The Little Things

(These beauties were in full bloom on our wedding day and always blossom on our anniversary.)

Each year on our wedding anniversary, I do my best to gather my thoughts well enough to express my love for my husband. It’s hard to gush about someone without coming across as braggy or less than genuine. I’d hate it if my words or photos left my female counterparts rolling their eyes at my latest attempt to paint a picture of a perfect life.

Know that for every photo that I post of a lovely looking meal there’s a not-so-appetizing greenish brown smoothie (yum!) or overcooked piece of salmon being served. For each adorable pet picture, there could just as easily be one of Cooper puking on the carpet (double yum!).

The same goes for our marriage. For every blog post proclaiming that my husband is the sweetest man alive, there’s an unwritten post about the times that we get on eachother’s nerves. I try my best to toe the line of acknowledging and celebrating the beautiful things, without denying the existence of the not-so-beautiful things.

Three years into marriage and I think we’re getting a better handle on not setting unrealistic expectations for ourselves (we still have miles to go). We don’t yet live in our dream home, one of our cars is the same one I cruised around in at 16,  our pets are kind of crazy, I can’t really guarantee that all of the rooms in our house will ever be clean at the same time. But we’re trying.

Three years is an in between kind of anniversary. Not a hallmark ten and not the romanticized first. Yet, I still want to shout my love for Jake from the rooftops (cue the rolling eyes).

But for real, I found a good one, you guys. He’s the kind of man that shows up for me every day. He remembers to put a dozen eggs in our cart at the store because we only have three left at home. He never fails to plan something special for my birthday and usually on a tight budget. He still reaches for my hand when we cross the street.

Do these things sound less than romantic? I’ll tell you, after fourteen years together and three years of marriage it’s the little things that make all of the difference.

Married Without Children

 

Lately, I've been all about bringing my camera along to capture snapshots of our everyday life. Things we love to do, that I don't ever want to forget. 

We often focus on documenting the wedding, arrival of a new baby, children's big milestones etc. But there's something about right now that feels worthy of being remembered. Married without children. The middle, if you will. 

This confuses some people on the outside looking in. When are you two going to have children?  The trap... Sometimes those outside voices start to seep in and sound like my own. I feel constant pressure to hurry up and get to the next stage of our lives.

I get so caught up in the race, that I forget how important right now is. Married without children does have its perks. We get to do things like browse through our favorite record store on a Saturday at our leisure. We can be totally spontaneous and make decisions with little forethought or planning involved. 

Best of all, we've had time to focus on one another. We've been working on building a solid foundation before we grow our family. 

I'm beyond excited for the day that we have children of our own, but right now I'm enjoying spending way too much (uninterupted) time looking for the right Simon & Garfunkel album.

All Things Good

Standing over the stove cooking dinner in my PJs with unwashed hair.

Our crazy pup is flying through the house like a bat out of hell (que the intermittent leg humps).

 A rather large stack of bills is piled on the kitchen table.

I've got my mind on my $$$ and my $$$ on my mind. I feel you, Snoop.

Amidst the chaos -- two loving, forgiving arms attached to the sweetest man I know wrap around me.

"I love when you cook for me. My happiness level is a 14 out of 10 right now, Babe." 

I married a constant reminder of all things good.

The noise quiets, and I realize that worry-ville can wait.

Right now deserves my full attention and best self. 

Dinner never tasted so good.

The Big Surprise

As I mentioned last week, Jake got a big surprise this year for his birthday. I went behind his back and got the entire family (and some of his coworkers) involved. Jake's been wanting some new golf clubs for quite a while. It seems though, that there is always something more essential that we find we need to spend our money on.

I asked anyone in the family that normally exchanges gifts with Jake to send me Golf Galaxy gift cards in whatever amount they would typically spend on him. I put them all together and then saved up to cover the rest.

I started the scavenger hunt with Friday's blog post, which lead him to several coworkers desks and to a few random spots before he eventually found me in the parking lot of Golf Galaxy. When he pulled up, I handed him the final clue that explained how much everyone had pitched in and that he could pick out a new set of clubs.

I'd love to say that he jumped up and down like a contestant on the Price is Right, but that's not really Jake's style. He was really quiet and started sweating a lot. I honestly don't think it hit him until we left the store.

