5 years!

Today is our 5 year anniversary!

Wow. What a fun, amazing, difficult, loaded, significant, adventurous, life-changing five years we have had together. It's been quite the journey!

In our still relatively young marriage, we have been through some major stuff. Looking at the marriage that we have today though, I am so thankful for the road that we have been on because of the strength that it has given us.

In honor of today, I am going to take you guys on a little picture tour of our relationship:

We met in October of our freshman year of college, almost 9 years ago. I was immediately in love but thought he was way out of my league, so it took 5 months of him chasing after to me to prove that it was me he wanted. Once we started dating, we were done for. Pretty much on our first date we told each other we wanted to marry each other- at 18 years old! We were crazy. It was really fun being able to share our college experience together; we had such an amazing community of friends, were Young Life leaders together, and did all sorts of fun Colorado stuff like tubing rivers, rock-climbing, back-packing, and camping together.

Here we are building our team work on a camping trip at the ripe ol' age of 19!

Fast-forward a couple years. The boy proposed.

He knelt on his knee and said he talked to my dad so I could go pick out a white dress. It's our love story so I just said yes.

I'm quoting T Swift for those of you not tracking... that is pretty much how it went though.

Engagement Pic:

The Big Day: June 3, 2005

After said Big Day, we enjoyed about 2 months of traveling and hanging out before Lane had to report for 5 months of training at Fort Sill, OK. Officer Basic Course is calling our name in this picture. Our entire life was packed into the back of his blazer, and we were hitting the road entering into Army Life. Oh man, I had NO IDEA what I was in for!

The youth. The innocence. The SKINNY people we were back then! So much has changed!

After OBC, we headed off to Fort Benning, in Columbus, GA. I taught high school social studies while Lane did his Army Thing and did it good.

Here's my man after graduating Ranger School. I'm pinning the coveted Ranger Tab on his shoulder. He lost nearly 30 pounds in his 12 weeks there. It was crazy.

Here we are enjoying an EXTRAVAGANT meal before Deployment #2. Maybe 1. Maybe 3? We definitely did not hold back on any of our final meals before deployments. They all blend together. That's what the Army does to ya.

And here we are in the backyard of our house in Georgia for our final day there. Moving to Colorado was the best decision we've ever made. We were very clearly called out of the Active Duty Army... but I do miss Georgia, the Army, our friends, our church, my work...

But... this new life together in Colorado has been good. In the deepest, most significant, fun, sacred sense of the word good.

These five years have held so much for us, it's hard to imagine what the next 5, 20, or 30 might hold! I wouldn't want to journey through any of it with anyone else in this world though- Happy Anniversary, Baby! :)