Marriage |

60 Years of Blessed Marriage

February 23, 2011 6 Comments

Today marks the 60th anniversary of my grandparents’ wedding day. That’s a rare thing these days! I have been so blessed to know them and see how loving and solid their marriage is. They are such an example to me. Even now, after so many years, you can clearly see how in love they are with each other. They still flirt with each other! It’s so sweet. I pray that my marriage will be that good and that long!

I love my grandparents so much. They have done so much for me over the years. But nothing as important as the love they have shown me. I couldn’t have asked for anyone better.

If you grandparents are still with you, please tell them you love them. Life is short.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: anniversary, family, love, marriage

Celebrating One Year of Bliss

January 27, 2011 1 Comment

One year ago, (and a week & a half now!) I married the love of my life. What an amazing year it has been! I am blessed beyond measure. My husband loves me so much. He takes care of me, respects me, and makes me feel like the most beautiful woman in the world. I couldn’t have asked for more. He is my love, my partner, my best friend.

As you know from yesterday’s post, we spent several days in Gatlinburg to celebrate our anniversary. However, we also went on a date on our actual anniversary. We went to Olive Garden, where we had our first date. We both love that place! It’s so yummy. Then we went to see Tron: Legacy. We both really wanted to see it. He has seen the original movie, from the 80′s. Well, he loves all things from the 80′s. Haha. It was a great movie!

We got home around 1 am. When we opened the front door, this is what we found:

My sister had decorated our room for our anniversary!!! She is the best ever. While The Sarge put our leftovers in the fridge, I got my camera to take these pics. Then we heard the music playing in our room!!

Rose petals, cake, chocolates with a “love monkey”, candles, music, etc. She did good! We were definitely overwhelmed.

The night was perfect. We enjoyed our dinner and the movie. We were surprised by my sister. And we had an amazing time just being together. I am so blessed.

Now, since I missed last weeks’ MilSpouse Friday Fill-In and I really liked the questions, I decided to post them today. So here goes.

1. What do you usually want to know about someone when meeting them for the first time?

It depends. If it’s a military spouse, I ask how long they’ve been married (to the military), where they’ve been stationed, if they have any advice for a new milspouse. If it’s anyone else, I usually just start a conversation and see where it leads.

2. Would you rather know everything about your spouse, or be regularly surprised?

Big things are a must know. And we know the big things about each other. But he surprises me regularly. Just part of getting to know each other even better.

3. If you could live in one city for the rest of your life, where would you live?

Nashville, TN. It’s home. I was born and raised here. It’s Music City, USA. It’s beautiful. I love my Nashville.

4. When you go out of town, what one material thing do you ALWAYS take?

My phone and my laptop. Especially while M is deployed.

5. Using no more than 10 nouns, and ONLY nouns, describe yourself.

Milspouse, wife, daughter, sister, friend, creative, faithful, listener, patriotic, christian.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: anniversary, husband, love, marriage, MilSpouse Friday Fill-In, pictures

5 Months

December 23, 2010 1 Comment

A few days ago was the 5 month mark for The Sarge being deployed. It’s been a long 5 months. Each month seems to last longer than the one before. Especially this month! I wish I could fast forward. Thankfully in a few short weeks my sweetheart will be in my arms again! I am counting down the days.

Since The Sarge missed Thanksgiving, and he’s missing Christmas, we’re having Thanksgiving/Christmas/our one year anniversary/his birthday all in one weekend while he is here. I’m so excited about it! My family and I are all saving the big presents for then. So it’s gonna be awesome. My sister and I are also trying to plan a small get together for a few of The Sarge’s friends. Oh, don’t worry. There will be lots of pictures! But I will not be online much at all while he’s here. Not to mention the rest of this week, for Christmas. And after Christmas my bestie is coming to see me (YAY!!!!) so I won’t be online. And I’m working at a wedding on New Year’s Eve. So……. It may be a while til you hear from me again! (besides the quick message) I hope you all have an amazing Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: anniversary, deployment, family, holidays, husband, marriage

The Life of an Army Wife

October 26, 2010 2 Comments

I was minding my own business, living my life, and then I fell in love with a soldier. He stole my heart. So I became an Army Wife. And I am so proud to be! But I have to say, it’s harder than I thought it would be. I mean, it’s hard enough being newlyweds! Getting to know each other in new ways, learning to live with each other, etc. Add to that preparing for and then going through a deployment. It’s a lot to deal with.

I miss my husband. I miss being close to him. I miss being able to hold his hand, hug him, cook for him. The little things. You don’t realize how much you need them until they aren’t there. A big one for us, he always takes the trash out. I HATE taking the trash out. I miss going out to eat with him. I miss going to movies with him. Or just watching a movie at home, snuggled up together. I have to say, it sucks.

I am so so so grateful for the internet. For Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo messenger and Skype video chat. Because of those things, I am able to talk to my beloved very often. That has really helped me through this! Especially since we have had a lot of medical problems in my family recently. Several surgeries and people in the hospital. I’ve been helping take care of people. It’s a lot to take on. Being able to talk to my husband, who is also my best friend, has helped me so much. He calms me down, even from over 7000 miles away.

We have been having some amazing conversations recently. Every time I talk to him, I fall more and more in love with him. He is truly my other half. I am a better person because of him. And it is so hard being away from him. I can’t wait for him to get home!

