Five years.

So much happens in that amount of time. When I look back on our marriage we have lived a life in just these short five years.

But five years also seems like a huge milestone to come to.

After a pretty rocky year four, Tom and I were ready to settle into this year and enjoy being married again.

We did a lot of adulting this year.

• We bought a house.
• We hosted two holidays (Christmas and Easter) for the first time.
• Tom started the process for VA disability benefits. We are almost a year out from when we started it, and there doesn’t seem to be an end in sight to when they will be rating him. There are lots of doctors’ visits involved and dealing with the VA beaucracy. Another post for another day maybe.
• We started our long list of home improvements.

We are loving our home. While we are still learning the quirks of the house and making plans to update certain things to our liking, we are still so happy with our choice to have our family here. The dogs love it, and George is going to have so many memories here.

George had a huge year as well. He went from our little baby to a very mobile and spirited toddler.

• He started walking.

• He turned one, and we celebrated with a huge party and lots of cake.

• He was Curious George for Halloween.

• He has had all kinds of sickness this year:  several ear infections, several trips to Urgent Care and one week long stay in the PICU, and most recently had the worst case of Hand Foot and Mouth. Needless to say we are ready for a month without him coming down with something.

 We have been able to spend a great amount time with family.

• We visited my parents at their lake house, and we gave George his first boat experience. It was also nice to get up on skis again.
• We took our first road trip with Tom’s family, where George charmed us all with his dancing skills at a wedding.
• We actually were able to start enjoying our town and have gone to several festivals and explored a many of trails.

This was our year to be fans. I had so much fun watching my teams play and be on highlight reels. Very exciting times. It also made me glad that we own a home because there was a lot of screaming.

• Our Royals went back to the World Series and won it this time! Still gives me goosies.
• The Chiefs made it to the playoffs, which they have not done for a really long time.
• Clemson made it to the National Championship game.

Maybe this next year will be the year for spirit chants for Gman.

Our careers really picked up for both of us. It’s like we are living different lives finally being in jobs that fulfill us professionally. Tom was finally on the road solo, and he is sweeping the crime away from this city. We also experienced the first scare of a work injury. We also have figured out how to work within the constraints of his shifts. My job is amazing. I feel challenged regularly (in a good way), and the office I work with is really a dream team. Very rarely is there a day that I don’t enjoy being at work, and I am proud of the things we are accomplishing there.

I feel like this year I really took back my fitness for me and started doing things that felt good but kept me active. I also PR’ed on a 10K.

This year we noticed that when we could have that focus on who we are as individuals and feel valued for our efforts, it really made a giant difference in who we were as a married couple. I think it is so important for couple to realize that you have to do work to be an individual separately from your couple identity. This is really the first year that one of us hasn’t felt a huge struggle in our career, and I think that had a direct impact as this was one of our best years married. This may not be true for others, but for us we needed to develop ourselves before we could be good for each other. It was the first year that I think we felt like we could breathe.

And in those breathes we were able to have a great year.

Full of memories and moving forward.

But also we were able to stand still and enjoy a lot more.

Life is truly beautiful, and so is our marriage.

If you want to read more about our love story, there are links documenting each step here.