00:00:00.000Sarah, Matt, this last weekend you did a journey to manhood ceremony. Could you explain what that
00:00:13.000is and the importance? Sure. First, the name, it's not copyrighted. It's just something I came
00:00:19.360up with on the fly to tag that picture in. The AFA, we've been going back and forth over how to
00:00:26.000do this for too long. We need to go ahead and solidify some ritual on it. But coming-of-age
00:00:31.160ceremonies are things that some parents have wanted us to engage in, and there's been some
00:00:38.660demand to be part of. So this was one of those scenarios. There's a young man, and he's, you know,
00:00:47.200trying to think how old he is at the time, but he's pretty young. So we didn't want to do some
00:00:53.280kind of, all right, collect my thoughts so I'm not babbling. So one of the things that we've
00:00:59.860always been opposed to, and we still are, we're not going to do a ceremony that pronounces a boy
00:01:06.320to be a man and then still treat them like a boy. And certainly here in the United States,
00:01:12.020it becomes very awkward to do that ceremony until someone is 18. So in the AFA, we don't want to do
00:01:18.040do those ceremonies until somebody's legally an adult. Because when we ritually accept
00:01:25.080a young man or a young woman as an adult, that means something. And we are then accountable
00:01:32.380and we've agreed that we're going to treat them that way. You can't do that and then go home and
00:01:37.980tell them it's bedtime or who they can date or this. You can't go do that. So you need to trust
00:01:43.960them as an adult at the point you do it. But what is important to us is that it's a process and
00:01:49.480there's that period. So in this particular child's case, the idea was to start this at, you know,
00:01:58.000however old he is, 10 or whatever he is, to say, hey, today you're going to start learning to
00:02:03.740become a man. You're going to put aside the childish things and start learning manful things.
00:02:12.500So there's going to be another ceremony for him when he's 13, a midway point to to mark that amount of his progression to see how far he's come.
00:02:23.940And then there'll be a follow up final ceremony when he's 18 and he officially becomes a man.
00:02:29.740But it was a really special ceremony and it was something that that his dad put together that was very, very nice.
00:02:36.340And I thought it was really powerful. It was just with the men because, you know,
00:02:40.220this is about accepting him as someone who's who's trying to become one of that group.
00:02:47.740And it was it was really nice to be a part of. And it's the first one of those ceremonies I've
00:02:52.800been an active part of. Just so much to it. I think sometimes these questions are meant as
00:02:59.040just kind of casual how you're doing. But if if more comes to me, I always like to give a little
00:03:03.760bit more on that. My wife and I both waited too long in our life to start having kids. And so
00:03:12.640it wasn't a guarantee. We're very, very lucky that we have Aubrey. Mandy and I were both 39
00:03:18.960when we had her. So we didn't know if that was going to be a reality for us. So we're so blessed
00:03:23.740having Aubrey. It's amazing. She's first, I think having kids in general, assuming that they're
00:03:32.060healthy and, and stuff is probably always amazing, but we lucked out and have a particularly good
00:03:37.720one. Aubrey is awesome. And it's been, it's just been so cool to watch her. And this is relevant
00:03:46.420to how it's going this week. Just every couple of days, you notice some new things she learns
00:03:52.260or picks up or new things she can do that she couldn't do the day before. And it's,
00:03:56.340it's really cool to be a part of that. No, I love it. Now, can't say it's not challenging. And I
00:04:04.180can't say that kids don't do stuff that gets on your nerves. I don't think people talk about that
00:04:08.400enough. It's a thing. But no, it's amazing. And I'm extremely, extremely fortunate and blessed