Eight Years of Wed // Anniversary Album

Mark and I are celebrating our eighth wedding anniversary. Well, it was actually on the 4th but due to life's current floor-ripping-up chaos, we are celebrating today with a lovely dinner out tonight. Woohoo!

Eight years of marriage - wowzers! In some ways, it feels like decades (what was life like without this guy by my side? Can barely remember!)... and yet it has also flown by. Though when I stop and think about everything we have crammed in over eight years it suddenly seems rather busy! In very short summary - we got married just as I finished uni and started my career in communications and fundraising, we rented one house then saved like crazy and bought our very first home (a little townhouse), we went on a 'trip of a lifetime' to South Africa, South America and Malaysia, we had one kid, then another one, privately sold our first home (sniff), bought a family-sized home (backyard, yay!), did renovations, got pregnant with #3.... phew!

So... anyhoo, being the sentimental gal I am, after we got hitched (like, a year or so later when I remembered to do it) I started a photo album (one of those 'antique' ones, you know where you actually printed photos then stuck them in a real live book thing?!) called our Anniversary Album... with the aim of putting in a photo each year from around the time of our Anniversary, so we could track our little family as we grew old and grey (I pray!) together. 

Now finding ourselves in this fandangled internet age, I thought I would show a little online version of where we are up to eight years in....

So here 'tis!

2004-2012
Eight years of marriage and adventure with my best friend!

Now, as above, we all know how sentimental I can be. I could gush for paragraphs or (let's be honest) pages about this lovely man of mine, but I don't think that everyone needs to read all that! Suffice to say this... you know that question you sometimes hear asked of married couples... 'If you could do it all over again, would you still marry this person?'. Well, if you were to happen to ask me that, here is what I would say...

If I knew then what I knew now? I would only run all the faster towards this man. Oh yes, I knew God had brought a good guy into my life but I had no idea how good. How loving, faithful, dedicated, godly, fun, caring and selfless he would be. No matter what challenges we came  up against. What a quietly adventurous life we would lead, what a family we would be blessed with, what growth we would both be challenged to embrace. I know God had His hand in bringing us together, cos I sure was not smart enough to truly recognise what a good thing I was onto when I accepted Mark's 'at dawn by the lake' proposal, though of course I had a fairly good inkling! But, oh, how grateful I am that, not even knowing how good it could be, we decided to leap into life together. Never even one second of regret... only gratitude.

Love you, Markinhos!

Ok, ok, enough gushing, right?! ;)