9 years together
Friday was our 9 th year anniversary. 9 years just blows my mind. It's hard to believe that it's been that long.

In all honesty, I'm having mixed feelings about our anniversary this year. I mean, let's keep it real here - marriage isn't always rainbows & fluffy bunnies. Much like life, there are highs & lows & right now, we're working on a low point. I've often mentioned that there are very few topics that are off limits to me & our relationship is one of them. However, just skipping a post about our anniversary & how I feel is something I just can't do. I feel like I have to write about it because, it's our life. It's what's really happening & if we do pull through this (which I'm sure we will), I want Logan & Carter to read about the realities of marriage & family & what their parents' lives were like. Most importantly, I want them to know how much work it is & what being a spouse is really all about. Not this fantasy version that we so often read about.

First, for the happy go lucky version of our beginnings, go check out our 7 th year anniversary post on the side bar, "The Wedding Story". I read that remembering the chemistry we had, the starry-eyed innocence about us, how young we were & clueless to what the world had in store for us. At one point in our life, we did have a fairy tale marriage with me often referring to Bill as my knight in shinning armor. But, there's evolution in all things. The only thing that's constant is change. We have changed a lot since then. Hell, we've changed a lot over the last three years, let alone nine. And this is where I struggle.

We are not the same people we were when we got married. In difficult stages in our marriage, I can no longer stop & ask myself why I wanted to marry Bill because after 10 years, many of those traits aren't there anymore. It's not a good thing or bad thing, it's just the way it is. People tend to change a lot between the ages of 19 and 30. I'm not the same person either & it's ridiculous to expect that we would be the same people throughout time & all eternity.

A complicating factor to this change is that we are totally different people. Polar opposites, if you will. At times in life, this is a positive. Bill often keeps me grounded or is the voice of reason. I get him to step outside the box a bit or add some fire to the family (sometimes not in a good way). Being opposite already & then moving towards an even bigger difference with natural change creating a huge chasm between us, we're at the "what the hell do we have in common other than our kids" point in marriage.

I'm sure this is a natural stage of evolution for all married parents, but we seem to always hit the extremes. When we first moved to our town, all we had was each other. Bill wanted to go out & pursue hobbies & life outside of the home & I joined our MOMS Club. Soon we moved from not having any interests outside of the four walls of our house to being so involved in our individual lives that we have nothing in common but the DNA linking us together.

This is the rut of all ruts.

We did have some big plans to celebrate our anniversary with a concert, dinner & a night out on the town in Boulder, but all was squashed when we realized that we have to be responsible parents. With the cost of gas for the trip, the concert tickets, the price of dinner & the $70 plus it would take just to pay the sitter, we couldn't do it. Expecting a baby who needs a new crib doesn't help either. In retrospect, we sorely needed that night out. It was something that we used to do when we were younger (Holy God on high, I can't believe I'm old enough to say that) & it was something that we do still have in common outside of parenthood.

So, I guess we're going into our 9 th year of marriage trying to close that gap, rekindling what we once had & finding a connection all over again. On one hand it sounds exciting, like discovering something new, on the other hand it sounds like serious work & almost impossible to do with how extreme our differences are.

This truly is the definition of growing old together & it's not quite as romantic as we all make it out to be.