This week we’re celebrating seven years of marriage! (And about 14.5 years of being together!) I invited your questions about our relationship recently, and on the drive home from our MS ride, John and I answered as many as we could get to. Here’s the first installment…

What’s the best piece of marriage advice you’ve ever received?
John: The first piece that comes to mind is one that just hit home recently, from a sermon by Adam Hamilton (starts at about 31:00). Being better partners makes us better parents, but being better parents won’t necessarily make us better partners. I also love the C.S. Lewis reading from our wedding.
Em: This is still the most impactful advice I’ve ever received.

How do you choose new adventures together?
Em: We love talking about our dreams a LOT. We both score highly for the Futuristic Strengthsfinder theme (“People exceptionally talented in the Futuristic theme are inspired by the future and what could be. They energize others with their visions of the future.”). We talk about what we hope to do next week, month, year, in ten years and fifty years. We talk about what we want our future summers to look like, future anniversaries, camping trips, even our retirement! We talk things out and discuss different options until we circle around what excites us both most and what is possible.
John: Our end-of-year dinner is the culmination of this. At that dinner, we make decisions about where we’ll travel in the next year, we narrow down what adventures we want to have, and we set family goals. Emily also wrote a post about how we find interesting things to do here.

What random/trivial thing do you argue about most often?
John: Issues of food safety can be contentious around here – when leftovers need to be thrown out, what is safe to eat in our refrigerator, if something sat out on the counter too long, etc.
Em: When John misses a turn, he will take FOREVER to find somewhere to turn around, and my aggravation at this is definitely disproportional to his actions. Also I can definitely cosign on food safety issues, though John wouldn’t say that’s trivial, ha.

What do you do when you feel like being alone/introverted, as a spouse or a parent?
Em: John likes to nap – he’ll often take a short nap in the evenings on weeknights, and loves taking a longer nap on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon – so that’s my alone time. I usually use it for writing here!
John: I definitely like to nap.

Do you pray together? Read the Bible together? Would love ideas for growing together.
Em: I hope to grow more in terms of praying together and reading the Bible together, but we mostly do those things on our own right now (aside from praying at meals or extraordinary circumstances). At least once a week, we’ll listen to a sermon together (in addition to worshiping at our own church) and talk about it. This gives us a common vocabulary to explore the world and grow our faith. As classic Enneagram 5’s, we love to learn together :)

You and John are both Enneagram 5s, correct? Tips for handling similar wiring?
Em: Correct! I could see how a marriage of two of the same types of other types might be more of an issue, but we’ve seen more positives from being the same type. We naturally face most challenges and try to solve most problems the same way, and it’s usually very easy for us to “read” each other and understand and have compassion for the motivations behind our behaviors.
John: As two introverts, we have an awareness of how easy it would be for us to stick to ourselves. I’m grateful that Emily takes the lead as our social coordinator and organizes things with our friends for the most part. She is definitely the more social of the two of us.

Hardest and best part of marriage?
John: We have had our issues with navigating collective action (i.e. assuming the other person will do the dishes). Emily is my best friend and because we’re married, she’s the person I get to spend the most time with. She makes my life so much more full and more fun.
Em: Some of our biggest challenges have been how to divvy up vacations with our families, given our limited resources of time and money. As for the best part – there are so many things I could choose, but as a person who has sometimes felt misunderstood by people when they first meet me, to be fully known, fully seen, and fully loved – by someone I fully trust – is a gift.

Up next: what we’re glad we did before having kids, how we prioritize each other with two full-time jobs, something you might not know about each of us, and more – plus one question that I decided needed its own post!

P.S. More from our wedding, because it never, ever gets old. Tanja is the best!

How do you like to spend your evenings?

