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!)
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| 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. :)
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| Baby Prez |
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| Mermaid Princess |
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| 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!
