Lucky Thirteen

Thirteen years ago today, I walked down the aisle of the church I went to Bible School in as a child and said, “I will.”

That simple two line sentence was in response to the question of whether I would take Tom to be my husband.

He said the same thing when asked if he’d take me to be his wife.

And here we are.

Has it always been awesome? Well, no, of course not.

But it’s mostly been worth it. And that’s saying something.

This morning I was hugging Alyssa goodbye and Olivia joined in. She wanted it to be a group hug. Then Tom joined and we were all bound together, kind of the physical manifestation of how I envision our family. It was cool.

I feel lucky that I can look back on the past thirteen years and see more good, more fun, more laughter than bad, hard tears.

I still swear by the advice I give to new moms. Don’t make decision about your relationship/marriage during the first year of your baby’s life. It doesn’t matter if you’ve just had your first baby or your fourth baby that first year is going to suck and you’ll probably hate your partner more often than you love him/her. But if you stick it out, it usually gets better. It can get so much better.

These days we make a pretty good team. He packs Olivia’s lunch, I wipe her butt help her with homework. He makes them breakfast, I do their hair (when Alyssa lets me help her with hers, which is rarely, but Olivia makes up for it by letting me do her hair every single day.)

I won’t say that every day is perfect because, duh, that would be a lie. But most days are good and I’m grateful to be able to say that now, thirteen years after we kissed that perfect kiss in front of our friends and family.