9 years...what?!?!!!

Today we celebrate 9 years of marriage.  Crazy!

We will celebrate with a trip to the chiropractor, maybe get a quick lunch and there will likely be some house cleaning and studying mixed in.  Super romantic.

I would say that 9 years is something to really be recognized for us though!

We have been through A LOT!

Did you know that we met and moved in together within a couple of months and only 4 months after we began dating, Sean bought my ring?!  Then, after having only dated for 7 months, we got engaged.  We were married 13 months later.  So we were married 20 months after we started dating.

We were CRAZY kids!  And we had not a clue what saying "I do" REALLY meant.  We thought we did...we loved each other, we were committed to spending the rest of our lives together through sickness and health, richer or poorer, in the good times AND the bad.  Only we just knew that for us, there probably wasn't going to be very many bad times.

Yup, we believed that.  Oh my...young and naive!

I will NEVER forget what a perfect day our wedding day was.  It was truly my dream wedding!

And after we got married, we were going to try to start a family right away!

Only that was our first test.  It didn't work out as we had hoped and planned.

This marked our fist MAJOR marital struggle.  It was such a hard time dealing with infertility and all that came with it.

We made it through...and we were blessed with Tate!

And then Sean decided to go back to school.  I was proud of him and wanted him to, but this meant another major challenge.  Money, time, stress...all challenges in our marriage.

We made it through...Sean graduated, we moved for Sean to start his new career and we began the next chapter of our lives.

 We then started discussing how we would grow our family again.  We knew we wanted more kids.  The started the next challenge...agreeing on how we would accomplish this goal.  Then, after agreeing...getting there.

We made it through...

We knew our life was going to change drastically, so we made time for just us...to be together, to be alone before our world was turned upside down.

And was it ever!!!  We grew our family by adding our Cason and Wesley within a few short weeks of one another and both with severe needs beyond anything we could have prepared ourselves for.

People thought we were crazy, WE thought we were crazy at times!  Life was crazy ALL the time...it still is. :)

You know what though, God brought us together for a reason.  Only Sean could put up with my brand of crazy...there may not be another man who could!  He supports me and values my opinion and disagrees with me when he should and reigns me in when I get a wild idea and also lets me be free to follow my dreams for me and our family when he feels it's right.

It has NOT been pure bliss over these 9 years...it just hasn't.  However, no matter how bad of a place we were in, I never in a million years would have rather been in a happy place with someone else.  I will take challenging times with Sean ANY DAY over not challenging times with anyone else.  And we've had lots and lots of challenges and disagreements and had to work through so much.  With each challenge that we conquer, we are stronger and more prepared to handle the challenges ahead of us.

We have built this crazy awesome life together with a lot of awesome and just as much crazy.  And I love my life with Sean.

However, I can honestly say that 9 years ago, I would have passed out if I had gotten a glimpse into what our life would become.  We never planned for things to turn out the way they did...not in a million years!

I can also say that we never knew in a million years how amazing things would be.  The doors that would be opened in our hearts that we didn't know existed.

And we love each  other more today than we did 9 years ago...so I would say that we are moving in the right direction!

And only God knows what lies ahead for us.  He certainly has created a life for us that has surprised us and scared us and forced us to be strong and lean on each other.  We welcome His plan for us and for our marriage in the years to come.

Sean, it's been a pretty awesome, scary and wild ride over these last 9 years!  I can't imagine being on this ride of my life with anyone else!  Happy Anniversary!!!!  To many many many more years of crazy...only I'd be okay if it calmed down JUST a bit! ;)  I love you more than I could ever express!!!!