About 75% of the time on a night we’re at home, I’m on my laptop. This feels like a lame answer, but it is what it is – since I try to limit screens as much as possible when our kiddos are awake, the time after they go to bed is when I tackle both life necessities – answering emails, updating our budget, ordering more wipes, booking an appointment – and luxuriating in my favorite hobbies (reading blogs and writing my own posts, mostly! :)). I reserve the last half hour or hour once I’m in bed for reading.

John usually occupies himself by reading, watching a show, studying, and taking care of his own life necessities. Sometimes we’ll watch something together, or work on a project (travel planning, when we’re lucky!). But one of the best ways we’ve found to switch things up on a random weeknight is to play a game together.

I know so many of us are looking to break the habit of social media scrolling or mindless TV watching (or worse, both at once!) and connect more purposefully, so I thought I’d share a few of our favorites!

Our favorite two-person games:

Sagrada | Pictured above, this is a gorgeous game that can be played by up to 4 people but is the rare find that I think is actually better with 2!
Monopoly Deal | Forget all your dreadful memories of Monopoly – this card game is quick (15 minutes!) and addictive!
Seven Wonders Duel | Seven Wonders is one of our favorite games to play with a group, and this slim-downed version succeeds at bringing the fun to a party of two.
Eight-Minute Empire | I like that this board is petite, so it’s possible to play in our armchairs, on the little table between them, instead of at our kitchen table. Plus, for some reason I beat John about 75% of the time :)
Rock Me Archimedes | We actually don’t own this, but have given it to several family members and love playing it when we’re at one of those recipient’s houses!

Other great two-person games:

Boggle | You know I love me some Boggle, but rolling the dice is SUPER loud, so it’s not the best fit for this season of life where we’re often playing when kiddos are sleeping!
Farkle | I’ve only played this in a larger group, but apparently you can play it with two people, too. Bonus: you just need six dice to play this game!
Mancala | We don’t have our own board yet, but played this all the time growing up! I’m thinking June might be ready in a year or two.
Scattergories | We play this often with 3+, but I suppose you could play it with two people, too.
Set | This game is quick and keeps you on your toes – a different style of play than many of the others listed here.
Scrabble
Double Solitaire
Othello
Quiddler
Sequence
Yahtzee
Bananagrams

Two-person games suggested by readers!

Blockus
Linkee
El Dorado
Sushi Go!
Battle Sheep

I’d love to hear if you have any games to add to our list! And, how do you spend your evenings?

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We celebrated our fourteenth dativersary this week. Can you believe it? Three more years, and we’ll have spent as much time together in this life as we have apart. We are the luckiest.

For all that has been written about the “emotional labor” and disproportionate household tasks that fall on women, I have been feeling super grateful lately for the little things John does to keep our household (and lives!) running smoothly. These aren’t tasks that would make their way onto a chore chart – though he does plenty of those, too – and they can so easily be taken for granted. I don’t want to do that, so I’m celebrating a few of them here. My sweet husband…

…refills our humidifiers
…washes and sanitizes bottles and pump parts every night
…packs our leftovers into John and Emily lunch-size portions after dinner
…stops our mail before every trip
…empties our robot vacuum after each tour of duty
…replaces my toothbrush head however often you’re supposed to do that
…finds and plugs my phone in to charge every night
…serves as my personal alarm clock every morning
…adjusts the thermostat to our preferred temperature upon waking and retiring
…makes June’s breakfast and fills her water bottle before school
…remembers to put our bath mat in the wash every so often
…keeps the nails of four members of our household trimmed (not including me, for the record)
…and replaces all the toilet paper, everywhere, always.

Notice a small thing today, friends, and thank someone for it :)

P.S. Our love story and five intentions.

A picture from our first summer together, above :)

Here is something you should know about my husband: he strongly dislikes cold weather. Like, gets a very mild case of SAD in the winter. (Hence our daughter’s name, in part!) For years he has dreamed about taking a warm-weather vacation in the depths of January or February, but the opportunity always snuck up on us after the holidays.

