16 years

You're the one for me, Babe! 

 August 18th marked another year in this adventure called marriage. This year I felt like I did a good job not taking things personally. Life is hard and families are stressful but thoughtless comments or frustrated sighs are not dominating my thoughts like they used to. I am very sensitive and I am not ashamed, in fact, I think of it like a superpower. (Glennon at Momastery, writes all about this.) I balanced this against living with five loud and outspoken males way better this year. Another not so lovey dovey idea to put on a marriage post is solitude. I need it. I enjoy it. This year I tapped into that and saw it deepen my relationships all around.

Matt shows up for me in the sweetest ways. My current favorite romantic gesture is when he goes in my place to parent meetings that drain me. I know, it's pretty steamy in here! ;) We have killer dates with wonderful food and he makes me laugh. (Hopefully that is how we will survive the election this fall.)

We went to a Bethel Worship Night last week and really grabbed onto the lyrics from the song "Pieces." The love of a good God, I want to love like that. 

Year 13 & 14

With optimism, I looked for anniversary posts on our 13th & 14th years of marriage so I can finish this series I started. There are none. Oh, 2013 & 2014, you jerks, you. Matt and I had a real hard time with those years. Overwhelmed with life, work, our first teenager, and an ADHD child, we had nothing left for each other.

The good news is we made it! I learned some things along the way, too. Things like the best bottle of red under $10. (ha! kidding, kinda.) I poured a lot into the kids during those days. Which is kind of cliche but also, kind of like loving Matt because they are half him. I learned new things about food and tried new dishes which is one of Matt's favorite ways to be loved. Honestly, there was a whole lot of "Help me, Jesus!" At some point, it didn't stop being difficult but I noticed that I had some strategies built up for when it's tough. Maybe there is some wisdom there but mostly I am just keeping it real.

Year 12

click here for my year 12 reflections. Or just have a good laugh at Matt and Winona.

Year 11

Hi blog friends! I am at it again. Doing my best to post on the blog and catch up on the marriage series I started. My year 11 reflection I posted is here.

I love looking back over the years we have been married. I am hoping this format is not too confusing to read. There is a tiny tag under each post that says "mawwiage" you can click on to see some of our journey together. If you are not into the links, just enjoy these Halloween pics from our past. (Yikes!) 

Year 10

Hi y'all! Remember me? This blog? This marriage series I started? 

Good news! I left off on year nine of marriage and blogged about almost every year after. I am tip toeing back into the blog, trying to share here as well as Instagram. 

I posted about year 10 here and then we went off to Seattle to celebrate, those posts are here.

Year 15

Sheakespeare's Sonnet 15 in light of our fifteenth year of marriage.When I read the cliff notes it had this to say:  life is transitory and ever-changing. Even the youth's beauty will fade over time, but because the poet knows that this metamorphosis is inevitable, he gains an even stronger appreciation of the young man's beautiful appearance in the present time — at least in the present time within the sonnet. Ironically, then, the youth's beauty is both transitory and permanent — transitory because all things in nature mutate and decay over time, and permanent because the inevitable aging process, which the poet is wholly aware of as inevitable, intensifies the young man's present beauty: Generally, the more momentary an object lasts, the more vibrant and intense is its short life span.

 I thought that was fitting. Year 15 had a few major transitions. Another house, new school options, and a new job. A lot of reminders that youth is fading, we are tired!

Not a lot of romantic things to say, I blame our teenagers. I'll wrap this up with a quote I found;
"A wedding anniversary is the celebration of love, trust, partnership, tolerance, and tenacity."

(I am working to catch up on the marriage series I started, we left off on year 9.)

year 9

  Oh this guy of mine. I needed him so much this year of our marriage. We had been through stuff, our families had been through so much stuff. ( You know in-laws and expectations, and never enough time to work it all out before everyone has to go back to "real life"?) I just waited at the door until he came home from work to pounce on him. A million thoughts swirling around my stay-at-home-mom head all day, then BAM! Another adult, capable of meaningful conversation!

