Parenting Builds Character: Celebrating 4 wonderful years... and the best is yet to come!

As I mentioned, this past week, Chad and I celebrated our 4th anniversary. And I've got to be honest, that just seems like such a small number considering all that's happened in our marriage. And I do not mean that in a bad way at all-- time has flown, and I've enjoyed it all-- but we've managed to go from apartment to house living, trade in both of our cars for new ones, add two precious boys, I became a stay at home mom, grown Chad's business, paid off our debt, changed churches, and about a million other milestones, I'm sure.

I'm also astounded at just how far we've come in our short time as man and wife. Now let me make it very clear that we loved each other like crazy when we got married.... but that doesn't really cut it! We've grown SO much in our relationships with the Lord, in how we respond and encourage each other, in how we communicate, and in our parenting. The number of arguments or "disagreements" between has decreased by like 95% and he went from being my favorite person, to being my most most most favorite person. And last but not least, our friendship with each other has really grown too. I just like him :)

But let me also be clear that we have by NO means arrived-- anything not handled correctly becomes a bomb, my mouth can still wreak major havoc, my love tank sometimes gets really low because Chad isn't a "words" person, and we're still learning so so so so so much! BUT I just love that we're doing it together, and that we're putting in the work now to have a great, sturdy, reliable, loving, and fun marriage til death do us part.

We celebrated this past Saturday night since we didn't actually see each other too much on our actual anniversary. My parents kept the boys and we went to Murphy's in the Virginia Highlands for the first time-- it was SO delicious-- one of our top 5 meals for sure. We tried really hard to save room for dessert but failed. So we went to Piedmont Park to walk around for a bit. But at 9pm it was still 93 degrees and we were sweating to death. So we sat on a bench for a while instead. It wasn't really helping any in the "making room" department, but we did get some good people watching in :) So before heading to claim our kiddies, we decided to go ahead and make a stop at Cafe Intermezzo-- of course it was delicious and of course I had to bring the majority of mine home in a box, but hey, at least we tried!

And of course, to stick with tradition on the year by year book I'm building, here is our "4th Anniversary" picture... I keep telling Chad that the book is to watch how we change, but really it's to watch me grow... year 0: newly weds, year 1: 8 months pregnant, year 2: 10 months post pregnant, year 3: 5 weeks post pregnant, and now this year, a whole year post baby and we're not even expecting another... wow it's like our own version of the calm before the storm :)