11 Years

Hubs and I celebrated 11 years of marriage on Saturday.

His mom called in the morning and asked if we wanted her to watch the boys so we could go on a lunch date.

Of course we said, “Naaahhhhh, we’d much rather stay home and watch the boys destroy everything in sight and break up their wrestling matches occurring every 5 minutes.”

Who am I kidding.  I was in the shower before the hubs hung up the phone.

Once the boys were situated at Grammie and Pop-Pop’s, the hubby couldn’t even speak for most of the drive to the restaurant because he was coming down from the stress of the circus act of simply leaving our house.

Ha!

But once we got within a few minutes of food, I saw his shoulders relax and we were able to genuinely smile at the hostess who commented, “Now, there’s a fine-looking couple.”

Over lunch we wrote down our list of highs and lows from the year – a tradition I talked about HERE.  Just a numbered sheet of memories on paper, but a wonderful treasure and keepsake of our story.

2013 was kind of a rough one for our marriage, so we spent most of 2014 healing and learning to love each other well again.

If someone were to ask me how we stay together in the midst of marital difficulty, I would say simply to SHOW EACH OTHER GRACE.  Be willing to forgive anything and everything, openly communicate needs, see them as God sees them, and continually remind one another that you love them and are NOT going anywhere.

Some of the highlights from the year was our trip to the Bahamas (see HERE), we got to attend a Miami Heat game together in February, the hubs taught Happy Buddy how to swim, I was quoted in the March issue of Parents Magazine, that time our kitchen was overtaken by mold, I started working full-time and so far our house hasn’t imploded and I haven’t lost my mind, hubs got to go on some epic scuba diving adventures, and we survived Happy Baby’s pneumonia hospitalization.

At least there weren’t any rectal prolapses this year.  PHEW.  Dodged a bullet on that one.

It’s always fun, but sometimes a bit bittersweet to look back over what the Lord has done in our family.  We make no pretenses to have it all together.  We have learned, however, to praise God in the good AND the bad.  We are able to see His hand of faithfulness in every single thing.  And we remember that He loves us – no matter what – He loves us.

One thing I realized as we talked about our kids is that Happy Baby will be 3 in a few months and I am fairly certain that I shouldn’t be calling him Happy Baby on this blog anymore.

So after our list I suggested that we make a few goals for the new year.

Mine were simple – 1. Nose ring (lol, I STILL want one, but have to wait until summer), and 2. Get pregnant.

The hubs had 1 goal.  It read like this –

VASECTOMY.

Hahahahahahhaa.

I showed him grace by not slugging him in the face.

– Julie 🙂

“Be humble and gentle.  Be patient with each other, making allowance for each other’s faults because of your love.  Try always to be led along together by the Holy Spirit and so be at peace with one another.” Ephesians 4:2-3

*Amazing photo above taken by my heroes at 13:13 Photography.  Go HERE if you want to see the rest of the hubs’ and my photo shoot.  And if you have photography needs and live in South Florida, then you better give these 2 super talented people a call.*