Nine Years!?!?!

Yeah, I know what you're thinking.  They look way too young to have been married for nine years.  Thanks, you're too kind!  Tomorrow, May 26, will mark nine years of marriage for Sarah and I so I wanted to take a minute and publicly declare my love for my wife.  I mean, after all, isn't blogging about one's wife the most sincere way to express one's love these days besides writing a love note on her facebook wall and changing one's facebook profile picture to a wedding picture (note: I did those things as well)? These past nine years have given us some wild experiences including the birth of our two daughters and our first son is due in a few short weeks.  We have survived two cross-country moves and we've experienced life in 5 vastly different cities.  I have changed jobs several times and we've both started our own businesses as we chase our dreams.  We've worked incredibly hard and we've stayed up late for more nights than I can count.  We've experienced unbelievable joys and we've experienced extreme lows like my mother passing away nearly 4 years ago.  Sarah has stood by me with every difficult decision we've faced and our faith has been stretched beyond anything I could have ever imagined.  We've been together since our freshman year of college 12+ years ago and it's crazy to think that one day we will have been together longer than we have been apart!  We have celebrated countless holidays and birthdays together and we have been blessed to be a part of many friends' and family members' special moments.  We've certainly never been rich, but God has always given us everything we've ever needed and we are blessed beyond measure.

I couldn't imagine spending my life with anyone else - no one else could understand me like she does and I could  never share a common life vision with anyone like I do with Sarah.  She is no doubt life's best gift for me and I am forever grateful that I get to experience the next 75 years with her!  Our marriage certainly isn't perfect, and I don't mean to sound like I'm bragging.  I'm mostly just sharing, in awe, that God has given me someone so uniquely fit to my needs.  He needs to receive all the credit and it's by His grace that we'll make it the rest of this race!

So thanks for reading my open heart - it has to make an appearance every so often to keep me honest and true!  Now onto some nine-year-old pictures of a few young kids fresh out of college who didn't have a clue what life would be throwing their way!  We'll always be grateful to our family friend, Russ, who jumped in to photograph our wedding as a gift since we were broke and couldn't afford to pay a photographer!  He's a big reason why we are centering our business around helping others and giving back when we can.

Despite the lack of alcohol at our wedding, there was a whole lot of dancing!

I need to explain the next two pictures.  The above photo is the last one where we were all dreamy and clean.  I tried to explain to Sarah what kind of a family she was marrying into, but I don't know that she believed it until this moment.  It seems as though Sam's Club must have had a huge sale on baking flour and silly string.  My brother and cousins dumped 80lbs. of flour on our car in addition to painting the tires orange and several other "decorations."  It seems as though I must have done something to my brother when he got married two years earlier, but I don't really remember why needed to seek revenge... At any rate, the car wash made a lot of money off of this wedding and we were baking biscuits in the engine for many months to come.