ten

2:20 PM

december 9, 2006

december 9, 2016

while the picture may look a little different now...the feelings are exactly the same.

ten years have gone by in a blink and in that blink we have created the most wonderful life together. we have brought four amazing daughters into this world. we have built our home from the ground up, both literally and figuratively. we have grown dan's career and in the same breath took a leap of faith for our future.

it may sound cheesy but there truly isn't one thing i would change about where we are ten years in. i'm not saying our lives are all sunshine and rainbows every day...but most days! of course there have been ups and downs the last ten years but nothing that has cracked our foundation.

we face the hard and revel in the good....together.

while it's easy to simply love your spouse it takes effort to coexist...especially once kids enter the picture. i am proud of the effort we put into our marriage. some call the effort work, but to me it never feels like work. i don't view it as a chore. i love being around dan so the efforts we make to keep our connection is fun to me. i think that is because at the base of our marriage is friendship. i just really really like him. now, that doesn't mean that i agree with him 100% of the time. that would be pretty boring. we have our share of disagreements but we also respect each other so we try to work through them...after a few hours of the silent treatment. (that gets me every time!)

our partnership is also 50/50 and i think that makes a big difference too. dan's strengths very much accent my weaknesses and maybe vice versa, but to be honest there isn't too much i need to make up for with him. for example...i truly suck in the cleaning department while dan isn't a master of the kitchen. soooo, i cook and he cleans. he works hard all day at the office...but he knows i work just as hard at home raising our girls. i dream big (optimist to the extreme) and he's there to bring me back down to earth. (realist through and through) it's things of this nature that we have grown to accept and love even more about each other over the last ten years.

(well, i'm sure dan would love for me to fall in love with cleaning and organization...but being the realist that he is, he knows that probably aint gonna happen!)

when it comes to parenting we are both very much on the same amateur page. we are learning as we go and loving every stage we've hit so far. we are a bit terrified for the teenage years but are taking life and all it's parenting issues one day at a time and praying we can keep these girls little for as long as humanly possible.

needless to say...life is really really good ten years in!

while we love our girls dearly...ten years of marriage called for a child-less mini vacation. over our actual anniversary that is exactly what we did. we snuck away to mexico for a few days and it was glorious!!!

this was only my second visit to mexico and while the first was almost 12 years ago and to cabo san lucas...the idea of the riviera maya was a whole new adventure for me. we left st louis at 6am and were on this boat by 11:30.
incredible!!

dan took the lead on everything for this getaway. all i had to do was line up the sitters (thanks dottie and nene!!) he chose the gorgeous rosewood mayakoba resort. to say this place was amazing would be an absolute understatement. it honestly took my breath away.

our suite was an over the water bungalow that we were taken to by boat. it had a little plunge pool, our own butler and bikes to ride around the resort. the bikes may have been my favorite part! you really forget how fun riding bikes can be.

we ate...we explored...we had uninterrupted conversations....

we were there during one of their slow weeks and boy did that work to our advantage. we practically had the entire resort to ourselves.

(this is how my husband lays out. he finds any shade he can and hides from the sun. the things you do for your sun-loving wife)

the rose margarita.
(insert heart eye emoji)

i mean, just look at this gorgeous garden! it looked even more amazing at night when those lanterns were all lit up. i'd totally re-up those vows here!