  I learned this year that I am an introvert and my husband is an extrovert. I learned this by making a lot of mistakes. Swinging wildly between hermitude and endless nights out with friends. Matt was doing wonderful at work and making such a difference in the community and I was looking for my sweet spot, too.

  Lucky for us, we found it in each other. Those differences in personality and life approaches have brought balance to our marriage. So different from when we first married and I was hell bent on "fixing" him.

year 8

Flashback to our first high school formal dance. The Sweetheart's Ball at Meridian High School. February 1996, I believe. 

Sooo, there's that.

Onto the next year of our marriage adventure. Happy times as Parker joined a football team & our family rallied to cheer him on. Kaleb also played flag football so a lot of our time was suddenly spent at games and practices.

   It was fun to do together, the whole family. Having all boys just made sense, where it had been a struggle for me at times.

   It was around this time we started alternating years between family vacation & time for just Matt & I to get away. We visited the Oregon Coast as a family, then Matt & I went to Monterey, CA the next year. As much as we try to live up each ordinary day, these trips really did something special. Goal setting, memory making & watching the boys experience new things. Young & broke holds a special place in my heart but this season was made so much better by having some margin in the budget for family time.

year 7

   Year of the date night. Seriously, we are still married because of date night. When the year started we were just recovering from moving and having baby #4 and when it was over, we actually liked each other again. Our families were ridiculously good to us in this season.

   A lot of date nights, double dates, overnight dates. Sometimes 3 dates a weekend! And most of them were terrible because we were fighting. But with all those opportunities to work on our relationship something happened. It was actually harder to make it not work. Then you were stuck mad for the night or having a major awkward moment in a restaurant. I began to see our fates intermingled. His happiness as my happiness.

(yes, I know some people get this whole concept BEFORE they say they say "I do." But hey, Dr. Phil says "Life's a marathon, not a sprint.")

 

year 6

Did you think I forgot about this series? I kind of did. But I don't want to stop even though the posts are more challenging than just posting some cute pictures of the kids. 

Here we are after we left off at the farm.

Every time I hear that song, We Found Love, I choke up. A lot, like sometimes I pullover if I am driving because it gets that ugly. Matt and I have this wild story. Or maybe it just feels wild because I am such a control freak and when I pictured my future before I met Matt, it was mostly an all white apartment with no kids. No kids ever. (Ha! Universe, you are so funny.)

Anyway, Matt and I pulled right up to the edge in our teen dating saga and somehow did not fall off. Maybe we fell off and climbed out of the pit. Either way, I had these days when I would just marvel at how in the world we weren't both dead. And not only were we not dead but things resembled some kind of love story, one you would want to be in.

I was worried about the edge though. I hoped it was a one and done. That we had checked the box and were never going to let things get that way again. This meant a lot of working for Matt. Extra hours being a good provider and a great employee. For me it was apparently changing my hair and baking cupcakes. (No one is ever a mess with good hair and baked goods!) But we found the edge many times.

We found the edge when I tried to make Matt go to Baptist church events. And that same cliff appeared when we were outnumbered 3 kids to just the two of us. And again when we welcomed Collin into the world, moved from Weiser to Nampa, got in a fender bender and had out of town family visiting in one week's time.

That was year six. The edge. Again. The farm was not a good fit anymore, for many reasons outside our control. (gas was almost $5 a gallon and Matt had an hour commute, for one) So we of course had a baby and moved into a blue shag-carpeted dump close to Matt's work.

There was a year seven but that was year six of marriage.

year 5

This was the period I label "The Farm." Matt and I escaped the 'burbs to occupy his grandfather's home on 37 acres in Weiser, ID. (An hour outside of Boise) 

Totally freeing. We moved as I was recovering from mild postpartum depression.

Our boys roamed the property. The land was not farmed so tall grass abounded, perfect for little boy's games. Matt, resident extrovert to the max,  paced the dirt road looking for some neighbor to chat with. Friday night high school football games, he soon found, were the spot for that. 