One of my favorite moments of his scavenger hunt was provided by our friend Paul. Jake headed over to Paul's desk for his next clue which read, "Take off your pants and meet me in the last stall of the men's bathroom". Paul had replaced the clue that I had sent to him to give to Jake. Jake said it took him a minute to understand that he was being pranked.

All in all it was a great birthday surprise. I neglected to take pictures, but on Saturday I slapped up some decorations, cooked Greek food, had a cake and invited the family over to celebrate Mr. Jake.

Please enjoy these instagrams of my man in all of his birthday glory.

The Things that Keep Us Up at Night

So much is weighing on my mind lately. I wake up in the middle of the night - fists and jaw tightly clenched. This is when I visualize my happy place. A moment in time when everything was in its right place.

I find myself in Hawaii at dusk on the beach with my brand new husband. Sunburns radiating heat, snarly salty hair from a day of swimming in the ocean. Stomachs full from gorging ourselves on shrimp tacos and shaved ice. We sit perched on a stone wall watching the sun set over surfers trying to catch a last wave before nightfall. 

So much uncertainty stretched out before us.

I go there in my mind from time to time. I imagine us returning someday. Wrinkled hands holding each others' in an old familiar way. Laughing to ourselves about all of the worrying that we did. 

How funny, we thought that we could control the things that kept us up at night.

First Anniversary

Jake and I celebrated our first anniversary at a nearby winery. I packed a special picnic to enjoy together after wine tasting.

Sitting beneath a tree in the warm North Carolina sun, we talked about the highs and lows of our first year of marriage. Both of us agreed on the things that we want to work on changing together. We imagined where we would be in our lives for our fifth, tenth and fiftieth wedding anniversaries. 

If life ends up looking at all like we imagined, we are in for one incredible journey together.

Open Letters on Marriage

Something that I've realized since entering the blogging world, sharing only the surface of our marriage does not do justice to either of us. In honor of our first wedding anniversary I'd like to share some thoughts on marriage. I've geared these thoughts toward both single and married readers.

Dear single readers,

Our wedding day was only one out of the past 366 days that we have spent as husband and wife (leap year). 1/366 - is a pretty small fraction. I say this because I have found that many of us put too much time into dreaming about the wedding, rather than preparing for the marriage.

Avoid the race to get married at all costs. I promise you this, if you rush into marriage, or end up living with someone that you aren't actually compatible with, you will feel far more alone than you ever could imagine as a single person. Some of the things that life threw at Jake and I during our first year of marriage would have left us in pieces if we didn't fully trust and unconditionally love one another.

On the outside looking in, it is easy to imagine that things are perfect for us married people. It isn't. But if you're lucky - it is rewarding.

Dear married readers,

Don't be so hard on yourself. You are not alone if you have cried yourself to sleep once or twice during your first year of marriage. It is normal if the sound of your spouse's chewing makes you want to jump out of a second story window. Do you ever feel guilt for not being the perfect partner? Me too.

Let's all try to avoid the comparison trap, kapeesh? I read a quote recently that resonated with me,

Photo By Rhonda Danner Quote by Stevin Futrick

Social media and blogs are often used as a place to share our highs. Pictures when we look our best, stories of our lavish vacations, Instagrams of the best meal we have eaten in months. While these snippets are fun to share, they do not make up the majority of our lives. The truth: I have dishes piled up in my sink and the floor of my closet is completely covered with dirty laundry.

Something valuable that I learned during our first year of marriage is to take the time to celebrate one another. As adults, it is rare that others will pat you on the back, even when you may really deserve it. Be the person who gives your spouse credit where it is due.

That being said, I have to give a shout out to my husband for everything he has done during our first year to make our marriage work...

Dear Jake,

You wash more than your fair share of dishes. When I get down on myself, you remind me of who I am. You acknowledge the fact that I am the best car dancer in the history of the world. You build me up even when I may not deserve it. I am so grateful for your endless supply of patience. We made it through the dreaded first year! Happy anniversary.









P.S. I am guest blogging today over at Great Expectations! Check it out by clicking here.

A Man & His Dog

Jake and Penny. Penny and Jake. These two are inseparable. In all honesty, I don't feel like the third wheel... I feel incredibly lucky to witness their special bond.

