13 years ago........

(Flowers Jeremiah sent me - courtesy of Martha's, of course!)

On March 29, 1997 we said "I do." There's a lot packed into those two little words. You get way more than you bargained for out of those two little words, too; the good, the bad and the ugly.

That day I added "wife" as one of the chapters to My Book of Life. I was already working on the "daughter" and "friend" chapters. And, yes, because of some choices that we made I had already even begun the "Mama" chapter, too. So, adding the "wife" chapter didn't seem altogether out of place. However, March 29, 1997 may have started a whole new book, not just a new chapter.

Whoever said that marriage is easy was a liar! A big. fat. liar! Add on top of that already being parents and you've got a double whammy. Marriage is hard. And those first couple of years were probably the absolute hardest years of our lives. I mean, we were, after all, still kids ourselves. Jeremiah was barely 20 and I was still, for a few months, 19. We were the stereotypical "kids raising kids," but we were doing it and we were making it work.

I'm happy to report that 13 years later, although it's still tough at times and something we work on each and every day, we are still very happily married. That's certainly not "stereotypical" considering how we started out. There's a song by Brad Paisley called "Then." And the words to the chorus are: "And now you're my whole life, now you're my whole world. I just can't believe the way I feel about you, girl. Like a river meets the sea, stronger than it's ever been. We've come so far since that day, And I thought I loved you then." That says a lot about the way I feel 13 years later.

I'm proud of us and the life we've made for ourselves and our children. God has given us two beautiful miracles as a result of our union and they are probably the best thing that has ever happened to either one of us.

Now, we still have our quirks. He doesn't for the life of him understand why I blog or how I can spend hours on end reading a book. And I don't understand why he takes longer in the bathroom in the morning than the kids and I combined (good thing we have two bathrooms) or why it takes him so long to answer my questions because "he's thinking" and I think he's just not listening to me.

But all in all, we're pretty compatible, we complement each other -- I'm the outgoing, talkative one. He's the introverted, quiet one -- and it works. Imagine if we were just alike? Yeah, right - that would certainly never work!

He's a great dad and a wonderful husband -- and, yeah, I think I was right. I did get WAY more out of saying "I do" than I bargained for and I wouldn't trade a single day of it!

Happy Anniversary to us!
(Cherry pie I baked for Jeremiah. He said it looked like something out of a magazine - so I had to take a picture!)


(Closeup shot Courtesy of Drake - he wanted to "see the juice")