8 year anniversary

8 years ago today Eric and I were married! It makes me feel a little old, 8 years sounds so long, but also so short. In honor of our 8 year anniversary, I wanted to post 8 great things about these 8 years.

1. Our beautiful girls and how becoming parents has enriched and stretched our marriage.
2. Our fun adventures to places like Yellowstone and Yosemite National Park, Nepal, Red River, NM, trips to the cabin, Ouray, Colorado Springs...the list could go on, but I love taking trips together and look forward to celebrating our anniversary with a trip to San Diego in a few weeks.
3. That God has used our marriage to chisel away at me and sharpen me in an attempt to make me more like God (note: I am NOT there and will probably never be there)
4. Our projects that we've worked on together in making Amarillo our home. We really seem to do great when we do projects together, like our back patio and our flower beds.
5. That we have grown in these past 8 years through so many seasons; poor newlyweds in a tiny apartment, graduate school and college, our first home, pregnancies and babies, moving together for the first time and making a new home together, our first professional jobs, etc.
6. That we have learned to love what each other loves but at the same time accepted the things that Eric loves that I just never will, but that is totally fine with me (example: He loves golf, I will never play golf, but I love going to the course with him and riding along and enjoying the beauty of the outdoors. I also am totally fine with him going to play golf whenever he needs or wants to. I love camping, Eric probably never will, but he enjoys going to the cabin and being outside that way.)
7. This one may be too much information for some, so stop reading if you want to, I just have to include it though because it is something that I feel is really great. That we waited until our wedding day to have sex and we have gotten to spend the last 8 years enjoying the intimacy of marriage together!
8. That we are continuing on to more and more years together and have determined TOGETHER that we will stay married to each other no matter what.

This is not exhaustive and I typed it rather hastily, so there is much more to all of these things. Tonight we probably won't celebrate in a traditional way, I've never been much of a romantic and don't get hung up on celebrating today. Plus Eric has spring football until 8pm tonight. But we are going to San Diego (yes as a family) and will have an enjoyable dinner out there to celebrate. I'm going to convince Eric to watch our wedding video tonight (our tradition, but we didn't do it last year), I think we need to refresh our memory on our vows, and I think Mali will get a kick out of it.