Five years married. Ten years together.

Today is my fifth wedding anniversary. How do I know this? Well, Facebook told me, but the other reason I know this is that I was smart ten years ago when I first asked my wife out.


The formal "asking" of my future wife to date me was done on September 30, 2001.  After three years of dating, when I knew I wanted to ask her to marry me, I decided to keep with tradition.  After the initial shock of her parents basically saying "no" when I asked for their blessing- I'm so serious about that (but we're cool now) - I asked her to marry me anyway on September 30, 2004.

 When it came time to plan the wedding, we found ourselves heeding her parents advice to put it off for another year, no doubt hoping we would change our minds (seriously, we're cool now). Looking back, this may have been the best decision.  I say this because we were able to save up some money, and because the following year, September 30th fell on a Saturday, and that is the day we got married - September 30, 2006.

For our entire ten years together, I have only had two days to remember, September 30th and a day in July that is her birthday. Although, I somehow managed to mess that up once while we were dating.  I bought her tickets to see Dave Matthews Band, and as I gave them to her, I said, "We can go see this show on your birthday!" To which she replied, "Well, this is four days after my birthday.  Do you not know when my birthday is?"  I recovered by saying quickly, "Did I say 'on' your birthday?  I meant 'for' your birthday.  Of course, I know what day your birthday is...." *awkward pause* "...want to go get some lunch?"

But making sure that I only had to remember one or two dates on the calendar wasn't the smartest thing I did.  The smartest thing I ever did was take the risk of asking her out.  She was way out of my league, but I kept after her, and soon enough, we won each other's hearts (although she had mine the whole time!).  I can't imagine life without her, and now that we have donated half of our respective genetic codes to create this adorable child of ours, life will never be the same.

The joy of overcoming struggles, the steadfastness through health issues, the certainty of our union when a lot of other things in this life are uncertain, the hard work she does so that I can stay home with our daughter, and the blessing of having the perfect partner for me do not go unappreciated.  I love my wife.  And I am man enough to say that I don't deserve how good she is to our family.  The kid and I have it pretty good.  Happy anniversary!