 We lost a beautiful community at Grace Chapel when we moved so we plugged into one another. Family game night started. We caught the Dave Ramsey bug, making financial plans for our future. And date nights stretched into overnight visits at the grandparents for our boys.

I was figuring out what my job "homemaker" meant for the first time. I had space and time to learn those things out of the city. It was a pace that suited me better than Matt. Though he enjoyed the long commute to decompress from work. The jump from 2 kids to 3 had hit us hard. We were out numbered. I think the country life gave us a chance to recenter and move forward as a family. Life in general felt less reactionary and more proactive on the farm. 

year 4

  Early in our marriage we were given all these marriage books. When people saw what a trainwreck our dating life was, they said a prayer and bought us something by Dennis Rainey.

  One of these books basically stated, in chapter 1 mind you, that Matt & I had a 400% chance of divorce...or something like that. Kid before marriage, both from broken homes, Matt in law enforcement...yada yada yada, we were doomed. So we stopped reading those books and picked up some on warfare. Seriously. How to fight for each other in a bloody battlefield of dysfunctional behavior.

   Year 4 was not to dissapoint in terms of adventure. We built a new home, Matt made the jump from patrol into School Resource Officer, and we became pregnant with Aden. Happy times, right?

   I think we were trying to outrun life. There was finally enough money to pay the bills, a beautiful new house to decorate, and another baby on the way. All that young and broke stuff was a thing of the past.

   Well, not really. The clouds started to gather and a depression set in. One day I will write about it. It was from this dark place that Matt learned to say to me "I'll die on this hill." He is assuring me that this is his fight, to the end. For my heart. For our family. I think back on it and it seems to me, that was the beginning of our marriage right there. For better or worse, Babe.

(so a quick note on the photos: 1-we can discuss my hair in the comment section, if you would like ;)
2-they do not always go with the exact year I am covering because 3-it's really hard to find pics without little people crawling all over us!)

year three

  Family of four. Matt tackled the toddler stage with ease and I doted on newborn Kaleb. That meant for most pictures, there are children sandwiched between Matt and I. The boys were only 19 months apart and our relationship had to form more of a partnership to get it all done.

Year three Matt started his career in law enforcement. A fun time of dreams becoming reality. And I traded that slicked ponytail for a rockin' soccer mom 'do! ( I think this whole series will just end up being about my hair.)

year 2

  The second year of marriage made us home owners and pregnant again. Yea, Matt & I aren't really ones for the easy road. Matt worked his tail off at multiple jobs, I even worked part time and we still had a hard time making ends meet. It was just that season where there is not enough. Good thing there was a lot of blind optimism, Grandparents, and cute babies to get us through.

year 1

  Matt was graced with two anniversaries. Such luck for a guy to have a re-do later in the year if he mucks up the first one or forgets. Not that has ever happened, I'm just saying it may hypothetically come in handy ;)

  Those crazy kids with a baby in that picture had just vowed to love always, from here into eternity. Yikes! There are a number of serious things I'd like to post about but first, indulge me. Can we all notice that Matt's head is covering up Jesus'? Wow, way to set that bar high from the get go! Also, I am not sure any of my vows can be legit because WHAT AM I WEARING??? I have clearly been up all night with that sweet sailor baby because that slicked ponytail is not doing anything for me, did I even shower beforehand? And one last note, those baby chubba thighs!!! OH! I could just EAT THEM UP!

 We went on to have a fancy pants wedding three months later.

  With that sweet sailor baby right in the middle of it all. It was a hard first year. I remember being so slowed down by my new life. A husband and child to care for and consider. Year one is really called "Death to Self." It was GOOD, though. Much better than I envisioned when I found out, a month before graduating high school, that I was pregnant. But I won't go to the Dark Farm on you.

Our first year of marriage was no fairytale but it wasn't all Ricky Lake either. I was comforted that we were together and if it was a mess, well it was our mess!