7 Years Ago

I married this wonderful woman. On Sunday, we celebrated our 7th anniversary at home with a Valentine themed dinner. My parents drove up for the day and came to church with us. Jayne woke us up in the morning with blueberry pancakes and juice, while we had some homemade pizza in the evening. She placed empty cards at each place setting and we took turns writing down the reasons we loved each member of our family. Cold Stone cupcakes and cherry pie with homemade raspberry sorbet topped off the evening. Have any of you had Cold Stone cupcakes? Oh my, they are delicious! They get a big thumbs up from both of us.

As Jayne and I have been reflecting upon 7 years together, we cannot believe how much our love has grown, especially in the past 8 months. We concluded that a few changes have occurred that have helped us tremendously.

1) Spending more time with just each other. Transitioning from student to working life was a little rough at first. Back in Maryland, every weekend (or more) was about finding something to do with some of our friends. A party, dinner, movies/games, etc. Moving to a new place with new faces and not having so many people in our same circumstances caused us to just do stuff at home with each other and the kids. Have we still made great friends here? Of course we have. Extra-familial (is that a word?) social interactions however, are no longer the focus of our weekends. And we have found that we like that. The closeness we feel towards each other is greater than at any point in our marriage. So I guess you could say that we have dialed back the "busyness" factor of our lives.

2) Budgeting - Back in July, I made a post about a financial plan we are trying to follow. While it doesn't look like I'll have my student loans paid off by this December (it was rather ambitious!), we have made great headway into paying that balance down. With baby coming in June, we also dialed back the intensity at which we are paying down loans and instead putting the majority of our surplus into savings until baby comes home safe and sound. The biggest thing that following Dave Ramsey has done for us though, is establishing a realistic budget and openly communicating about money. What a blessing! We haven't had a money fight in quite a while and are totally on the same page about money coming in and going out.

(After reading the post and discussing it, we both agreed that there were a couple more things to add.)

3) Cutting Cable - Last November, we cut our cable. In addition to enjoying the bit of extra cash each month, we both have found that we really don't miss it all that much. We bought a HD antenna a few years ago so we just hooked that back up to catch Lost and The Office and currently, the Olympics. We don't feel like we "have" to watch TV to get our money's worth because, well, its free!

4) Love Languages - My parents bought us a book called "The 5 Love Languages" for Christmas about two years ago. We finally got around to reading it this winter and wish we would have sooner. It basically states that there are five primary love languages, or ways to express love: Words of Affirmation, Receiving Gifts, Physical Touch, Quality Time and Acts of Service. Each person responds best to one of these, but may have aspects of each. Jayne's is most definitely Quality Time, so I made a greater effort to give her more of my time and it has paid off in spades. Mine is apparently Words of Affirmation since I'm so needy.

So these are the two four changes we have made that have paid tremendous dividends for our marriage. We still have rough spots now and again. It usually involves video games. Oh well, it gives me something to write about next year right?