14 years, day 67

Today is my 14th wedding anniversary! Not necessarily a milestone number, but we have learned to take every year seriously.  We kind of see our marriage in 3 parts:  1 - the stage when we had tons of time and availability for each other, but took each other for granted and wasted times arguing about petty, petty things.  2 - The stage where we fell in love with each other in our new roles as parents.  It was fun to be on the same team, but it was definitely new to have issues like sleep deprivation and discipline work its way into our everyday tango.  3 - the stage where we have seen heartbreak in the form of death, divorce, and disease and it plays a role in our marriage every day.  We try to really enjoy each other and our life together.  It's not a perfect marriage, but we make sure that we are a priority to each other every day.  And that is really difficult with 3 kids.

I'm sure there are many more stages to come (parenting teens is right around the corner - YIKES!), but we are so blessed to have each other.  I am truly married to my best friend.  We are currently attending a marriage class through our church and Tuesday night we had to each list what our biggest hope, dream, and fear was to each other.  I was not surprised at all to see that our biggest hopes were exactly the same.  To raise our children to have a relationship with Christ and to send them on their way so that we can enjoy our time with each other.  As much as I love my children (which is a lot), I love their dad even more.  We don't want to rush through these years with our kids, but we really are looking forward to one day enjoying the years of just him and me again.

We celebrated the night by going out to eat and buying a new shredder.  Woo Hoo!  We are ROMANTICS, I tell you.