Five Years

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Two weeks ago, my husband and I celebrated our fifth anniversary.  He asked me, "Do you think five years is a long time to be married?"  As I thought about his question, it occurred to me that, while five years shouldn't be a long time to be married, there are so many marriages that end before five years.

We are so blessed to have been married five years and to still want to be married for the rest of our lives.

Here are a few highlights of our marriage.

2013 - the year we were married!

15 - the number of people at our wedding

I know you're thinking...that's crazy small!  Yes, we chose to have a small wedding.  A very small wedding.  We were married in my hometown church; the very same church my parents were married in, in fact.  The pastor that married us was the father of a dear high school friend and my grandparents' neighbor.  (Funny fact: I went to my very first high school Homecoming dance with his son more than a decade before Pastor Kenton officiated our wedding!)  My grandpa was sick with cancer at the time, and we didn't expect him to live much longer.  We were hoping that my grandpa would be able to attend the wedding, but that night, he wasn't responsive.  Instead, we went to his bedside right after the wedding and told him all about it.

Instead of a big fancy dinner, we had dinner at a private room at a local restaurant.  We were supposed to have a different room, but the restaurant double booked it, and we got pushed to the small semi-private room, but we chose to make a great evening of it anyway.  Everyone ordered what they wanted, and we laughed and talked, spent time with our loved ones, cut our cake, and laughed even more.  (I honestly have no idea what I ordered for dinner.  Ha!)

We laugh a lot.  Can you tell?

5 - the number of children in (and out of) our lives

In five years, we have had four pregnancies.  If you know us or have seen pictures of our family, you know that there are only three small children in our family.  Little Prez was born in 2013, and we couldn't have been more thrilled about our first baby boy.  In 2014, we had a miscarriage at eight weeks.  We only knew that we were pregnant for about three days before finding out that there was no heartbeat.  There are no words to describe the feeling of loss, but I can't wait to meet that baby in heaven someday!  About the same time as the miscarriage, we were blessed to welcome our niece, Miss Coco, into our family.  Becoming the parent to a middle schooler without being around for the first ten years of her life was quite a challenge, but every day was a blessing with that beautiful girl.    A year later, our little Mermaid Princess was born.  You'd never know that she's two full years younger than Little Prez; they are like twins and do everything together.  And finally, there's my Little Viking who was born a year and a half ago.  He's the baby in every way, but wants to be a big kid!

If you stop and do the math, we have added one child to our family each year since we got married (except this past year).  It's the good kind of chaos.  :)

Baby Prez

Mermaid Princess

Little Viking

4 - the number of houses we've lived in since getting married

We started out in a 100+ year old house in Lincoln, Nebraska.  When Little Prez was just 8 weeks old, we moved due to a flooding basement and a terrible landlord.  Our second house was where we really began making memories as a family.  We painted a nursery for Little Prez, planted a garden, welcomed Miss Coco, brought home our Mermaid Princess, and really created a home.  In that backyard, two of our puppies remain.  We also sent Little Prez to daycare for the first time...right next door.  It was truly the best daycare scenario.  Alexander the Husband built his businesses there, and I wrote my dissertation.  (We still had basement flooding and different terrible landlords.)  Then we moved to another rental, but this time, in South Carolina.  We brought home our Little Viking to that house and lived with a black living room for two years.  And finally, this past summer, we finally bought our first house!

7 - the number of degrees we have earned

Yup, that's a lot of degrees.  I have earned four, and Alexander the Husband has earned three.  Most of them are in business -- 5 of them.  We haven't ever received one, but we joke about the day that we'll get an invite or a Christmas card addressed to Mr. and Dr. Harvey.  It's a little odd sounding, don't you think?

0 - the number of times my husband has seen me with my natural hair color

Isn't that wild?  He has never ever seen me with blonde hair!  It's been the same chocolate brown since we met.  I've always liked having dark hair, but I used to change it up pretty frequently.  Switching back and forth from light to dark and dark to light.  When I got to grad school, my first year I didn't get paid enough to cover my bills and wasn't allowed to get a side job.  Thankfully, I had saved up quite a bit while working corporate before that, but there was no way that I was going to waste hundreds and hundreds of dollars that year to keep up my fun hair changing habit.  The next year, I was officially a PhD student, so my pay doubled.  Just enough to pay the bills, but there was still no way that I was going to waste money on getting my hair professionally colored every six weeks.  So, Natural Instincts Chocolate Brown has been my color for almost eight years.  I can't remember a time since before high school that I kept my hair the same for that long!

 

Intentional Marriage: The Art of Loving Your Husband {Book Review}

Intentional Marriage: The Art of Loving Your Husband

The book, Intentional Marriage: The Art of Loving Your Husband by Crystal Brothers, reminds me of a cross between The Love Dare and good common sense advice, but specifically for a wife.  And honestly, sometimes we need that common sense to be forced into our lives.  The idea behind the book is that you cannot change your spouse, but you can change yourself. 

"You cannot pout, or argue enough to change your husband.  What you can do is change yourself."

For each of 31 days, Crystal provides a biblically based idea to intentionally love or serve your husband.  After the short devotion and idea for the day, Crystal poses related questions that will engage wives in thinking about how they can love their husbands, how they can have a contented attitude, and how God views their role as a wife.  The questions will engage wives in being intentional about loving their husbands. 

