3,285 Days of Marriage.

Project 365 * 4
Day 671

     Oh, sweet November 5th. The day I walked down the aisle and became a wife to the man I love. I never expected that nine years later, I would be more in love with my husband than I was on the day I married him. In all honesty, the love we shared on our wedding day pales in comparison to the love we share now. We have truly been through it all together. Good times. Bad times. Very good times. Very bad times. We've had many joys. And many sorrows. But all of it led to this day. This moment nine years later. How did we celebrate nine years? Matt worked. I worked. Matt visited his mom in the hospital. I made dinner. Cleaned it up. Prepared things for tomorrow. We bathed our kids. We read to them. We played with them. I held Tobin and sang to him. Matt held Tobin. (He's not quite sure how to get to sleep anymore without his pacifiers. He stays awake for a long time after we put him to bed.) Matt and I exchanged cards. One store bought. One homemade. And one lone gift. Some chocolates. Money is tight right now, and we just don't have the funds to buy gifts for each other. But after nine years, you learn that it isn't about gifts. It isn't about cards. It isn't about date nights. It's about time. It's about nights like this. When we go about our business as usual, exchanging hugs and kisses when we can. Stealing away a few minutes to talk when the kids are quiet. It's about the other 364 days of the year. The regular Mondays. The same old, same old Thursdays. It's about who we are, and how we love on all those ordinary days. Ordinary days are important. The most important, I feel. The way we live them is who we really are. Anyone can buy flowers, and gifts, and have extravagant date nights. Special days are just that. They're special. But they're not always indicative of how we really live. The real test is all the ordinary days. The days where nothing much special is going on. When you make a choice to love someone throughout all those ordinary days, 364 of them, for nine years, you know what you have is real.

     Thankful for my sweet love. Thankful to be able to call my husband best friend, lover, soulmate. Thankful for our nine years of marriage. I've learned a great many things throughout those years, but the most important is this: just love each other. Through it all. In the good. In the bad. Just, love. And by showing love, even when you don't want to, you find that all your prior notions of love and romance just don't compare to the oceans upon oceans upon oceans of love two people can share after 3,285 days of marriage.