Five Years, So Happy Together

It was five years ago this month that we joined our lives together.

Earlier this month we celebrated our fifth wedding anniversary. We took our own advice from our recent post about The Long Haul and filled a weekend trip with some things we’ve never done before, along with a few things we always enjoy and want to do again. The weather was warm, like it was on the day we married, and we took a short trip south to San Diego County to celebrate our five years together. It wasn’t exactly London and Paris, where we went on our honeymoon, but it was nice.

The traditional gift for the fifth anniversary is wood, and so, we gave ourselves the chance to see some wood up close and in its fall finery on our trip. Julian is a tiny town in northern San Diego County known for its Old West feel and its apple crop. You might know Julian as the home of one of the stores on the Bead Shop Hop, but there is a lot more to this town than beads.

High up in the mountains, the palm and eucalyptus trees give way to oaks and pines. A walk through town, even on a fairly warm day, brings the scent of wood stoves and fallen leaves. And everywhere you look, Julian presents its apples. It seems like every other storefront along the main road sells apple pies, apple cider, apple turnovers, apple donuts, candy apples and even bushel baskets of fresh local apples. You really can’t visit without trying at least one of these apple delights, and we were no exception, enjoying some apple crisp and a piece of apple-pumpkin pie.

We thoroughly enjoyed our weekend. It was wonderful to get a chance to spend time together away from the buzz of daily life and it gave us a chance to reflect on our relationship and our life so far as a married couple. Five years seems like both a long time and like no time at all.  If you read our recent post about our adoption journey, you know how much can happen in a few years. While the last five years have been busy in so many ways and there have been a lot of changes, there are some things that haven’t changed a bit since we officially joined our lives together on that November day in 2007.

For one thing, we still love doing things together, whether it’s something big like a multi-day road trip, or something small like a trip to the mall for birthday cards. If you follow us on Facebook, you know we do a lot of stuff together. We feel that the time we spend with each other is precious, and we want to make the most of it.

When we got married, we made a vow to support each other no matter what. At the time, we didn’t think our lives together would involve a long road to become parents, but it has. We started our plan to grow our family almost right after we got married so it's been nearly five years for that too. Trying to become parents has been much more difficult than we imagined. While isn't always easy to face the stress and frustration that our wait to adopt brings, being together makes it better and we try every day to live up to our vows and support each other. Certainly some days are are better than others and some are tougher, but we make it through through all of them, and always side by side.

During these five years our love for each other has deepened and grown.  We’re closer now than we’ve ever been before. As we face challenges in our lives, whether related to the adoption or not, our bonds grow stronger. Waiting to adopt has brought us much closer together. It keeps us engaged with each other and our lives and the world around us. Our connection continues to strengthen through our travels and challenges. Whatever comes our way, good or bad, fun or trying, we know we’re a team.

You know what they say about first comes love, then comes marriage, and then comes the baby carriage. Five years into our marriage, we are happy and grateful that we've have each other and our love and marriage, but we're still hoping for the baby carriage. We had a lot of fun during our trip, as we always do. We always enjoy spending our time together and like exploring Southern California, whether it’s a quick visit to Disneyland or the Getty Villa or a weekend away in San Diego. We know we'll always want to spend time together, but we also know that no matter how good a time we have doing these things, a smile on the face of our child will make good times even better.  Someday, we will have a child to share our life with and we can't wait!  That will be a wonderful time, and our love will grow even more when we are parents. Traveling together gives us strength and comfort as we wait for that happy day.