For me, the book really hits home.  I love my husband, but certainly there are days when I allow love to just be a feeling.  I'm not intentional about showing him love.  In fact, sometimes I'm just not willing to change, and I expect him to do all the changing.  Fair, huh?  In Intentional Marriage: The Art of Loving Your Husband, I can see that the problem isn't just what I'm not doing, it's my attitude.  God calls us to give cheerfully, to be filled with grace, to be unselfish.  And I love that this book calls me out on these things and more. 

I look forward to implementing the devotions into my daily life.  The daily action items can be those that go directly to your husband (like making his favorite dinner), but they also include conversations with the Heavenly Father, changes to yourself and your internal attitudes, and examining God's Word in the Bible. 

Not only is Intentional Marriage: The Art of Loving Your Husband a 31 day devotional, it is also a resource guide.  At the end of the book, Crystal includes even more valuable ideas for wives including:

• 101 Ways to Bless Your Husband
• 101+ Free or Cheap Date Night Ideas
• 101+ Conversation Starters

I love the ideas for ways to bless your husband.  There are many things that sometimes we, as wives, just expect our husbands to do for themselves.  What if we took the time every so often to show love by doing the expected (theirs) or the unexpected?

And the date ideas . . . Well you know me, I love being frugal!  One of my favorites is: go geocaching.  I used to think that people going geocaching were crazy, but now I think it sounds like a little adventure! 

And the conversation starters . . . I would say that my husband doesn't have any trouble finding topics of conversation, but there are some great questions in the book!   Everything from deep questions like, "What incident in your life has most shaped your faith?" to humorous questions like "If you were in the circus, what would your job be?"

I believe that Intentional Marriage: The Art of Loving Your Husband is an excellent resource for wives.  You can also find related resources and free printables on Crystal's website.  Click HERE to access them. 

You can purchase the book now until April 28, 2014 as a part of the Ultimate Homemaking Bundle!  The bundle is only $29.97 for over $700 worth of books, printables, and more! 

You can purchase Intentional Marriage: The Art of Loving Your Husband directly for $3.99 HERE.

Check out my review of more books in the Ultimate Homemaking Bundle:

·         The Homemaker's Guide to Creating the Perfect Schedule

·         Intentional Marriage: The Art of Loving YourHusband

·         Healing with God's Earthly Gifts (coming soon)

·         More than a Holiday (coming soon)

·         My Simple Healthy Life (coming soon)

·         How to Build a Strong Christian Home (coming soon)

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Reasons Why I Love My Husband

This post was inspired by a blog post over at {Sara}Under the Sun.  So often we go through the day without really stopping to give our spouses encouragement and gratitude.  It may be enough to simply say, "I love you."  Or maybe you express love through actions and deeds.  But another way to express love, encouragement, and thankfulness is through expressing the reasons why you love your spouse.  

One Valentine's Day, I hid notes of reasons why I love my hubby (boyfriend at the time) all around his apartment, but to be honest, I haven't put a lot of effort into reminding him of these reasons.  I'd like to tell him and the whole world why I love him and why I am thankful for him as a husband.  

Here are just 5 reasons why I love my husband.

#1.  My husband is one of the most intelligent people I know.  I am constantly awed by his scientific mumbo jumbo.

#2.  My husband is a good Christian man.  He takes his faith and his role as the spiritual head of our family very seriously.

#3. My husband is a hunk.  Yes, he's that handsome.

#4. My husband is funny.  Seriously, he might be able to make it as a comedian.  He makes me laugh every single day...literally.

#5.  My husband is an ambitious DIY-er.  He has done so many projects for our family including refinishing a crib for our son and is always planning new projects to make our life better and easier.  


There are so many more reasons why I love and am thankful for my husband, so stay tuned!

Pre-Bean Date Night

On Sunday evening, my husband and I went on what will be one of our last dates before the little Bean arrives.  We had to drive over to Omaha to take his parents to the airport, so we decided to come early and do date night in the 'big city' instead of just doing the usual in Lincoln.  

We started out at Bonefish Grill for dinner.  He had only been there a couple of times, and I had only been once a couple of years ago, so it was fun to basically be trying somewhere new.  (At least, it was new to us as couple.)  We started out with the famous Bang Bang Shrimp and cups of the corn chowder with crabmeat.  The shrimp appetizer was, honestly, disappointing.  But, the chowder was delicious, especially with the warm bread and pesto!  

For entrees, I had the Lily's Chicken, which was delicious with the mashed potatoes.  (I can't get enough potatoes right now; it's pretty much my only major pregnancy craving.)   Alex had the stuff imperial longfin, which is basically a fish within a fish within a fish; in other words, it's fish stuff with more seafood.  Even though I didn't get fish at a seafood restaurant, we both really enjoyed our meals.  And we had enough to bring home for lunch/dinner on Monday.  I splurged at the end of the meal with dessert, which I'm a sucker for, in general.  Usually, I forego dessert when we are eating out, but the special menu had strawberry shortcake on it.  I had to get it!  It was great; the shortcake biscuit with cream was awesome, but the strawberries were almost a bit too sweet with the syrupy sauce.  

We then headed over the the movie theater to finish out our dinner-and-a-movie date.  What movie?  Ironman 3 in 3D, of course!  The movie was not as good as the first Ironman, but better than Ironman 2.  However, there were some funky things that only my thinker of a husband would point out.  I won't mention them because I don't want to spoil the movie for anyone!  

What a great date night!  It was definitely a fantastic idea to have our date out of town.  It added an extra special element to the date.  

How have you managed to still have date nights after children?

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