Three.

23 May 2009
Photo by Jen Fox Photography

People meeting us for the first time think of us very much as "newlyweds" when we share how long we've been married.

Three years.

(Feels more like forty-three. But in a good way.)

"Oh, you're still in that honeymoon phase," we often hear.

Ha. That's kinda funny.

It may have been "only" three years, but it included James' prolonged and unintentional unemployment (close to two years), a fairly major religious shift, the birth of our first child and his death, a cross-country move, a separation of three months and several thousand miles while I was fresh into a second pregnancy (and all the throwing up that attended it), packing up our apartment, and leaving the job I had been at for over eleven years, and then there was the birth of our second child.

What honeymoon phase?

23 May 2012
A lot has happened in 3 years.

It's not a contest and I suppose it really doesn't matter whether someone else thinks of us as a pair of blissed out "newlyweds" who know little of life's travails. When I look over my shoulder at the three years between that day and this one, I'm pretty darn sure that James and Kirsten are going to make it, holding hands, loving and in love as ever.

Photo by Jen Fox Photography

Happy anniversary to my love. Knowing what I know, I would say "yes" all over again.