for the ups and downs

{via my fotolog}

later this week we are headed up to the mountains to visit peter's sister and her hubby for a few days. i'm super excited about the trip since we haven't managed to make it up for a visit since they moved there in august. granted that is mostly because they weren't married until october, and adele was less than 7 weeks old at their wedding. but. it still makes me sad that they've had to come see us every time we've seen them for the last ten months.

on top of the wonderfulness of seeing ben & kelly, i love love love the mountains in the summer. especially the early summer. when i worked as the assistant youth director we took the middle schoolers to camp in the mountains every june. camp was always crazy-exhausting, but there was something about the mountains that time of year - this time of year - that i always looked forward to no matter how many hours i "worked" while there.

and on top of all of that [as if that's not enough...] ben & kelly have graciously offered to watch our kids for an entire day while we're there so peter & i can go to the biltmore. we haven't been to the biltmore in nearly 10 years. the last time we were there it was november of 2005. when peter proposed.

after he proposed we agreed that we wouldn't come back every single year, but he promised to take me back once we hit ten years. when i reminded him of that he said "yes, but ten years happened a lot quicker than i thought it would."

so true.

close to ten years ago we started planning our wedding. of course in my head i'm still only about 25 so it really doesn't seem possible that it has been that long since we got engaged. there's also something incredible about realizing how far we've come in the last ten years. [and something humbling about realizing how far we have to go.]

peter and i danced our first dance at our wedding to a song by dave barnes called "nothing fancy." every time i hear it i'm transported back to our wedding reception. i have a special place in my heart for dave barnes because of that song. i even made a custom painting with some of the lyrics that hangs above our bed.

since then dave has released another song called "God gave me you." the lyrics from that song seem fitting for this week's celebration:

God gave me you for the ups and downs

God gave me you for the days of doubt

for when i think i've lost my way

there are no words left here to say, it's true

God gave me you

we've had our share of ups and downs over the years. i don't know a single couple who hasn't. but i've never regretted saying yes. i didn't regret it when we had some unreasonable requests put on our wedding. i didn't regret it when we moved three times in our first three years of marriage. i didn't regret it when we struggled to have a baby. [i struggled with lots of other things at that point, but i never regretted who was by my side.] i didn't regret it when he left his job in part to form another company. i didn't regret it when i lost our first baby. or when we decided it would be a good idea to buy a house that needed some work two and a half months before bringing adele home.

{almost} ten years later, my answer is still yes. i'm so thankful God gave me you for the ups and downs.

xo