We had a significant celebration in our family this week. We celebrated our ninth anniversary.

I look at that picture and I think about how skinny I was and how I thought I was fat THEN. Ugh.

But on a serious note, I think of everything we have experienced in the nine years since. That girl in the picture was a brand new bride. She’d never given birth, held her newborn daughters, sat in a hospital room holding her sick daughter, and her father was still alive.

But… she didn’t know what a blessing it was to be a mother. To snuggle up to a sleeping little girl and hold a tiny, sticky hand in hers.

I’m grateful for all the joys and even the struggles we’ve experienced in nine years. Even though things were difficult at times, they made us stronger and brought us closer.

Here’s to nine years. I can’t wait to see what the next sixty hold for us.