Every Love Story Is Beautiful But Ours Is My Favorite...

On Friday July 25, 2014 I have the privilege to say that I have been Mrs. Kevin Griffith for 5 blessed years. While most of my blog posts have been about health, clean eating and fitness, today I want to share with you what a true love story looks like. Today the love story is mine and I will share with you what it takes to stay married and in love for five years strong.

If you were to ask my 9^th grade self who I was going to marry I would have told you Kevin Griffith and my naive 9^th grade self was so totally right. Kevin and I started dating when I was 14 and never have stopped loving each other since. We literally have grown up together and built a life that many young women would kill to have. There is something so special about sharing all of life’s milestones together. We experienced high school hand in hand and like most high school sweethearts had a few month long break ups here and there testing how much we really loved each other. Many told us “oh you will never marry your high school sweetheart just keep looking.” Those who offered that advice were wrong. Sometimes you do. He cheered me on thru college and promised me that at the end of that degree he would marry me. He proposed at sunrise in Sedona Arizona the summer before my senior year of college with one of the most stunning rings a girl could ask for. Our wedding was one of the very best days of my life. Only coming in a close tie with the day our son was born. He has followed me to where life has taken “me” because he wanted to support my dreams of being a teacher. We moved our life to State College for MY job and my dreams. He stood beside me and we built our new life together here. After two years of renting and enjoying being a newlywed he built me my dream home. We welcomed our first and only so far into the world a few months after we have moved in and the rest is history so far. Below you will see a few pictures of the journey along the way. 

Carefree Days Together

Young And In Love 

Younger Years Together 

College Days 

Marry Me? 

What I kept calling "The Best Day Ever" - Sunrise proposal- looking teary eyed! 

Along with me every step of the way....

Bachelorette Party Night - Getting excited to be Mrs. Griffith 

The Honeymoon 

Settling into our new town as Mr. & Mrs. Griffith

"And then there were 3"

Building me our dream home

Opening the door to our new future the day we closed on the house

"The other best day of our life"

Ugly Sweater Christmas Party Smooch- Still in love after all these years 

"And they lived happily ever after" 

What I will tell you now is something that I remind myself often. Being married and staying married and staying happy takes a hell of a lot of work. Dating is fun, it is easy and carefree but being married and being parents, that is the tricky part. You see for many, at least for me a lot of the romantic things we girls dream about – they tend to disappear a little more than we would like, habits that we never saw when dating surface and you find that there will be days when you have to try really, really hard to make things work. But here is the secret- you have to show up, every single day, you show up and you love them even when it’s hard. Why? Because when you walk down the aisle you make a promise to them, God and your family to love them forever… not just for as long as it’s fun. 

"Signing up for our forever"

If you want to stay married you have to show up and work for your marriage and some days you have to fight like hell to keep it going. After 5 years I have learned that some days are not fun, but if you work really hard, you can create a beautiful life. Not just one that looks good on the outside but one that feels good on the inside. Everybody’s grass looks greener on the other side, but rather than looking on the other side maybe you should water your own lawn. If you focus on your marriage and cultivate love you will find your happily every after.

Above our sink in the kitchen I have two things that make me smile every single day. The first is above the sink and it reads this “And they lived happily ever after.” The second is a quote on the window seal and it says “Grow old with me, the best is yet to be.” It is a reminder daily that I am blessed to have married my best friend and it makes me proud of our hard work together. We really do have our happily ever after and I really do want to grow old with him. Even on the days he makes me crazy, I’d pick him to spend forever with every single time.

"Truly Best Friends"

This week when we celebrate our anniversary we have a few fun traditions that I will share with you and I hope you consider starting these traditions for yourself as well. On our anniversary we plan something special just for us. Some years we go big and some years we go small but every year we make it really special. Why you ask, because it was the best day of our life and its fun to relive the best day of your life right?  This year we are trying something new. We were going to go away but after much discussion a “staycation” sounded even more appealing. We wanted a weekend at home without our little one. Why would we want to do that? Because for as long as we have lived in our home I have either been pregnant with Carter or we had him. Leaving us little time for dates when we want, sleeping in and enjoying our house without having to worry about naps and snacks and bedtime. This weekend our home will be just ours for a little bit of time. While we will miss our little man I am looking forward to it just being us like “old times.” We each are in charge of a day of the weekend. We have many surprises planned for each other. I cannot wait to spend the time with him and am very excited to see what he has planned for me.

We also have a journal that I spend the week leading up to our anniversary preparing. You see when it came time for our first anniversary; I wanted to do something really neat that would start a tradition. I love traditions! I started our love story.  In this journal I write about each month of our year that is coming to an end and all the milestones that happened during that time. Some are happy milestones, some sad, some exciting and some that just make you chuckle. My reason for doing this is that our life is pretty amazing and I don’t want to ever forget how blessed we are. Someday when one of us passes away or maybe when we are both gone our children or the one left behind will treasure this journal forever. I already treasure it so much and I am only 5 years into it.

 

The Anniversary Journal

On the evening of our anniversary we sit down with this journal and have cake, we drink champagne out of our wedding flutes and we read this journal. Sometimes it makes us laugh and sometimes I get choked up but it makes us feel proud of the life we have built together. After we read the journal we also read our guest book and all of the sweet wishes and messages from our family and friends that day. Life is short so we celebrate each year that we have been blessed to spend together. Cheers to year 6 and many, many, many more!