five years...

It's hard to believe I've been married for five years...

(on the 29th, that is)

Sometimes it feels like I've always been married...

other times not that long at all!

I want to avoid writing a sappy post about how much I love my husband, because, really,

you all know how much I love him!

But I will say that when I look back on the years that I have known him, I can't thank God enough for the story He wrote for us to meet and eventually marry and be where we are today.

I love our story...

and that it is continuing to be written.

I pray it just gets sweeter with time.

Staying married to someone for five years these days isn't done quite so commonly.

I have to choose every day whether or not I'm going to continue loving him.

Some days it's easier, some days it's harder -

But it's always worth it.

We couldn't do it this well without our community.

We are so thankful that God has us in Tucson, at Second Mile,

around the people that we are blessed to call our family.

They encourage us, challenge us, pray for us, and love us unconditionally.

And we certainly couldn't last in marriage without God being there with us.

I pray that we'd allow Him to be more and more apart of it

in the coming years we have together.

christmas 2011

Since I've got over a week of free time on my hands, I'm trying to catch up on my blogging!

Andrew and I take turns with our families for Thanksgiving and Christmas. This year was our turn to go to South Dakota for Christmas.

We had our Dunning family christmas celebration the weekend before:

Here's Gracie eating a popsicle (yep, popsicles in December!)

I couldn't get a good photo of Isaiah - he's a wild man!

Vonnie

I think they were watching "How the Grinch Stole Christmas"...

Here's Nefertiti, my parent's newer puppy:

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I took some photos of our decorations at home before we left:

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We flew to South Dakota the 23rd and will be here till the 28th. We've been hanging out in the abnormally warm weather! Feels great to us!

The three musketeers:

We played some Christmas afternoon football (well, the boys did):

...the girls ran after:

Miss Maizie:

Uncle Alex with the girls:

Maranatha:

Andrew tuckered out after the game:

The sunset was beautiful that night:

We went to falls park to look at the lights. They do a pretty great job, really:

Hope you all had a Merry Christmas, friends!