Married for Six Years!

(not us. stock photo.)

This past weekend, the husband and I celebrated our 6th year wedding anniversary. Woopwoop! We had breakfast together (at McDonald's haha) and also had a lovely dinner at a nice restaurant.

We have also started this random tradition of getting a gift for each other only on the day, where we go to a mall, set a budget (this year it was $20 each) and a time limit and go find a fun gift for each other. We wait (this part is his idea not mine!) until we get home (painful) and then we exchange it.

I think it came out of relieving each other of the pressure of getting anniversary gifts, figuring how much to spend, what to get, getting annoyed if one forgot haha, etc. Especially because our anniversary is pretty close to Christmas and the husband's birthday, this has been a fun activity we can do together and on the day of the anniversary itself.

This year the husband got me a lovely ornament from Redcurrent (very pretty store, love it) and a home decor magazine that had heaps of Christmas ideas in it (ahhh! Too many ideas now!), while I got him a Mini magazine (like the Mini as in the type of car) and a big bag of lollies/candy cos' his magazine was a special import from the UK and sorta used up most of the budget haha.

So here we are six years on. Crazy! It has also been the American Thanksgiving (even though we don't really celebrate it here in NZ some of my American friends do) so we've been thinking about what we are thankful for.

The husband and I are thankful to God for:

- good support from people around us this past year, like a counsellor who has given us his wisdom and time for free!
- a great team we work with who have been flexible with us and given us lots of grace when we need it...
- a marriage where we are each other's best friend and we enjoy each other's company
- a marriage that has endured some unexpected things like job dramas, grief, medical things, infertility, etc, yet remained on the same page on the whole,
- things He is continually doing in our lives that we don't have control over (ugh have to say I love/hate it!)
- to be honest, just overall survival of another year.

On another note... today I spotted a couple posts on (in)courage that were neat.
Here they are:

- Staying Sane this Christmas (I need this because this year I'm a bit overwhelmed by how fast it has come by!)
- The Depth of an Empty Womb (I know each of us is at different places in this journey, and this author feels like she can 'see the light' and while not everyone may feel like this yet, it is still a good reminder to focus on God's promises... even if we don't feel like it!)