Monday Moments: Fourteen Years

We’re pretty low key about anniversary celebrations, but low-key never meant no blog post!

Dear Carl, I’m no good at throwing parties, buying presents, or even necessarily remembering what year it is, but I am good at digging up pictures to put with words to remind you how much I love you :)

We started dating in high school, so we’ve seen each other through team-bonding orange hair dye (him), braces (me), and a thing or two else. But look how cute, right?

I definitely stole that sweater early on in our dating days and never gave it back. It went so well with my pajama pants, as you see.

Grade 11 math help, that’s where it all started. I really wasn’t good at math, but I also honestly didn’t really care about getting my grade up ;) Good thing too, since my mark somehow actually went dowwwwn.

But I did get a date to the Valentine’s dinner, so I think it’s fair to say the math tutoring ruse was a success.

Despite knowing me through some of my finest awkward years, he still wanted to marry me! Which we did in May, when my allergies were at their finest, so he obviously took me into a field of pollen-filled flowers, because I am not a natural crier and what is a wedding without a watery eye or two.

Ah, young love. He’s happier than he looks, I’m pretty sure.

While he’s remained relatively stable through the past decade, I’ve gone through the emotions that come with bearing five children and basically giving up on sleep, bringing us to the point of recent dramatics where I told him with all the hand gestures and crazy eyes that the only gift my 98% introverted self ever wants is TIME and SPACE to THINK MY OWN THOUGHTS and BREATHE MY OWN AIR.

I swear I used to be the emotionally stable one in our relationship, but those days have clearly gone the way of the dodo. And so what does he do? HE GIVES ME TIME AND SPACE. He takes my crazy self seriously, and I couldn’t be more grateful.

He says I keep him on his toes, but literally it is very much the other way around, so I am just trying to even things out.

He is my voice of reason, my biggest cheerleader, and the one person I’m not blood-related to that I trust to love me forever. Our home is happier when he’s in it and I’m so thankful for these 14 years of sharing a life. He has the broadest shoulders for piggybacks, the fastest legs for teaching kids to ride a bike, the greatest patience for untangling jewelry knots and unclogging drains, the best Lego building skills, the funniest jokes at kids’ birthday parties, and the fanciest way of eating cashews on hikes.

Thanks for laughing at my jokes, for encouraging me and cheering me on, for keeping me active, for pushing me out of my comfort zone, for keeping me sane in the midst of parenting, for sharing my love of efficiency, and for believing I’m smart, beautiful, funny and capable, no matter how much I do to prove you wrong.

Happy anniversary to the best of the best.