Penelope gets a happy little dance going when Jake walks into the room. I can see the stress of Jake's day melt away when Penny jumps on him and gives him kisses (read: licks his face off).

For a man who hates to shop, Jake could browse the puppy aisle for hours. I would consider Jake to be frugal, but when it comes to Penny, only the best will do. 

I couldn't help but smile when I noticed - propped on top of Jake's stash of Sports Illustrated, a copy of Dog World Magazine.

My sweet guy sure knows how to treat a lady.

Our Love Story Chapter IV

If you have not already done so, you can click on Chapter 1, Chapter 2 and Chapter 3 to read the first parts of Our Love Story.

I won't leave you in suspense any longer, about six weeks after college graduation, Jake moved down to Charlotte. We lived with my parents while we looked for jobs and saved money to buy our first home.

That summer, Jake proposed to me in a very Jake-like fashion (sweet and understated). We had looked at rings together, so I had a feeling that it was coming - but did not expect him to propose when he did.

I grew up playing tennis and Jake and I had been playing a lot together that summer. During one of our matches, Jake lobbed a ball really high into the chain link fence that surrounded the court. When I went to retrieve the tennis ball, I noticed that there was writing on it. Scrawled in Sharpie read, "Bre, will you marry me?". Jake came over to my side of the court, got down on one knee and revealed the ring that I had really wanted. Clearly, I said, "Yes!". Later, Jake told me that he had hit that ball to me several times and I unknowingly hit it back to him.

That winter, we bought our first home together. The night after we closed, we were so excited that we slept on the floor of our empty house, even though we had a bed to sleep in about twenty minutes away at my parent's house.

For the next year, we were very busy settling into our new home and planning our wedding.

On April 16, 2011, after nearly twelve years of dating, living in eight different cities combined and spending four years long distance, Jake and I committed our lives to each other.

I would like to share a reading from our wedding that I feel sums up marriage perfectly,

"Why do people marry? Because we need a witness to our lives. There's billions of people on the planet. What does any one life really mean? But in a marriage, you're promising to care about everything. The good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things... All of it, all of the time, every day. You're saying, 'Your life will not go unnoticed because I will notice it. Your life will not go un-witnessed because I will be your witness'." 

(Full disclosure: This quote is from a kind of horrible movie, starring Richard Gere and J. Lo - but, when I heard it a few years back, it really resonated with me.)

Disclaimer: On this Valentine's Day, I am going to sing the praises of my husband, if this makes you want to vom, now would be a good time to click that little x up at the top of the screen ;)

Jake,

I appreciate you for understanding that when I am in the kitchen, all bets are off. Usually, by the time I am finished cooking it looks like a bomb went off. Thank you for always doing the dishes and accepting food as payment.

You are the kindest person that I know. I have looked far and wide, but have yet to meet a single person that does not instantly love you. There is not a mean bone in your body.

Thank you for making me feel like the greatest stand up comedian around. The fact that you constantly laugh to the point of tears at me does wonders for my self esteem.

I know that I can be a downer sometimes, I am working on it. You, on the other hand, never complain. You are appreciative for the smallest things and you  n e v e r  ask for anything. I admire you very much for this.

You are affectionate without being over-the-top with the PDA. You always kiss me before you leave for work in the morning (most of the time when I am still asleep) .

When I watch you with our nieces (and with Penelope), I get a glimpse of the father that you will be some day. This makes me very excited for our future.

You are supportive of all of my crazy ideas and big dreams.

You bring out the best in me.

I love you.

Our Love Story Chapter III

The next chapter of our love story begins when Jake and I entered college. If you missed them, please check out Chapter I and Chapter II.

After saying goodbye to Jake at the airport in Charlotte, I had a few days to mentally prepare myself for starting school in Columbia, SC. I headed to the University of South Carolina both excited and terrified. I was eager to make new friends (which had always come fairly easy to me) and to have a fresh start. I would miss Jake, but I had a feeling that I was going to love college.

My first few days were a blur. I met a lot of new people and did my best to make friends, but I soon found that I did not fit in. The large group of friends from high school that I once took for granted, was very hard to come by in college. I felt like an outsider and very uncomfortable in my own skin. Not to mention, I missed Jake terribly. Eventually, I made a small group of girlfriends that I was able to open up to and be my (weird) self with. 

