So how about a New Years’ resolution already (already? yes, already!)…  

We will blog… more… so hold us to it! And we’ll leave “more” that vague on purpose, because we don’t want to break any promises!

Ok, enough clowning around. This year has sincerely been incredible. Thank you to so many of you who have walked it with us, cheered us on and celebrated with us.  It’s great to have people all over the U.S. to share our lives with. So thank you!  And since there are so many wonderful events missing from this blog, we’ll do our best to do “A Year in Pictures” as our Christmas letter to help cram everything in and give you less to read.  Everyone prefers a picture book anyway, yes?

In January we started off the year celebrating our second anniversary!

In February we had our traditional Valentine’s Day with the Daubenmires.  This time we treked to Indiana and drove home in a ridiculous snowstorm!

Ashley also announced to the world that she’d be starting Portray Photo! AND Ashley’s brother, Ahron, got engaged!

In March we started FPU, a 13-week course by Dave Ramsey about financial peace.  We are quite excited about where it’s taken us and where we’re going!

March also had several birthdays to celebrate. We surprised Ahron on his 25th, and Jeff got a surprise on his 27th, too.

For Jeff’s, the two of us had lunch at Cantina Laredo, and then we went back to the apartment where a Fiesta Surprise Party was waiting!  And we also went to Alabama to celebrate Nikki’s 20th birthday and to do a photo shoot with the siblings.

In April we kicked off a busy year of concerts! We saw Deas Vail and Copeland (one of Copeland’s last shows).

We also saw Train and David Gray at the Ryman.  David Gray was phenomenal, and we fell in love with the Ryman that night.

We also enjoyed Pam’s (Ashley’s mom) Christmas present, which was tickets to see Bon Jovi here in Nashville.  And we (by that I mean us four kids) got lucky, because Dashboard Confessional was opening up for them on that date!

And we can’t forget that we attended another show at the Ryman!  This time it was The Swell Season, and they are amazing.

April also brought the much anticipated Vasilko wedding in Minnesota.  While we were incredibly excited to celebrate Paul and Brooke, we were also excited for the excuse to head back to Willmar and see so many of our CTI friends.

Willmar also gave us the excuse to see one of Ashley’s high school best friends, miss Heather Johnson, who has lived in South Dakota for the past four years.  It was an honor to do a photo shoot for her to help her put together a surprise gift for her parents’ wedding anniversary!

Opry Mills Mall and Grand Ole Opry

In May Nashville got slammed with the flood of the century.  It was great to see everyone come together and help out.  So many places, including Ashley’s work, were giving employees a day from work to help out, so we went with our church and volunteered with Samaritan’s Purse to help pull out drywall, clean out crawl spaces and pick up debree.

May also helped us check off an item on our financial plan – we cut up all our credit cards!  That was an exciting day, and thankfully we have not missed them once in the past seven months, even with Christmas shopping!

In June we attempted what was our first camping trip in a good while.  First ever as a married couple in fact.  We met our Indiana friends, the Daubenmires, in a state park in Southern Indiana and had an experience we’ll never forget.  Among the most memorable moments was the crazy thunderstorm that rolled through the first night after bed time and the raccoons that tried to steal our stuff mutliple times, resulting in Jeff chasing after one into the woods because it took our hand wipes.

July brought us back to Illinois for The Fourth.  We made a detour to St. Louis on the way, though, to help surprise Ashley’s mom at The Fox Theater.  We all had tickets to see Wicked, which was so incredible.

We celebrated Ashley’s birthday early when her mom brought her a cake.  And then just the two of us celebrated on the day of, with dinner at Olive Garden, a movie and Coldstone ice cream.

We then headed to North Carolina to vacation with friends.  We loved staying in the adorable town of Black Mountain, attending Bele Chere in Asheville and shopping and eating at so many amazing restuarants in both Asheville and Black Mountain, including revisiting our favorite tapas place from our honeymoon called Chorizo (located at The Grove Arcade).

We closed out the month with a pretty big event for us.  WE BECAME DEBT FREE!  Bye bye car payment!

August brought Ahron and Kathy’s wedding!  The weather turned out to be absolutely beautiful.  It was so wonderful to help out in all the ways we did, and to finally see their vision for the day come to life.  What a beautiful evening under the stars it was.

September, in a way, was the beginning of something new.  Ashley was offered a different job at Provident, where she’d have the opportunity to work with Mainstream Sales and International.  It has been a fun and exciting change for her that has kept her quite busy.  September also marked the beginning of what would be a busy travel season for Jeff.  This is when he started traveling every month to Georgia for work.  And somehow we squeezed in a trip to Six Flags St. Louis to meet up with Ashley’s parents, and Ashley’s dad managed to drag us on the Dragon’s Wing.  It was something we never thought we’d do, especially Ashley who screamed the entire time.

But the best part of September?  Our family grew a bit!  Ashley has talked about a puppy for years, and while attending FPU, we decided that when we paid the car off (thus becoming debt free!) we would reward ourselves by getting a puppy.  Ashley’s specific requirements (girl, puppy, long soft coat, Border Collie) complicated the search a bit.  But then one day a sweet, sad little face appeared at the local shelter. And after spending just 10 minutes with him, Jeff decided he was the one. Yes, a he.  A one year-old little boy we affectionately call Lyric.  And while he is no longer a puppy in age, he still most definitely acts like one.  We have been so blessed with his temperment and for him being somewhat easy to train.  He’s truly been one of our greatest joys, being the adorable, shadow, cuddling, sweetheart that he is, as well as the craziest, hyper, entertaining ball of energy that he also is.

October brought us back to Illinois, where Ashley had two fabulous shoots.  Sam is doing a surprise for her parents for Christmas, so shhh!!! (see part 1 and part 2), and Emily just wanted some photos of her cute kids, which is easy to do when they are so photogenic (see part 1 and part 2).  Portray Photo kept pretty busy this fall, and this winter has been no excpetion with Christmas cards and lots of Portray Word letter art orders.

Right before Halloween, Ashley and her mom got away to Florida for the weekend.  It was beautiful weather, great views, and a great time for relaxing.

We ended the month by getting our photos taken.  Kristine Neeley did an amazing job!  She has become a good friend of Ashley’s, whom she eats lunch at Moe’s with often, while they discuss life, photography and Dave Ramsey.  We can’t thank Kristine enough for giving us such wonderful gifts in these photos.

November brought us to Needtobreathe at the Ryman.  Another amazing show (we love music, can you tell?)!  We also had Thanksgiving in Illinois.

And now we’re here to December.  It’s currently freezing cold (high of 27 today and 21 tomorrow) for the South, and there is still snow on the ground, having snowed over 24 hours ago!  We can’t remember there ever being a time when snow snuck around here this long.  Our stockings are hung by the chimney with care, and we are anxiously awaiting Christmastime so we can spend it with both our families.  We pray that each of you has a blessed time with your dear ones, and that you stay safe and warm.

Lots of love and licks (from Lyric that is)!

Jeff, Ashley and Lyric Goins

“Faith is the assurance of things hoped for.” – Hebrews 11:1