8 Years of Marriage

In the past month we've hit a couple of milestones, one being my turning 30 late July, and the 2nd being our 8th wedding anniversary earlier this month! I've been hit a little hard with turning 30, and while it is by no means old and it's just a number, I'm not where I wanted to be at 30. We have been trying to grow our family for 7 years, and I recently made a career change that has been a big adjustment. Seeing a new number at the beginning of my age isn't easy when you aren't where you wanted to be. However, while there are things I wish I would have accomplished by now, I realized that there are a lot of things that we have accomplished in this time that we are so thankful for! I write out 8 blessings below, one for each year of marriage, and hope this will inspire you to count your blessings as well! It's extremely difficult to be sad or anxious while also being grateful, so we'll see how this works!

1. Aunt & Uncle: Being auntie & uncle to our three nephews, and numerous friends kiddos including 5 goddaughters (and one godchild arriving any day!) has been our best role to date. I'm sure any who have hung out with us in the past few years have heard about Joel, Joseph, & Lincoln and we are so blessed to have them as part of our lives and honoured to be an important part of theirs as well. So exciting seeing our goddaughters grow up, with the oldest starting kindergarten this year!

Joel and one of our goddaughters having a stroll. So special to see them interact with each other :).

2. Reading: A few years ago, I made the new years resolution to work towards reading all of the books that we owned. Since then we've both been reading so much more than when we first got married, and have enjoyed it immensely. I've ready 40+ books each of the past 3 years, and probably the biggest hobby we've added since reading so much is buying a ton of books. I'll never catch up at this rate, but it's a good problem to have! I read somewhere that buying books is an entirely different hobby than reading books, and we enjoy both thoroughly. If you're looking to enhance your reading life some things that have helped us: tracking on methods like the Goodreads app, and listening to reading podcasts like What Should I Read Next & From the Front Porch. The Children's Hospital Booksale is coming up next month too so I'm sure we'll be adding to our collection!

The books that I own & read in 2018. Some books not pictured are e-books or books that I borrowed.

3. Trips: In our 8 years we've been fortunate to go on a number of vacations including a few Caribbean cruises, some city vacations to Chicago & LA, Disneyworld & land, and most recently to London for our first European adventure. We have a family vacation planned for winter 2020, and have a long bucket list of travel in the future hopefully! It's hard to pin down a favourite trip, but Chicago is definitely one of my favourite cities to visit and one that we repeat whenever we can. My next bucket list type trip that I'm hoping to go on is Italy, since coming home from London all I can think about is going to a European country with pizza...England disappointed on the food front a little bit so nothing sounds better than old things accompanied by pizza and wine. 

A highlight of our trip to London was the Tower of London tour, and the beautiful Tower Bridge!

4. Living in a Time Where Clothes Feel like Pajamas but Look Cute. This is an embarrassing one because I legit just deleted one about feeling more informed about current issues and replaced it with wearing leggings as pants. My previous item here didn't come across super intelligent, but I will touch on it briefly - I feel much more informed about politics, issues that are important, and feel like a better person than when I first got married. Books & podcasts have been a huge help in this arena and I am so thankful to be more aware of the world around me. Back to leggings. I love rompers, my new business attire is ath-leisure (aka workout clothes you don't exercise in). I love that we live in a world where leggings and a jersey dress looks adorable and feels like PJs. I am thankful forever for this. I hope it never goes away. Also, back to being informed - much easier to be passionate about issues when you are dressed comfortably!

5. Podcasts: I've already mentioned podcasts a couple of times in this post, so you can tell that they are extremely influential. I finally got into podcasts probably about 5 years ago, and listen a majority of most days. I get so many more chores done, learn a lot, and am entertained. Some favourites that I haven't already mentioned: The Popcast, Relevant, That Sounds Fun, The Lazy Genius, 10 Things to Tell You, By the Book, The Simple Show. 

6. Incredible Friend Group: Philip is still best friends with his friends from kindergarten, and I am so thankful for them, their wives, and their kids. I feel so lucky to have married into such a great group of people, and especially want to note what great dads they are, how the wives have become close even though we're adopted in, and the kids are a delight. In addition, we have our bud Ryan who comes for sleepovers and sportscationed with us in the Fall, and a couple from church that we have book club with and have adventures with! So thankful for good friends. 

7. Renos: In our marriage we have renovated 2 kitchens, 2 main levels, and a basement! We are working on our exterior now which I hope to share soon, and am excited to update the blog with some after pictures of projects we worked on during hiatus. 

Our kitchen getting some finishing touches a few years ago.

8. Career Changes. As many of you will know, I had been working for a kitchen manufacturing company here in Winnipeg for the past 8 years. It was an amazing opportunity and I learned so much. I was primarily a design assistant for a majority of that time, but the past 2 years I moved into a corporate role doing training events for dealers, teaching them about the product and how to use the design software. I have since moved into a freelance role doing similar work. I never would have thought that I'd be confident enough to speak in front of people and teach them, let alone do it on my own. Being by myself in business hasn't been easy, so we'll see if I stick with it or not - but it is an exciting adventure at the very least. In regards to Philip's career, he is at a company he loves, as well as working on side projects like a writing project and a number of art pieces (stay tuned as we may sell some soon!). 

Overall, it has been a great 8 years. There have been some curveballs, and I always think of part of our vows where we promised to love what we didn't yet know. We certainly didn't know that we would struggle with infertility, that we'd take some career risks, that we'd move and renovate (although based on my parents, Philip should have had an idea this would happen). However, we've enjoyed the ride most of the time, and I'm excited to see what the next 8 years will bring!