With him leaving just after 6 months of marriage, it’s going to be like starting all over when he gets back. On one hand that sucks. We will have been married for over a year and have to get used to each other all over again! But on the other hand, it’s exciting! It’s all new again! That can be fun! I know I’m up for the challenge!

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: About Me, Army, deployment, husband, marriage

My Dream Wedding

May 27, 2010 10 Comments

I started dreaming of my wedding day when I was just a little girl. I always wanted to get married in the same room my parents did, the chapel in my home church. With my best friends standing by my side. All of my friends and family there to watch my become a Mrs. Every little detail would be perfect.

When Matthew proposed, we knew he would be deployed at some point but we thought we had plenty of time to plan my dream wedding. The day after I got our personalized napkins in the mail we found out his deployment had been bumped up by 6 months and we would have to change our wedding date.

We finally decided on January 16th, 2010. With only 4 months to plan, we had to move quickly. It also meant that a lot of our family and friends could not make it to our wedding. We invited a little more than 100 people. Which for some people is big. However, with the size of my family and the number of friends we have, we wanted to invite over 300!

A lot of the small detail we worked out the way I wanted them. My flowers and my sister’s flowers. The colors we used. The paper lanterns in the reception room. The purple shoes with my lime green nail polish.

One big thing that didn’t happen. My grandparents weren’t there. My dad’s parents have both passed away. My mom’s parents are still alive and very much a part of my life. Due to their health, they were not able to travel to my wedding.

We had our ceremony in the foyer to the chapel. I loved how it turned out! The candelabras are the exact same ones that my parents used in their wedding.

Matthew’s brother Keith was his best man. My sister Hannah was my maid of honor. Matthew’s daughter Callie was our flower girl. Our friend’s son Ty was our ring bearer. Matthew’s best friend Rodney sang for us. The rest of the guys Matthew asked to be groomsmen couldn’t make it. That’s why we decided to just have a best man and maid of honor. We did have ushers who were (from Left to Right) my cousin Eric, our friend (my “brudder”) Brian, our friend (My “brother”) Toye, and my best friend Josh. My best friend Kelly was my honorary Matron of Honor. I felt bad about not having my other bridesmaids stand up with me. I didn’t even get pictures with them. That’s definitely something I would have changed.

These center pieces were EXACTLY what I wanted. My mom did such an amazing job with them! We only did half of the center pieces like this.

I absolutely loved the cupcakes we had. They were adorable and SO yummy! Probably the best I’ve ever had! But I think I would have a cake at the next wedding.

I had a vision of my reception being in a beautiful ballroom with chandeliers galore. I am very pleased with the way it turned out though. I think the only big thing I would change about the room itself would be: No Fluorescent lights!!

Here’s a big detail I would change. We originally wanted to have our “guest book” be a signature picture frame. When we have our “BIG” wedding, we will do that.

We decided to do a “unity candle” in our wedding. Since we plan on having a bigger vow renewal ceremony for all of our friends and family, we are going to do a sand ceremony. We didn’t want to do that for this ceremony since you can only mix different colored sand once! LOL!

When I look back at our wedding, it was really the perfect day. There were things that didn’t go as planned. There were details I will change for our big ceremony. But the day I married the love of my life was absolutely perfect. I will never think differently.

This was prompted by Mama Kat’s Writing Prompts. “If you could do your wedding over, how would you do it?”

I selected this post to be featured on Military Blogs. Please visit the site and vote for my blog!

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: About Me, husband, love, marriage, weddings

Love Is In The Air

April 27, 2010 5 Comments

We had so much fun this weekend at the marriage retreat. We learned a lot about communication and how to love your spouse in their love language. Even though we’re newlyweds, I think it was great for us to go because we learned that stuff early!

We also loved where we stayed, the Chattanooga Choo Choo. For those of you who don’t know, it is a historical train station that was turned into a hotel. It is so cool! They have all these train cars that they turned into hotel rooms, as well as 3 hotel buildings. They have several shops and restaurants, including 2 restaurants that are in train cars. Most of our meals were provided for, except for Saturday night which was “date night”. So on Saturday we ate in the “Silver Diner” which is one of the restaurants in the train cars. It’s a pizza place. SO good! My parents just happened to be staying in Chattanooga this weekend too, for a business conference, so they ate with us. We made it “Double Date Night”. Hehe.

We also went into this awesome little scrapbook store that also had souvenirs and other things. While we were in there we were talking to the owner about stamps and we told her that we use stamps for letterboxing. She said “Have you found the one I have here?” We looked at each other and said “NO!” Then Matthew proceeded to RUN back to our hotel room to get our letterboxing bag! Haha. We were so excited! It was also cool because my parents were in there with us so they got to see what we do with letterboxes. My mom has gone with us to find one, but my dad hadn’t before this weekend. He started to talk about a stamp he wants me to make. I think we found a new letterboxer! (Or at least a stamp designer!)

We went letterboxing after our last session was over, on our way home. We found 3 outside a museum on the river, one on the Riverwalk on the Tennessee River in Chattanooga, one in a civil war cemetery and one at a rest area on the way home. We also found one at a former abortion clinic in Chattanooga that was bought by a Christian organization. They have a Memorial for the Unborn garden in honor of miscarried children. It was so beautiful!

Well, here are some pictures we took this weekend. It was so beautiful there! Unfortunately, I didn’t get any pictures of the gardens at night. They had flames lit up and down the garden walk at night but I didn’t have my camera with me on Friday night and they weren’t lit on Saturday because of the rain. Boo.