Marriage. We had such a great time celebrating our 6 year anniversary in Newport and while we were there, I did a lot of reflecting on what makes us happy, what makes us work together as a married couple. I’m not at all trying to preach here I’m just sharing a little bit about us.
We talked about this over dinner one night fueled by a delicious bottle of red, and we both agreed that we place an emphasis on respecting one another, and by this I mean taking responsibility for the impact we have on each other’s feelings. For instance, if I have a bad day with the kids or with work, when Brian walks through the door it might be easy to take it out on him, but remembering that how I act or what I say could hurt him and so I approach my greeting differently. Same goes for him. Alternately, we have the same responsibility to lift each other up. It may sound simple, but doing little things here and there make such a positive impact. Brian will leave me sweet notes in the morning before he leaves for work or bring me flowers, I’ll send him funny texts during the day, make his favorite meal, we remember to do these things because they’re important to fueling the connection and keeping it alive and well. This mutual respect plays a huge role in us being happy and enjoying one other every single day.
FUN. We have so much F U N together. Life is short, and we honestly have no idea wha is going to happen tomorrow so we better be having some fun both as a couple and as a family today. It doesn’t matter where or when, it could be a Monday night or in the middle of a busy week, carving out time to smile and laugh and feel good is EVERYTHING.. For us that looks like so many different things. We love going on adventures with our kids, we love putting the kids to bed early, opening up a bottle of wine and sitting on the couch with our favorite show. We love dancing, and music in general so we go to concerts, we have dance parties in the kitchen, we sit outside on our deck and play our favorite album and look up at the stars, we turn the music up in the car and sing at the top of our lungs and clap our hands, you get the drift. The fun we have together is what keeps me going all the days, and I hope we raise our kids to live that same way because that’s what it’s all about.
Carving out time to be alone as a couple. We love our kids and we have a lot of fun with them, but it’s important to remember how we liked to have fun before they arrived, and when they aren’t around. We’re lucky to be able to get babysitters or family to takeover when we need a night out or a weekend away (rare and difficult to pull off but we somehow do it). At night when kids go to bed, this is a BIGGIE. When they finally fall asleep and we can converse and hang out without interruptions. We do this almost every night. We actually don’t eat dinner together as a family during the week which I know is not the greatest habit, but it works for us right now. Brian gets home too late to keep the kids waiting for dinner, so I’ll usually sit with them while they eat around 5, and Brian and I eat after they go to bed. We usually have a glass of wine with dinner and just slow down and chill. It’s such a nice time to unwind and enjoy a meal in peace, and I look forward to it everyday. On the weekends of course, we all eat together and sometime during the week we are able to if Brian gets home early enough.
Oh and Brian’s here next to me and wanted to add that we don’t take each other too seriously 🙃 For instance while we were in Newport we had a somersault contest on our bed, I won.
Newport RECAP Friday!