I was very shaken and doubted myself a lot during my freshman year. I was on the phone with Jake almost every single night. Usually, about once every 3-4 months we were able to visit one another. I will never forget how I felt when I first went to stay with Jake in Cortland, NY. The excitement that I had was beyond anything that I'd ever experienced.

During our Freshman year of college, Jake's parents made the decision to move from Upstate New York to Wisconsin, where they were originally from and where all of their extended family lives. I think that this made being away from me harder on Jake, because he no longer had the comfort of his family being close by. Jake decided to transfer to the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee for his sophomore year. This made our distance door-to-door about 1,000 miles.

I visited Jake in Milwaukee in the fall of our sophomore year, and we talked more about moving closer together. We wanted to make a smart decision and did not want to jump into something that we might regret. I decided to get serious about transferring to a school in the Midwest. It was certainly a risk, but one that I was willing to take.

I have the most supportive parents in the world, and though they were saddened by the idea of me living so far away, they wanted to see me happy. I also think that they felt that Jake was the real deal. Ultimately, I decided to look at schools in Chicago. My dad took me to visit the city and I fell in love. I liked the idea of Jake and I still having separate lives, and time to be independent, but to be close enough to see each other when we wanted to.

I was accepted into a few different schools in the Midwest, and eventually made the decision to transfer to Loyola Chicago in the spring semester of my sophomore year. This would put Jake and I about 1.5- 2hrs away depending on traffic. To some people, this would still be considered long distance, but the thought of being able to hop in the car to see each other on the weekends was unimaginable to us. I had a tough transition at first, but overall, I loved my time in Chicago. I lived in a house with six other women (yes, it was as crazy as it sounds) and we learned a lot from each other.

Jake and I spent almost every weekend together and grew closer than ever. We both faced some difficult circumstances during our time in the midwest. My father was diagnosed with prostate cancer and Jake and I both lost close family members. This motivated me to try to live life to its fullest and to go for an opportunity that I may have normally passed up. I decided to study abroad in Rome, Italy during the first semester of my senior year.

Jake and I were apart for 4.5 months and spent a lot of time on Skype. My poor father paid for some seriously expensive international cell phone bills. I traveled throughout Europe and learned a great deal about myself while living abroad. When I returned from Italy, Jake and I agreed that we never wanted to live apart for a long period of time again.

Right before I left for Europe, my sister found out that her and my brother-in-law were pregnant. Our niece, Adelaide, was born a few weeks before my college graduation. Holding Addie for the first time made me certain that I would be moving back to Charlotte after graduation.

I had hoped that Jake would move to North Carolina with me, as I think we both felt confident that we wanted to spend our lives together. However, there were a lot of details to work out and it would take a serious leap of faith on Jake's part.

Our Love Story Chapter II

The second chapter of our love story starts on my first day of 8th grade. If you missed the first chapter, you can find it here.

After a mere 3 weeks since our break up, I was not looking forward to heading back to school in September. My stomach turned at the thought of seeing Jake (my newly ex boyfriend) on a daily basis.

I had decided that if I kept my head down in the hallway, I could make it through the first day of school without any awkward run-ins. As I walked into first period science, I noticed that Jake was in my class. It was a fairly large room, with two-seater lab tables. As fate would have it, our teacher had assigned seats alphabetically (our last initals were K and L). Jake and I would be lab partners for the entire year.

For the first few months of school, I did my best to win Jake back. I loaded up on Tommy Girl perfume and slathered on Limited Too roll-on glitter. I remember intentionally singing Coldplay songs under my breath (one of his favorite bands at the time) hoping that he would hear me and remember how much he loved me.

8th grade came and went with very little non-science related conversation between the two of us.

I dated a few other people and tried to move on from Jake. Eventually, we repaired our friendship and were able to hang out in the same circle without feeling uncomfortable.

After being friends for a while, we started to realize that we both wanted more from each other. At first, we tried to be "together" without a title (does this ever work?). Towards the middle of high school, we officially got back together. We went to Junior and Senior prom together and spent lots of time cruising around in Jake's sweet ride, a teal 1992 Dodge Dynasty (it was '04/'05 at the time... Also worth mentioning, we did not actually take this car to prom).

