OK so lots of things to respond to in this thread....
1. The wife. A goddamn angel. So as a wife and a mother, she's phenomenal. She takes care of both kids while I'm at work, handles all the bills etc for the house, and cooks fantastic meals. It's like living in a restaurant sometimes. She even plans the meals for the week and writes up the menu in the kitchen for the whole week.
2. Heather's also a great friend. This means we can just hang out like buddies. We like the same movies, sports, food, and so on. She totally sees how much I like my music and is more than happy for me to take off for a week and go see ProgPower, Heathen Crusade, Metal Camp, etc. with my mates. She absolutely sees the need for guys to hang out with other guys.
3. I go to work everyday. As Brandon mentioned, I have a 1 hour commute each way (sometimes more) and my iPOD is a GODSEND. Basically, I listen to 2 full albums per day. To add, I have a CD player in the bathroom, so as I get ready each morning, I listen to a CD. So in total, I can listen to 3 albums per day.
4. The kids. We have two now (Chloe, 5 and Sebastian, 3). Just today we spent the afternoon at the local library watching some musician singing kids songs, and then we played educational games on the PC. Of course, we took a stack of books out too. Anyway, I digress, but I spend as much time as I can with my family on the weekends, and I get to eat dinner and read bedtime stories with the kids each night before they go to bed.
5. So in summary, I earn the $$, my wife takes care of the house and kids, I spend evenings and weekends with kids, and each night, after the kids go to bed, the wife and I mostly watch a TV show or 2. On occasion we watch a movie but it's after the kids go to sleep. My kids go to sleep at 8:30pm each night.
One quick thing -- it gets a little easier once they're in pre-school or kindergarten. In other words, as they get older, they're less dependent on you so you get some of your own life back. On the flipside, because they're older, they get to appreciate things that you can be involved in -- like trips to the library, museum, movie theater (I see all the kids films, heh), and so on. Of course, family holidays might include trips to Sea World (which we did a couple of years ago) and again, as they get older, then trips to Europe to show them Rome, Paris, London, Barcelona, etc.
Both kids will also hold dual nationality so they'll have no problem traveling around the EU.
Ass Magnet. I might change the name of the label to Ass Magnet. It would probably attract more attention, if nothing else.
