One Year of Marriage and More to Come

Today is the day that my husband and I celebrate our one year anniversary as a married couple. It is so amazing to think about all the years we have spent together growing and learning about each other. For those of you who don't know me personally, we have been together for 8 years. My husband and I attended the same school together all K-12th grade. Pretty crazy! It is also pretty wild that we graduated with 9 people and of those seven other people, our best friends married. I have been asked many times when I knew that he was the one because lets face it, our love story isn't normal in today's age. That question takes me back to fourth grade. One of my bestie's at the time asked me "Hannah, who do you think is the CUTEST boy in our class?" To which I responded, Justin. I had a crush on my husband pretty much from the age where you could formulate crushes. We started dating in 8th grade and haven't looked back since then.

Here are some photos of us together from our freshman and senior year together.

My husband has taught me so much about being a better person and I would hope he would say the same about me. As we get older, I am just amazed at his patience and love. I will not lie... I unfortunately can be a hot head sometimes but he reels me back in. He also loves me when I feel my most undesirable(you know those days where work has you stressed to the max and your messy bun is no longer a messy bun but more like a birds nest.) He spoils me with his love to the point that I just can't fathom it any other way. I also want to add that he is THE BEST dog dad.

I could go on and on about our relationship. He truly makes me feel my best. We didn't have a normal first year of marriage. Most people spend their first year working out the kinks of living together and learning to live with their new spouse. We bought our house together a month after getting engaged. With that being said, we started working on our marriage during our engagement.
 I would say that the word to describe our first year of marriage would be "time." I am about to graduate from my LPN program this week. We spent the last year learning how to make time to see each other. Let me just say, there was times it was so hard and very frustrating. But as I told you earlier, Justin is patient. We would spend any and every moment together, even just trips to Walmart or Target. He made it a point to ask me on dates and take time for me when I could give time to him. This past year was very testing. But we made it. I was told by many jokingly that if he will stay with me through nursing school then he could stick by me through anything. If that isn't one of the truest statements. But I say all this to show just how important it is to take TIME for one another. We didn't have much time together this past year but every ounce of it was valuable and precious. Had neither one of us invested our efforts even in our exhaustion from work and school, we might be starting from square one. We had built such a solid foundation together over the years and as it goes to show, time played a big role. Those eight years prepared us for this first year of marriage.
I am so very blessed to have my husband. He treats me as the lucky girl in all those gushy country love songs, as Jake loves Melanie in Sweet Home Alabama and as Noah cares for Allie in The Notebook. I can't wait for all the other times to come.

One of my favorite quotes: "Why you wanna marry me anyways? So I can kiss you anytime I want."