That is, until this year. After a tough 2017, where, among other things, our surprise 30th birthday/fifth wedding anniversary trips fell through, we decided on a whim to finally make a snowbird getaway happen. The deciding factor was a fall Southwest Airlines sale, where we snapped up tickets to Tampa. With a destination in hand, John began researching where, exactly, we wanted to go once we landed. The criteria: warm (obviously), clear water, somewhere within driving distance of the Tampa airport, somewhere with an “Old Florida” feel, somewhere with a relaxed and laid-back vibe, and somewhere we could walk most places. Anna Maria Island checked all of those boxes and then some.

Anna Maria is a tiny, white-sand sliver of a barrier island known for its beautiful beaches and quaint vibe. There are no high-rise condos or obnoxious chains. The island-wide speed limit is 35 MPH :) We stayed at the even quieter north end of the island (the Anna Maria section), and it’s so narrow that you can see the Gulf at one end of the street and turn around to see Tampa Bay at the other. We stayed at the Sunrise Garden Resort, which is really the only “hotel” at that end – it’s surrounded by colorful houses (many of them rentals), cute shops, and restaurants. We were very happy there and would absolutely recommend it over the more commercial south end of the island.

Here’s how we really knew this was the perfect destination for us: I could probably count on two hands the number of people we saw under 40. Ha! That’s a little bit of an exaggeration, but if a place is good enough for retirees, it’s good enough for us! Those people know how to relax, I tell you what :)

This vacation was quite possibly the least-planned out adventure we have ever had. We didn’t make any reservations or an itinerary in advance, and that worked out fine! We arrived Wednesday afternoon and left Saturday afternoon, and here were a few highlights:

— Ginny’s and Jane E’s for breakfast sandwiches and smoothies
— The Waterfront Restaurant for dinner (twice!)
— Bean Point, the beach on the north tip of the island, for long walks, shell collecting, and nature sightings
— Renting chairs from Beach Bums and reading on the Tampa Bay-side beach
— Browsing the many adorable shops on Pine Street
— The General Store for yummy deli sandwiches, salads, and ice cream (twice!)
— Poppo’s Taqueria for burrito bowls and quesadillas
— The Donut Experiment for a design-your-own morning treat

We walked to all of these spots from our hotel easily, which was so nice! We also enjoyed watching the Olympics from bed in the evenings and lounging by (and taking a dip in) Sunrise’s heated pool.

The only real off-island adventure we had was kayaking in Robinson Preserve, launching from nearby Bradenton — the perfect active counterpoint to our generally lazy schedule. We rented a tandem from Kayak Jacks for a two hour or so self-guided paddle (through a mangrove tunnel and out to a sandbar!) and it was a seamless experience.

My favorite part? Aside from the flights themselves, which felt absurdly luxurious without wrangling a two-year-old, my favorite part of the trip was our last morning. After checking out of our hotel, we brought our beach chairs back to the water’s edge and chatted through the famous 36 Questions That Lead to Love. We had never done them before, and though of course we knew many of each other’s answers, it was such a treat to just sit there, enjoy each other’s company, and be reminded of all the ways we are similar and all the reasons we are a perfect match for each other.

Which really, was the whole point. I’m not the first one to say it, but time away together is a joy and a priority if you have kids. Yes, we generally like to prioritize trips that include the whole family (and love traveling together dearly!), but John and I plan to be best friends long after kiddos are off to college, and best friends need love and attention and special memories all along the way, not just after the kids have officially turned out alright. We’re grateful we got to to take this trip (our first multi-night stay away) and especially thankful to my Mom for watching June! They had a great time, too :)

Anna Maria was the perfectly relaxing winter getaway we were hoping for, and we couldn’t recommend it more!!

I’d love to hear: Do y’all have a favorite winter getaway? And, if you have kids, have you gotten away yet with just your spouse?

P.S. Clearly I am a big fan of this hat – perfect for such a sunny location!

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