12 Years

Last week my  husband and I celebrated our 12 year anniversary! I think I should say that again because I some times don't believe it myself 12 Years!! It seems so long ago we got engaged and then married and it feels as though we were only children; in many ways we were! I was 23 and he was 8 days shy of 23. Although we have been marred for 12 years we have been a couple for nearly 18 years! We began dating in December of our senior year in high school... yes, high school sweet hearts!

We've survived a lot and by a lot I mean A LOT! He went to college in West Virginia I stayed in New York- we dated the entire time we were in college! We saw each other every few months on and on Holidays. We got engaged the summer of our senior year, I graduated a semester early and moved with him to West Virginia. Upon his graduation we moved to Virginia for a job he had already been offered. One year later in 2002 we got married~ We had our first Daughter 2 short years later in 2004. At the end of 2004 we moved to Ohio and had our second daughter in 2006.

in 2008 we found out Curt would be deployed (he's a civilian with the DOD) ~ I turned 30 that year, he left in 2009 and we both grew as individuals over the next three years of his deployment. In 2011 we moved to Florida ~ a few months later the deployment ended and we were a family once again.

I say all of this because ~ Well I think its important to be honest about myself and my marriage. Its great when you can see that two people have been married for 12 years and have 4 kids and it looks easy. Well I am sure as many of you know that its not~ Its not easy. We have to work at our marriage every day, sometimes its little things... like me speaking his love langue and hugging him or holding his hand and some times its big things... like "ok we need to talk before I lose it". But just because we work at it doesn't mean there is something wrong ~ it means we have learned along the way how to make a marriage work... how to make our marriage work. We were fortunate enough to attend a wedding last weekend and we had someone ask us how long we had been married and when we said 12 years - he responded by saying "well you made it past the average".. while that makes me happy and makes me smile that "we made it" I know the only reason we have is because we have learned life and marriage are not perfect and they likely never will be. But I don't think we would want them to be perfect otherwise how would we grow and learn, and how would we teach our children how to make a marriage work?

I thank God for the patience and understanding my husband has for me... boy do I thank him! But I also thank God everyday for the love we share and our willingness to know that we won't ever be perfect and that is just fine with us...