Looking Back on Three Years of Marriage

My hubby and I have been together five years now and married for three of those wonderful years as of yesterday and each year is better than the last. I thought I’d share some of the tid-bits I’ve come to learn throughout “Year Three” during all of our changes and challenges (buying a house, having a baby, family relocating, friends moving and divorcing, etc.). I love that even after 5 years I’m still learning things about my hubby and our relationship with every new day. Take them as pointers or as funny little extras I don’t care, either way I'm still going to share.

Year Three:

• Always put your marriage 1^st—your kids will suffer in a divorce that will not happen if you put your marriage first.
• If you cannot readily recall or remember your last date night…it’s time for another.
• Don’t start fights once you’re in bed…sleep will never come
• Words mean more than flowers, but flowers mean more than nothing
• If by 3 years you’ve never lost a fight…it’s time to.  Being right isn’t always alright.
• If after 3 years he still doesn’t fold his socks… he isn’t going to. Give it up because you need to…...(see next)
• Pick your battles…they are not all worth it.
• Hold hands as often as you can
• Always have a WORKING bathroom vent
• Men work best with a “to-do list”
• Wire hangers don’t warrant the energy for a fight, GET RID OF THEM!
• Always try to out-serve each other—you won’t regret it!
• If you have kids, pray over them nightly together, and lastly…
• Pray together often.

MEMO TO MOM: Have more date nights.

Toy Review-Kidoozie Flash Beat Drum

Kidoozie Flash Beat Drum

Bright colored exterior, large buttons and bright-colored lights

Lights up with the faintest touch of a child, so not much work on their part to keep it in play mode.

Plays notes with flashing lights when rolling along on its side as well

Buttons on the sides make it function in different modes—Example: Yellow button = Musical beats start with one touch and continue for several moments while flashing different color lights.  Blue button = one beat with one touch. Green button = a silly sound or chime with one touch.

Teaches great cause and effect while working on fine motor skills.

Almost indestructible.

Variety of songs and sounds so mommy doesn’t hide it in the trash can.

Long battery life, easy replacement.

Volume control

Light weight and easy for them to carry around at the narrow part in the middle

Kitchen Transformation

 When we moved into our new house we HATED the color of our kitchen cabinets.  Before we would commit to the house completely we went looking for a way to transform the cabinets instead of replacing them and low and behold we found the answer….

Rust-oleum Cabinet Transformations Kit.

Here are some before and after shots of our new kitchen, despite how dark our kitchen looks in these photos (due to the broken kitchen light and a crappy iPhone camera) our kitchen actually looks 10 times better than before! The process is pretty self explanatory on the box and there is even a YouTube video out there to go with it so I won’t go into step-by-step detail here; but I will advise what they didn’t and that is make sure you stop at the paint counter at your local hardwood store and have them TINT THE STAINER WITH YOUR COLOR CHOICE or you will have white cabinets!  (Just incase you miss the fine print on the top.)

Here are some of our before and after photos of our new kitchen.

The color choices for the Light Kit. *Note that
small print on the top telling you to color it at the
hardware counter? Small huh?

The color choices for the Dark Kit

MEMO TO MOM: Do always read the instructions.

“Us” Time Not “We” Time

Some days, not all but some, I miss the days when it was just me and Brian.  This does not make me a bad mom it just makes me a good wife.  (Not to mention HUMAN.)  After all I did marry the man because I wanted to spend all of my time with him, that’s what marriage is--24/7 with the love of your life.  But with a tiny toddler toddling around, we rarely ever get to spend any “just us” time--and when we do we just end up wanting to nap!  So, on the rare occasion when we get to do something together, even if it’s mundane stuff like grocery shopping or unpacking the house, I enjoy every minute of it.  If we happen to get dinner or a movie in too it’s a major plus!

 But I’m okay with mundane, it’s quality time like any other--and ladies lets face it, they may not admit that one of their love languages is quality time but our guys show it when they don’t get it!  (I know I know, your thinking my hubby’s is definitely not quality time, but come on, it may not be his favorite love language but it has to be on the list or he wouldn’t have proposed in the first place.  Again...Marriage=24/7  See above again.)  So when Brian and I started bickering over where we keep the scissors and our arrangement in our refrigerator, it was time for some “us time”.

So I decided tonight mundane would have to do since our schedules, with his finals and Liam’s therapy, were taking over our calendar.  This is when I dropped Liam off at Gigi’s and ran into town to meet Brian at the end of his work day.  Coffee in hand, we made the best of our hour.  We had been discussing purchasing a screen door for the new house and needed to price quote them as well as the wood for our pergola that’s going to cover the back yard. (See Liam’s Story for more on our upcoming new backyard for our fair skinned boy. The kid’s got to have his shade!) So even though our one hour consisted of walking through Lowe's, hand in hand, discussing and planning our home improvements, at least we had the hour.  And we now have a plan for our porch, bathroom, and yard.
Take that, mundane hour.

MEMO TO MOM: Mundane is better than NOTHING!