Our 5th anniversary is this week so to celebrate I thought it would be fun to share some memories from our first five years. I’m a big believer in only looking back to see how far you’ve come so it’s always sweet to look back on our journey.
Year 1 – Buying our House
Buying a home is such a big life move and one we tackled in our first year married. Before we got married I owned a small 1,000 sf condo in East Memphis. Our current home is 3 times the size and was over 3 times the price so this was a big change for us. We considered buying something smaller but decided we wanted a home we could “grow our family into”, oh how optimistic we were back then!
My grandmother passed before we closed but we were able to bring her to tour the house while we were still under contract and I’m really glad she got to see us hit this milestone. Her passing was our first loss as a couple.
Year 2 – Home for the Holidays
We moved into our house in June 2017 and kicked off our 2nd year of marriage in October so year two saw us celebrate all the major holidays for the first time in our home. We bought bought furniture and holiday decor and really focused on making our house a home this year. We also loved entertaining have a murder mystery party for Halloween, hosted family for Thanksgiving and Christmas, had a NYE party and hosted a baby shower that first year.
Year 3 – Buddy joins the family (and we say goodbye to Sweetie)
Technically we adopted Buddy right before our anniversary but this year was his first year as part of our family. We had rescued a different dog (whose name was also Buddy) in the summer and found his family after a few days, having him in the house made us realize that we had both space in our home and in our hearts for a 3rd dog. Buddy was abandoned in an industrial area on our town and someone who worked there posted on Nextdoor looking for a home for him. We knew he was the one as soon as we saw his picture! Sweetie was very indifferent and Haley was not the biggest fan tbh but they learned to co-exist peacefully.
This year we also learned than Sweetie was much older than we initially thought when we adopted her (she was another off the street rescue and we found her a few months after we started dating) and she started becoming more frail and having health issues. Buddy also had ehrlicia in January so we spent a lot of time and money at the vet that year. When Sweetie stopped eating and drinking that May we knew it was her time and took her to cross the rainbow bridge.
Year 4 – We start trying to conceive
We kicked off our 4th year of marriage with our first of now many trips to Panama City Beach. We had decided that at this point we felt settled into our home and in a good place financially to start a family. During our 3rd year my work had been stressful and had me on the road a lot but at this point I had my current job and no longer had to travel. Of course, we know now that if you are sexually active and not using birth control you are considered TTC but we naively thought we had just been really great at timing it right to not get pregnant and this is when we started to switch our timing to trying to get pregnant. Each month I got my period stung a little more. When the world went into lockdown in 2020 we thought well, this is probably bad timing anyway and stopped focusing on trying. And then that summer we went through our Ectopic pregnancy nightmare.
Shortly after our anniversary we added Bella to our family as a playmate for Buddy. While they are now the best of friends you wouldn’t have known that in the beginning and it was a few hard months of acclimation.
We also had to let Haley cross over the rainbow bridge this year right before the pandemic started. This was hard for us not only because Haley had been with us since our very first date (I adopted Haley four years before I met Shaun) but we struggled with the decision. An accident from years ago had worn on her over the years and she had lost mobility at this point. While we didn’t mind carrying her to go out we also didn’t think it was fair to her to have to lay in her dog bed all day while we were at work. Haley was also the kind of dog to not show her pain (she never whined once after a surgery that failed to re-attach her broken leg and ultimately had to have it amputated) and we felt like she was holding on for us and it wasn’t fair to her.
Year 5 – Lots of Waterfalls and Pursuing Adoption
A year ago we kicked off our 5th year married with a waterfall hike and this is something we’ve made a point of making time for this year. Like many people, the pandemic changed our perspective on how we spent out time and gain a greater appreciation for the outdoors. It has been great to have something to look forward to as we plan each hike and they have been fun to tackle together.
This year also marked a change in our plans on how to grow our family and kicked off our adoption journey.
The past five years have had a lot of joyful moments and a lot of painful ones too but it is the whole of these experiences that has grown our marriage. As we celebrate five years and head into our 6th we’re hopeful that this will be defined as the year that we become parents. But whatever this year brings we will be here for it together.