one year later

Well.. we did it! We survived our first year of marriage. Every one always says that the first year is the hardest. That might be the case for couples who have not already been together for awhile or are experiencing living together for the first time but it wasn’t for us. Cody and I had been together for six years prior to getting married and had bunked up together the whole time. So really, getting married didn’t change much. Our first year was a great one!

After the best honeymoon ever… we found out I was pregnant (yay for honeymoon babies!). McKenzie and Kasey were SO excited to be big sisters. It was really just an exciting time for our whole family. Who knew that only months later we would find out we were having our second set of twins!! I will never EVER forget the moment in doctors office being told their were two little heartbeats… again. We were not expecting to have four children so we really needed to think about what had to change so we could make this work.

One of our decisions was for me to become a stay at home mom. This would be the first time I hadn’t worked since I was 16 years old. Only having one source of income is absolutely terrifying to me but thinking about daycare costs wasn’t even worth it. Cody works his butt off for this family, often working 16 hour shifts multiple times a week. Something I definitely couldn’t do, that’s for sure.

So now that we were going to be rolling six deep, it was time for the MINIVAN talk. I never thought I would be that soccer mom but here’s my thought about it now…. the van life is the ONLY life. Haha, seriously having so much room is amazing. I will never go back to another vehicle. Well maybe when my children are adults. 🙂

After nine long months of being a very emotional pregnant wife (sorry hunny!), I had my two beautiful little babes, Harper and Mason. That stay in the hospital is when I fell in love with Cody all over again. It wasn’t when we said ‘I do’ but it was when I watched him holding and loving his babies. It was when we found out Mason had heart problems and we cried together. It was when I realized he was going to be the best dad to my children. Being a good husband is very important but being an incredible father ranks pretty high on my list.

This past year was obviously filled with a ton of change for us, less money but double the kids (yikes!). That can be hard for any couple but looking back, it didn’t seem hard at all. In fact, I believe this year has made us stronger than ever. Sure, we disagree often and fight sometimes but never for long. Who has time for all that when you have four kids running around? We both hate being the first one to say sorry but we each know when we are the one in the wrong. Our marriage isn’t perfect, but neither is anyone else’s. We love the life we have and as the years pass we will continue to grow and learn from each other.

I threw in some throwback pictures of our first couple years of dating. 🙂