Happy 5th Anniversary!

Yesterday, November 13th, was our anniversary... FIVE years! How exciting. There's something fun about hitting the 5th one. I am so blessed to be married to such a wonderful husband and such a wonderful dad! I couldn't have asked for anything more. I love you babe... SO much! Thank you for loving me, protecting me, and believing in me. You are awesome!

About 2 weeks ago we were sitting in our Sunday School class at church and we had no idea what we were doing for our anniversary. We had thought about going to Chicago for the weekend but that just seemed to be a little "too busy" for me. In our class we were studying a DVD lesson on Love and Respect by Dr. Emerson Eggerichs and his wife Sarah. It was fascinating. That morning, the leader told us that Dr. Eggerichs was actually going to be in Peoria the weekend of the 13-14th! We both looked at each other and knew we wanted to go! We went home and registered and then realized... we should probably find somewhere for the kids to go!

Long story short, a small group from our church volunteered to help us out by watching our kids for us! What a blessing! Two ladies (one of which had an older set of twins herself) watched the kids from 6pm until 10am the next morning at which time one of the ladies switched out duties with a husband! It was a pure blessing. We are so thankful for church family like that! It was so encouraging knowing that our kids were being cared for and even more encouraging that one of the moms did have twins so we knew she wouldn't stress out too much!

We had a magnificent time at the conference. I would definitely recommend it to anyone if it every comes to a town near you - definitely worth the time. I have a whole new outlook on my marriage. The basic premise was Ephesians 5:33 where it says "However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband." We, as women, are commanded to respect our husbands and our husbands are commanded to love us, their wives. Isn't it interesting that we are commanded to do this? We are commanded to do things that usually don't come natural to us. We as women speak a different language than our husbands. We are looking for love. Our husbands speak the language of respect. They want our respect. The model that Dr. Emerson Eggerichs has built is that a wife's respect motivates her husband to love her more and the husbands love for his wife in turn motivates her to respect her husband more.

I could go on and on... That was just a tiny bit of the conference. He also talked about love and respect in regards to our sons and daughters which was just as wonderful. It was just really good! Dr. Emerson Eggerichs has written a couple of books that I would recommend checking out!

It was so fun to celebrate 5 years! I'm looking forward to many more!!! We had a wonderful weekend of rejuvenating our marriage and getting on an even better track for the future. Oh, how important that is! Thank you to our friends for watching our kids and Thank You Lord for the truth and power of Your Word!
This is my anniversary present... a diamond anniversary ring. it's a little hard to see but absolutely perfect! It's almost like my wedding band but has 15 diamonds across it instead of 8. THANK YOU babe! I absolutely LOVE IT!!!