Nine years of us

A couple weeks ago, we celebrated nine years of marriage. Our anniversary was on a Wednesday, so the actual day was mostly routine, apart from a special celebratory fika in the afternoon with our favorite sourdough cinnamon rolls (always sans frosting and subbing in cardamom for half the cinnamon) and coffee. I showed Cooper pictures from our wedding day–something we hadn't done before actually– and it was fun for him to flip through the album and recognize familiar faces, including much younger mommy and daddy.

The weekend after our anniversary, we had planned a morning at the beach as a date, but with thunderstorms and lots of rain, plans changed. My father- and sister-in-law came over to watch the boys, so we could have a date with just the two of us. We browsed a local antique shop before heading to a coffee shop. We shared a latte while working on a crossword and some word puzzles together, talking, and a little knitting for me.

After that, we grabbed our rain jackets and walked through the local Saturday morning farmer's market, holding hands, picking up a pasture-raised pork roast, and then some dried salami from a local boutique grocery store.

Finally, we got a smoothie to share and drove around for awhile, on country roads, past trees and fields, talking and dreaming and just generally feeling unhurried.

It was just plain fun to be together, just the two of us, no schedule or specific plans, just in each other's company.

Looking back, the last year of marriage was very eventful, with both hard and good things. We welcomed Finn and we are grieving my wonderful mother-in-law. We completed a lot of projects around the house, potty-trained a toddler, started a garden, taught Cooper how to ride a scooter, played in the sand and the snow and made the very big adjustment to two sweet little boys.

As I do every year around this time, here are some of my favorite things about our life together right now:

• We take turns making coffee for each other each morning (much easier since we got an automatic pour over coffee machine)
• A better rhythm with giving one another rest and downtime; finding balance in marriage and parenthood that allows us time to recharge
• Walks, as a family. Whether that be when Nicholas is done with work, or to the park down the street, on a Saturday afternoon, with or without a scooter– whatever form it takes, it's enjoyable.
• You kiss me goodbye when I'm still in bed with the boys when you leave for your early mornings in Chicago. And then we sometimes text about your coffee at work, and I send you pictures of the boys and usually the (funny) first things Cooper says when he wakes up.
• Nicholas completely remade my blog (if you notice it looks different, that's why!) and I knit him a sweater
• We navigate parenting from building tiles and Legos, to discipline, to praying with our boys, to comforting them when they're sad or scared, to finding an unbelievable amount of joy in raising a family together. I cannot begin to say what an honor it is to both be your wife, and to parent alongside you.

Here are some of my favorite pictures of us from the last year of our marriage, most of which feature our little family of three/four (depending on whether it was taken prior to March), since we have the best little tagalong companions these days:

P.S.— if you're curious, here are my previous anniversary posts and our love story (the beginning of it, anyway; our story is ongoing, of course!) in two parts:

• Our first year
• Two years of us
• Three years of us
• Four years of us
• Five years of us
• Six years of us
• Seven years of us
• Eight years of us
• Our love story, part I
• Our love story, part II