Happy Anniversary!

Yesterday, Michael and I celebrated our 6 year anniversary. I can't believe it's already been that long. I think about when we first were married. Michael had just finished his first year year of law school and I was going to graduate with a Bachelor's degree in a couple of months. We lived in a tiny apartment in one of the scariest parts of Salt Lake City. Now, Michael is firmly established in his career, we have two beautiful daughters, I have a thriving piano teaching business, and we live in a nice home. One would think that after 6 years of working hard to get where we are today, we would have a full-out celebration and paint the town red. That is not the case. Instead, we spent the entire day (and I do mean entire day- starting at 10 am and ending at midnight) like this: We are in the process of finishing the basement of our house and have been scrambling like crazy over the last week to get it ready for carpet to be installed tomorrow. And so, we made the kids play together upstairs all day long, while we spent the day downstairs with stuffy face masks on and paint all over us. Pretty romantic, huh?

However, it was not all bad. Michael and I got to "hang out" (if you could call it that) all day together. We immediately realized that painting was not going to be as easy as we thought and it took a lot of patience and compromise to find a method that was effective and efficient. After a while, I started thinking about when Michael and I decided to finish the basement. We had a lot of decisions to make about if we could afford to, how much we were willing to spend, how the space would be used, what colors to paint, and lots of other little stuff. Sometimes, we didn't agree and had to listen to the other person and perhaps meet somewhere in the middle.

I imagine that when it comes to making major decisions, some couples find out just how quickly they can disagree and hard it can be to give up some or all of what you want. In the six years that we've been married, Michael and I have learned how to communicate with one another and how to come to a mutual agreement without either one of us getting too upset. We're definitely not perfect and still need a lot of work. But when I look back over the years, I can see how we have slowly improved our relationship to become one of equal partnership.

Happy Anniversary, Michael. Thanks for six wonderful years. I look forward to sharing many more with you. I love you.