On August 3rd we will celebrate 10 years of marriage! 10 years! A whole decade! During the last 10 years we have done things and lived places we never thought were possible. We have been through tough and challenging times and been through some pretty awesome times. I thought it would be fun to make a list of the top 10 most memorable moments from the last 10 years! I am not going to count our wedding day since it is a given that was pretty awesome 🙂
1. Finding out we were having a baby boy! In May of 2004 we had just gotten back from a really fun trip down to San Diego and Orange County. I still remember walking out of the hospital after the ultrasound with the name of our first child. As soon as they told us it was a boy, we knew he was going to be our Daniel.
2. The births of our 3 children. Having a baby is amazing, it really is. To know that we created these 3 little boys is amazing. I have always wanted to be a Mommy and will always remember the days that a new little boy join our family.
3. The homecomings. Over the last 6.5 years Ben has been deployed three times as well as a bunch of other times he has been away for different reasons. The homecomings are always so wonderful! Just to see him again and know that he is done being away from us for a while is so nice.
4. Packing up everything and moving from California to Kentucky. In 2005 we decided it would be best to head to Kentucky because of the high cost of living in California. It was so hard to say goodbye to family and friends and I do wonder what life would be like if we had stayed but I am glad we did it. Ben quit his job, we packed up everything and drove east to our new home.
5. Our Mediterranean Cruise. This cruise was amazing and our family got to see so much! I am so glad we decided to do this. It really was a once in a lifetime opportunity.
6. Our trip to Catalina for our 7th anniversary. Sometimes the Army does crazy things…like giving Ben his R&R over our 7th anniversary even though he didn’t request it and it was pushed back from his original date 3 weeks earlier. We were able to get away just the two of us to Catalina Island were we went for our honeymoon. It was amazing and we had such a great time! It was so different from when we went the first time. I would like to go again sometime and take the boys. I think they would like it too.
7. Buying our first home. We bought our first home in September of last year. When we were looking at this house we just  looked at each other and knew it was what we wanted. It was perfect for us and our little boys.
8. Moving to Germany. It took Daniel and I 4.5 months to get there but once we did it was amazing to think about us living there for a while. It was one of those, “Are we really living in Europe?” moments when Ben finally took me to our new apartment.
9. When Ben join the Army. When I met Ben, the Army was apart of his past. It wasn’t something we even really talked about until we had been married a few years. He didn’t join until we had been married 3.5 years. Making that decision changed the path of our lives.
10. Our 15 month deployment. This was probably the hardest period of time during our marriage. We didn’t see each other for 11 months straight as the deployment kept getting extended. I still think about how odd it is that we lived apart for so long without seeing each other. During that time our marriage looked very different because it was long distance but we made it through and became stronger because of it.
