10 Years!

I tried writing this once already today and right at the end of the post, my computer did something weird and didn't save it! So disappointing!

I can't believe that 10 years have already gone by since Mike and I got married. I was thinking about our wedding day this morning and how awesome it was! I was a 24 year old girl just so excited and ready to be married to the guy I had been dating/engaged to for 5 1/2 years. Our wedding day was perfect. I wasn't the "bridezilla" that some girls are - HA! I was very calm and go-with-the-flow through the whole planning process and also through the whole wedding day. We had fun and laughed a lot! Just how I wanted the day to be!

Mike was still in school when we got married and graduated in May of 2001. He began the job search and of course we were just looking for jobs in St. Louis. That's where we lived and that's where we wanted to stay - forever! But, God had different plans for us! Mike got his first job out of college and that job moved us to Joplin, MO. We knew not a soul there. We went from living in a town filled with family, friends, our church, and everything we knew and loved to a town where we needed Mapquest to find anything! We quickly found a church and got in a great SS class. We met some great friends and really liked living there. The summer of 2002 we got some wonderful news - We were pregnant with our first baby! Everyone was so excited! We celebrated our 2 year anniversary in February and our sweet Macie was born on March 20, 2003. What a sweet baby she was! So content and happy! She still is to this day. Such a wonderful blessing to us!

When Macie was 10 months old, Mike got a new job and we packed up and headed north to Lawrence, KS. We still look back on that time and kind of laugh. We only lived there a year and it was a weird year. We were perfectly happy, but it wasn't home. It was a college town and with that brought some weirdness. HA! I guess that's true of any big college town, huh?

In January of 2005, Mike got a call from a recruiter asking him if he'd be interested in interviewing for a job in Arkansas. Mike jumped at the chance! I, on the other hand, jumped with some hesitation. In my defense, the only thing I knew about Arkansas was all the bad stuff you hear when you aren't from the state. You know, stuff like: Everyone marries their cousin, their favorite form of entertainment is cow tipping, etc. I wasn't so sure about it. I'm laughing just thinking about our first drive down. We were on Hwy. 71 crossing from Missouri into Arkansas and I was looking in every car trying to see what people "down here" looked like! HAHA!!! Mike finally said, "Chris, stop staring at people!" I don't know what I was looking for - people with 2 heads or something??!! Who knows! We finally got into Fort Smith and somehow we ended up on the wrong side of town. It wasn't a good first impression. I cried. Yes, just like I cried the first time we drove around every new town we moved to! But, just imagine, you are in a place where you don't know anyone, don't know where anything is, and you are going to have to start all over again. I think I deserve a few tears, right? We circled the city and ended up on Rogers Ave. We ate dinner at Red Lobster and I saw many things that I liked. Lots of good restaurants, a nice hospital, shopping, etc. I was starting to get on board with "this" Arkansas. Mike went on his interview the next morning and it went well. As we were eating lunch and getting ready to leave town, we got a call from the company asking us to come back because they had a job offer. We went back over there, got the offer, signed the contract and headed back to Lawrence to pack and move - for the 3rd time! This time, we knew we were putting some roots down. We bought our first home and one of the first days there I saw this church on TV that interested me. I asked Mike if he'd ever heard of a town called Lavaca? He said no, but looked it up online and found that it wasn't far from our house. The next Sunday, we loaded up 2 year old Macie, and made the drive to FBC-Lavaca. Five minutes into the sermon, Mike asked for my pen and wrote "We're joining here" on my bulletin. I agreed. We loved it! We joined the church the very next week and started getting involved. That summer, we got more great news - we were pregnant again and expecting our 2nd baby! Little Miss Maddie came roaring into our lives on February 20, 2006! She's such a sweet kid. A little spit fire, but sweet as can be, too! Her personality is more introverted than Macie, but she can make us laugh so hard with her silly side. She's an awesome blessing - we are so thankful God gave her to us!

Our lives this past 6 years in Fort Smith have been so great. We have grown as a couple, grown as individuals, became parents a third time to sweet Mabrie on September 3, 2010 and made some of the best friends any couple could ask for. God has blessed us more than we ever imagined. We aren't the same people we were 10 years ago. We've changed so much and I hope it's for the better. We love each other more now than we did on that cold February Saturday back in 2001. We are closer to the Lord than we were on that day, too. We've moved, laughed, cried, had babies, bought a house, tried to sell that same house - 3 times (HA!), made new friends, served in our church, gone on vacations, dates, visited family, put more miles on our cars than we could possibly count, but through it all, we wouldn't change a single thing. Each step in our journey has led us right where we are and right where we are is awesome! We want to continue to grow as a couple, grow in the Lord and grow as parents. We are blessed beyond anything we ever dreamed. So thankful that God made us for each other. I can't wait to see what our next 10, 20, 30, + years will be like. This is forever - just like we promised back on Feb. 10, 2001!

Happy Anniversary, Mike! I love you!!