Celebrating a Decade- Our Anniversary

We were cruising back home on Friday which was our ten year anniversary. It was wonderful to spend the whole day with Matt celebrating, reminiscing, and having fun.

We ate a lot, read a lot, dozed some, played some games, Matt did the Flow Rider surfing, played in the pool, called our babies and then got dressed up for a fancy dinner.

They must have known we were celebrating because lobster was on the menu at dinner!

It's so fun sharing the same anniversary with this awesome couple. It makes missing each others' weddings totally worth it! I'll take an anniversary trip with them any time.

I was reading a book a few months ago, and the author shared some marriage advice I'd never heard before. She encouraged couples to find good couple friends (Not just relationships where the wives are friends and the husbands tag along, but friendships where both couples are really good friends). When I read that, I immediately thought of Brooke and Corey, because Matt and I both enjoy both of them so much. We have matching families with kiddos at the same age, and it's always refreshing to spend time with them. Our whole cruise was enhanced in countless ways because they were with us.

I'm so very thankful to have been able to celebrate our first decade of marriage in such an extravagant way. Life with Littles is demanding and exhausting, and it's easy at times to put our marriage on the back burner while we wrangle life just trying to keep our kids alive (and not crying) everyday. It was incredible to be able to escape from the demands of everyday life and just have fun together experiencing new things.

This man made all my dreams come true. On our wedding day, when I thought about what our life would look like in ten years, I'm pretty sure every single dream has come true. Matt is such a diligent and passionate employee and has been thriving in his career which has given us the blessing of a beautiful home and most importantly the opportunity for me to stay home and take care of our babies everyday. And our three kids, well they are awesome. Parenting them is one of life's greatest joys. We are rooted in a town we love with family nearby, real friendships and a church family where we are connected, serving, and growing. God has blessed us beyond all my dreams, and everyday this wonderful man is by my side. If I could describe our ten years of marriage in one word, it would be Thankful.

Keeping with tradition we each came up with our top 5 moments of our TENTH year of marriage:

Matt's Top Five:
5. Promotion to Group Lead at FlightSafety
4. Nathan's 5th birthday party
3. Frontier city with the boys
2. Ziplining and Dunn's River Falls in Jamaica
1. Our date night in Pensacola

Angela's Top Five:
5. Christmas Day (even with a sick baby)
4. Frontier City with the boys
3. Elisabeth's Birthday Party/Samuel's Birthday Party/Nathan's Birthday Party (I loved them all for all different reasons!)
2. Date night in Pensacola
1. Ziplining and Dunn's River Falls in Jamaica

We also talked about some of our favorite moments of our entire marriage (We set a rule that they had to be non-Mommy/Daddy related)

Our vacations always end up being some of our very favorite moments (another reason why we make them a priority), so we talked a lot about celebrating our four year anniversary at Cinderella's castle at Disney World, our long weekend in Destin when Matt was working there, our snorkeling and excursions on our past cruises, Schlitterbahn, our date nights on our family beach vacations, etc.

The summer after we got married, our schedule was really easy. Neither of us had started grad school, so our evenings were open. I remember cooking new meals, going for walks, visiting the Shondelmyers :), and just having a great time being married.

Before Matt accepted his job at FlightSafety he brought me to Broken Arrow for the day to see if it was a place we wanted to live. We ate at Los Cabos, drove around aimlessly and imagined living and raising a family here.

The night we closed on our first house, we brought an air mattress and slept in our empty house.

Before we had kids we had friends over to play games, snack, and visit at least once a week. Those nights were so fun!

And now, our Friday night date nights are usually one of the highlights of our week. We always look forward to getting to eat out, go to a movie, or just veg out at home watching Netflix or doing other non-parenting related things.

It was special to think back on our first ten years of marriage and we are excited to see what the next ten bring!