What to Do When Your Kids Grow Up and Move Out, according to Jeff and Lisa

1. Head out to celebrate your 27th wedding anniversary. 27 years, while just the beginning for you two, is such a hard-won, precious accomplishment.

2. Run into the Pfister with your sister and niece to pick up a gift card for a friend and have so much fun that you decide to just stay at the lobby bar to celebrate your anniversary here.

3. Order Miller Lites on tap. Though there are a myriad of other fancier options, stick to what works for both of you. After all, you’ve learned that whenever you try to deviate from this usual order, you will just end up asking the bartender, “Do you have anything that tastes like a Miller Lite?”

4. Plan a trip to Hawaii. Plan it for soon, like in a few months.

5. Both of your kids have recently graduated and moved out of your home. Remind each other that you’re “dating again” and gleefully start over together. Even after 27 years, there are still so many adventures ahead.

6. Get your motorcycle license. Your son wants to get his and you’re worried about his safety. Take the class with him just to keep an eye on him but fall in love with motorcycling and buy a Harley six weeks later.

7. Start taking your motorcycle on sweet little day trips together. Wake up early to be the only vehicle on the road, dewy fields and little towns rolling by. Stop for breakfast somewhere like Madison or Port Washington, then turn around and head home. Laugh at how even after all this time, life continues to open up for you in new ways.

8. Wait, you know what you should do? Rent a Harley in Hawaii! Immediately make a plan to bike to as many waterfalls as you can with a backpack of food and an elated freedom.

9. Take time to reminisce about when you first met, about how it took seven years of dating to get engaged but once the ring was finally purchased, he couldn’t wait another minute and just proposed right in the living room.

10. Wake up each morning to the same person, the one you choose in routine and in spontaneity. Forge ahead into these uncharted days together.

What Not to Do In Marriage, At Any Single Point in Time:
– Say, “You’re becoming your mother.”