Celebrating Seven Years of Marriage

Every time I have sat down to write down my thoughts on the last 7 years, I have felt almost speechless. I can’t believe Nate and I are celebrating SEVEN years of marriage today. Honestly, that’s not long at all in the grand scheme of things and I know that. But it’s still hard to believe that the time has gone by in a snap.

Here we are. Adults. Both turning (or have turned!) 30 this year. We have a 2 year old. He’s a TODDLER, he’s not even a baby anymore! We have experienced so much together and no matter how hard or how wonderful those experiences have been – they have brought us closer together. We are different in a lot of ways but have grown to be so much more similar over the last few years. We see eye to eye on more things and we understand each other’s opinion a little bit more. We just get each other so much more now than I think we did when we got married and I kind of love that. I think we’ve learned to speak each other’s love language a little better over time! Let’s take a walk down memory lane from our first year of marriage photo project!

Nate is so much better than I am at random acts of love and kindness. He’s fantastic at gift giving but especially at every day treats – like bringing me my favorite coffee or a Dr. Pepper when I’m not expecting it. He knows when I need to go and have some time to myself. He encourages me to do the things I love even if that takes time away from him or Landon. And he reminds me that it’s okay to do that for myself! Likewise, I strive to be the kind of wife who wants him to make time for himself to go golfing, running, or whatever his heart desires! We ask each other before we plan things without one another but unless something is truly important to do on a certain day, it’s usually no big deal!

We love traveling but I’m not the planning type. I love that Nate has that initiative to make things happen because I’m the kind of person who thinks it’s just too difficult to work out the details. Most of the time I just don’t want to spend the money or try to budget it out. But Nate reminds me often that while we need to be realistic with our money- we also need to ENJOY it when it’s possible. We’ve gone on little trips here and there to places I would have never visited on my own and I love that we have those wonderful memories together!

We let stuff go. Sometimes we let it go a little too much. Ha! Nate has taught me to let the house get a little messy, let the laundry go unfolded sometimes, and to acknowledge the fact that a bubble bath or some family time can come first ahead of that stuff. I still get overwhelmed at times by it all and I like things to be in order – but if life happens and things get a little out of control, I can usually be calm about it. On the flipside, Nate knows that I’ll reach a breaking point if we let things go for too long. My house will probably never look perfect but I know I’ll look back on all the weekends we went out and did fun things instead of spending our time at home deep cleaning!

So here’s to another seven years of adventures. Here’s to our perfectly messy life full of weeks where I feel like we are pretty great at adulting and weeks where I feel like we’re constantly running behind and eating too much fast food. I find myself more and more in love with Nate and our life together every single day. He puts our family first every day, he makes time for Landon no matter how tired he is, and he runs errands for us after a long day at work so I don’t have to. He is truly my best friend and my favorite person to spend time with.