One Year At A Glance
My husband and I celebrated our one year anniversary today and it was lovely! So much has happened in our lives this year:
- We lived in 3 different apartments
- We moved twice while I was pregnant
- We got pregnant and had our baby
- We lived in two different cities
- We worked four different jobs
- We bought a new car
- We visited Boise, Idaho a few times
- We drove to Sacramento, California
- We visited San Francisco, California
- We lived with my grandparents for a few weeks
- We held five different church callings
- We had plenty of date nights
- We saw a lot of movies
- We tried new things together
- We drew closer to one another
- We went to the temple nearly every week
- We made new friends
- We got to know each others family even better
- We survived (a very mild) winter in Northern Utah
Life has been wonderful!! I’ve learned so much about myself and my spouse. Here are a few things my spouse has taught me:
- How to communicate better
- How to face our money head on through budgeting and money management
- How to play Dominion
- How to serve
- How to magnify church callings
- How to compromise
- How to stand up for myself
- How to let things go
- How to do family history
How We Celebrated
For our anniversary we went out to a nicer dinner and then spent some time at the LDS Church History Museum and the LDS Family History Library. We had a lovely time together!! My husband is ultra passionate about Family History. He knows Ancestry.com and our church’s site FamilySearch,org like the back of his hand. It was so fun to go together to the Family History library! They have a super interactive exhibit on the first floor that takes you through different aspects of your family history. We loved learning more about the family members who have come before us. It was such a wonderful way to spend our first wedding anniversary. I love my darling husband! We finished off the night with frozen yogurt before picking up our little guy and heading home.
What I’ve Learned About Marriage
I have learned so much about marriage this year. Admittedly, I was somewhat nervous going into our first year, because I feel like all I’ve ever heard is how hard the first year of marriage is and how hard marriage is. When you hear so much negative about “just making it through” it can be pretty intimidating to take the plunge.
For my husband and I, marriage has not been hard. Life is hard. We love being married and have worked diligently to stay on the same page with one another. Does that mean we have never disagreed on anything? Absolutely not! Does that mean we’ve gotten in a huge fight with every disagreement? No way! We have worked tirelessly to be respectful and communicate. We have never had a disagreement get heated. We determined very early on that it is not worth it to fight about things that have no eternal significance (or in other words are temporary problems). So far that has worked wonderfully for us! We can express concerns to one another about things, but we maintain respect and love as we discuss our differences of opinion, routine, goals, etc. I believe that when you truly feel heard, you can work out any problem.
Some of the things that have made life hard this first year has been work, careers, goals, and circumstances. We have worked hard to maneuver each situation with patience, faith, and hard work. I’m not saying we’ve been perfect at it. I’ve certainly felt overwhelmed and overdone plenty, but in those times I have leaned on my husband. On the other hand, my husband has been able to lean on me through times when he has been overwhelmed and overdone. And when we both feel like the bottom falls out and we both need to lean on the other person…we just drink a soda, watch The Office, and laugh our cares away. That and attend the temple, of course.
I have learned that a relationship works best when two people are evenly yoked. Meaning one person is not constantly dragging the other person. Both work in harmony to pull equal weight. For us that has changed and evolved as the year has gone. At the beginning we were both working and taking care of house work about 50/50. As the year has gone on, I became a stay-at-home mom to attend to our baby and the home. Now our dynamic has shifted as my husband provides for us with his job, I take care of the home, and we both strive to take care of our son the best we can. We respect one another and never nag or compare “who does more.” We simply both work hard and that is that!
This year I’ve also learned that there is a recipe to a successful marriage:
- Put God first
- Keep your spiritual cup full individually and as a couple
- Pray together
- Serve selflessly
- Have regular date night
- Be intimate
- Always kiss your wife goodbye and tell her you love her when you leave for work (even when she’s half asleep)
- Home cooked meals and full bellies make for happy husbands
- Always kiss each other good night
- Go to bed together
- Keep doing the things you love to do
I truly believe that is all it takes, but you both have to be doing those things.
Onward and Upward
We’re one year down! A drop in the bucket compared to some people. We look forward to our future together with hope and anticipation. I can’t wait to see what year two brings. I love my husband more today than I did a year ago, a month ago, or even a day ago. We grow closer with every day we spend as husband and wife. We work hard at our marriage and family. We love each other and are faithful to one another. We are not even close to perfect, but we are diligent and that’s all that matters. Here’s to growing together and lifting one another!
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Also, if you would like to read more about our love story, check out these blog posts:
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