I seriously cannot even believe I am saying it.  5 years ago today I married the man of my dreams.  Seriously.  There is no way that I could have picked a better man.  I am so thankful for the home he was raised in and the path that he took in his life to get him to turn into the amazing man that he has become today.  Yes, cliche, but I am so much more in love with him now that the day that I married him.  A totally different kind of love.  A totally awesome and real kind of love.  I thought I knew what love was before…man I cannot wait to see what I know about love many years down the road.  Every night I ask for a long healthy life with this man and our boys.  Oh the possibilities.
Pictures are so stinkin’ awesome.  Looking back through the past 5 years in pictures brought back so much I had forgotten about and stirred up so many more emotions than if I had not been able to document so much of it.  WOW.  I am so stinkin’ glad that I took so many pictures.  Since  I’m am not a very emotional person so I can honestly say that 5 years probably would not have meant as much as it does now after looking through all the amazing-ness we have been through in pictures.

I could have done sooooooo much more, but I thought this might be a fun little “Cliff notes” of the journey:

5 years ago we got married at the Hotel Galvez and headed off on our new adventure in THE SHAGGIN’ WAGON!  Seriously…can it be any better?  Love the fact that our amazing friends and family went all out on the get-away car!

From there Joe took me to Europe, where I have ALWAYS wanted to go…so Santorini here we came:

And about 6 months into marriage God blessed us with a house that we soon turned into our home

What they heck were we going to do with all that space??  Well VERY shortly after our one year anniversary…we got a surprise

an awesome surprise

and 9 months later our son Jake came into our lives

WOW!  What a life changer.  The whole next year I was able to just be a mom and not work, we got to do a TON of traveling and my love of photography became a reality, all 100% thanks to Joe and his encouragement of my dream.

All the while Jake grew like a weed

and once we started to get used to the “routine” of a kid, we got another awesome surprise

HELLO!  And Only 18mos apart.  We decided to not find out the sex with Jake or with this one either

Welcome to the world our baby Brock

and all the chaos that followed with more than 1 child

Two boys was AWESOME…and we always knew that we wanted three kids, so why not just cram them all into 5 years of marriage, right?!?

Hello sweet Holt

Throughout it all Joe has been my rock.  We have had MANY bad days on not remembering how much we love eachother, but through it all…the days that we do remember what we have been blessed with FAR outweigh the ones that we didn’t.

And so here we are TODAY.  5 years later.  A family of 5.
I am a momma of 3 incredible boys, owner of 2 amazing dogs and a INSANELY blessed wife of my one and only Joe.
Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think that we would be here back when we wrote out our goals that day on our honeymoon.
5 years.  God has been so stinkin’ good to us.
Joe, I am so thankful that you still love me at my worst and get to enjoy my best.
I definitely “married up” as you always like to say.  Thank you for asking me to marry you (FINALLY) and for saying yes when Dan asked if you would take ME as your wife.  What a blessed little girl I am!
I cannot wait to see what God has in store for the next 5 years…oh the possibilities!!