During my Junior year, my parents made the decision to move to Charlotte, NC after I graduated from high school. The magnitude of the move did not hit me at first, since I figured that everyone would be going away to college. I was excited for my senior year of high school and at 16, a year-and-a-half felt like a lifetime away.

Things started to become more real when I began applying to colleges in the Southeast, while all of my friends applied to schools in the Northeast. Jake decided on SUNY Cortland (not too far outside of Syracuse, NY) and I chose The University of South Carolina (Columbia, SC). A mere 830 miles away from one another.

Our senior year was a whirlwind; football games (Jake was on the team), parties, dances and lots of time spent together. After my parents moved to Charlotte, I stayed in New York for the summer. Without my permission, August came. It was time for me to leave everything that was familiar to me behind.

Jake drove to Charlotte with me so that we could spend a week together before I started school. We talked about what a long distance relationship would mean, and ultimately decided to take things day-by-day. We did not want to put too much pressure on one another, but breaking up didn't feel right.

In a crowded airport we said goodbye. As we drove away, I sobbed in the car with my mom. Immediately following the airport, my mom took me to the DMV to get my SC driver's license. As if driver's license photos aren't heinous enough.

Our Love Story Chapter I

A lot of my favorite bloggers have written really beautiful love story posts (some of which you can find here, here, here and here). Their love stories have given me a better idea of who they are and what they are all about.

I go back-and-forth with the concept of posting personal stories on this blog. I tend to be private with things that are close to my heart. After much thought, I have decided that I want to be more open and to use this blog to document many different facets of my life. I made this decision when I noticed a common thread that ran through the blogs that I really really love... Many of these women can post a DIY photo collage one day, and the next will write about their struggle with trying to conceive a child. It is this dynamic thread that runs through all of us as women that has inspired me to push myself to open up.

Without further ado, our love story...

To start, we will have to travel back in time to the year 1999. Jake and I were both 12 years old and went to middle school together in Upstate New York. We had a lot of mutual friends and probably met in passing a couple of times the year before. The first meeting that jumps out in my mind though, was at a local park that had soccer fields and basketball courts. It was fall and there was a chill in the air. Jake had a black ski hat on and his nose was running (funny which details stick out in your mind). I was interested in one of his friends at the time.

We became friends and would occasionally talk on the phone or on AIM (please tell me that you grew up in the generation of AIM) his screen name was JkBball50 and mine was Smileylyke a match made in heaven. Back in middle school, we had this strange ritual where you would ask someone what their list was. As hilarious as this sounds, you would list off the top 5 people that you liked in order of importance. Jkbball50 instant messaged me one day asking for my list, and I put him at number 4. This gave the kid some hope. He was very persistent from that point on - asking me to be his girlfriend about 5 times over the next month. 6th time was the charm and on October 28th, 1999 I said yes.

We started off pretty awkward, communicating through notes folded in a very intricate fashion written in pink gel pen ink. We pretty much did not talk in person for the first few weeks. Slowly but surely, we started to be less shy around each other and actually, gasp, spoke to each other face-to-face. Soon we were talking on the phone every single night and hugging in the hallway at school! Big steps. In December on Jake's 13th birthday we had our first kiss.

What happened next was very unexpected. I actually liked him. Like, really liked him. Dare I say loved him. Are we capable of knowing what romantic love is at age 12? The Wonder Years says, "Yes!" and so do I.

For the next 10 months we were inseparable. But, at 13 when things start to get too heavy too fast something is bound to break.

To my extreme shock, Jake broke up with me a few weeks before we started 8th grade. How could this happen? I was the one in control of this relationship. I was the one that he had pursued.

It's not easy to learn at 13 that no matter what I did I couldn't force someone to want to be with me. I could not make him love me.

I have this vivid memory of calling him and sobbing into the phone to please change his mind. After he hung up on me I cried on the floor in my parents bathroom and prayed, asking God to please let Jake see us the way that I did. Dramatic for 13? I would argue that age is just a number, isn't it? My feelings were very real to me at the time. It is easy to dismiss someone for being young and naive, yet is there ever a time when your feelings are more pure?

I will end Chapter I with a page from my journal written in 1999.

 

The sad thing is that my handwriting really has not improved much.

Stay tuned for more of our love story. I hope to add a post each week leading up to Jake's birthday on December 7th.