Having three children myself, I can testify that having them around kicks the busy-ness of life to a whole other level. In addition to activities and commitments that my husband and I have, we have three little beings who need to be shuttled to school, swimming, dance class, etc.

Many articles and studies seem to point towards children being detrimental to your marriage. I can see how it could be the case; having uninterrupted conversations with my husband generally have to wait until the kids are all in bed or we’re out on a Date Night.

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I don’t have a long dating history from before I met my husband. It’s not that I didn’t date, but I was one of those girls who went for relationships of the long-term variety. For the most part.

I spent over two years dating someone during my senior high years who was three years older than me. “Dating” seems like such a trivial word, considering that I had a promise ring. Do you remember those? Seventeen-year-old me wore it with pride. It now rattles around in the bottom of my jewelry box.

The next serious relationship I had was with a guy who was five years older than me. Five years older than me.  I come from a small town and, well, it seemed that the older guys were always the ones who my friends and I dated. They were so “mature.” I put that in quotes because in hindsight it is nothing but hilarious.

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MSN.com posted an article that was originally in Oprah’s “O” magazine, written by Rita Wilson (wife of one Tom Hanks, in case you were not aware). In the article she talks about a time when they were riding in the car the her parents and the question, “Would you marry the same person again?” came up. One of her parents threw out a “Not me!”

It’s a good article that got me thinking. We’re coming up on our ten year anniversary and the question “If you knew at 25 what you know today about your spouse, would you still marry the same person?” made me think I should address it.

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Anyone who is a regular reader of my personal site or is a Twitter friend knows that my husband is far better at housework than I am. I am not a slob by any right; he is just a guy who hates a dirty floor or any sort of clutter. In our nine years of marriage I have probably washed the floor, oh, five times. That’s not a typo. He is rather particular about the state of our floors (he gets it from his Mom) and will attack them before I even think they need to be dealt with.

The Wall Street Journal had an article this past week titled, “Housework Pays Off Between The Sheets.”
The gist of the article is, “The more housework you do, the more often you are likely to have sex with your spouse.”

I don’t know that I entirely agree. Or agree at all.

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Lisa Belkin over at the New York Times parenting blog Motherlode published a post this weekend titled, “Miss, Mrs. or Ms.?” In her post, she quotes an article in Time magazine which includes an essay by Nancy Gibbs in which she discusses her name.

Nancy talks about how she uses different names depending on the situation. She usually goes by her maiden name, but will sometimes use her husband’s name. As for the Miss/Mrs./Ms. question, she says, “All these identities are me: Ms. when I’m out slaying dragons, Mrs. when I’m in the company of those I love most, Miss when I want to stay home under the covers and daydream.”

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I read an article over at Yahoo! Shine titled, “How did you know you loved him/her?” The author talks about the kind of love that she shares with her significant other; the kind of love where they love you for who you are and not for who you were or who you could be.

I stopped to think about when I first knew I loved my husband. I’ve mentioned many times over that the time span between our first date and getting engaged was one month. Yes, you read that right.

I obviously love him far differently now, after nearly ten years of marriage, than I loved him in the beginning. The love we have now still has those moments of butterflies but the bulk of it is that comfort and security that comes from a long history together. We’ve worked hard to get to where we are today and have that cozy kind of love.

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This past weekend my husband and I packed our three kids into our minivan and embarked on a road trip to the Oregon coast. In the course of four days and three nights we traveled over 1,300 miles throughout Washington and Oregon states. Based on the fact that I am sitting here typing this, you know that we made it home alive.

We wondered how well our kids would do on the trip and were quite surprised (and thankful) at how well the whole thing went. We broke the driving into small chunks of time (two hours on average) and would stop to get out and stretch our legs, have a bathroom break, grab a meal, etc. While in the van we had books, snacks and the almighty DVD player.

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I came across an article over at MSN.com that I thought would be a fun one to share on a Friday: “Weirdest Wedding Gifts Ever.”

Most of the items listed are pretty funny, in my humble opinion.

“Fake vomit.” Really?

“24 double rolls of toilet paper.” Um, thanks?

“A bronze bust of myself.” Ha!

“Autographed picture of Bret Michaels.” AWESOME.

We (sadly) didn’t get any weird wedding gifts, just a few that weren’t quite us and were exchanged.

How about you? Did you get any weird wedding gifts?

A college friend of mine called over the weekend and it was great to get caught up on each others’ lives and families. She brought her husband and three kids out here last summer and while six kids under the age of six in one house was, shall we say, chaotic, our families had a great time together.

I hung up the phone and relayed bits and pieces of the conversation to my husband. In the midst of my (compelling, I’m sure) recap I remembered a tidbit about my friend and her husband that had always struck me as interesting. Not interesting in a bad way, but interesting in a “I don’t know how they did it” way.

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Nataly forwarded me this article from the Washington Street Journal titled, “For Better or Worse, Fewer Couples Tie the Knot.” The gist of the article is that fewer people are getting married because they either are afraid that they will soon receive a pink slip or they simply cannot afford the whole cermony/reception side of things.

The article states that the average cost of a wedding these days is $16,000. That’s the average. I don’t doubt that it’s true. My husband’s uncle got married in California over fifteen years ago and her family spent $25,000 on the wedding. I’m not even kidding.

When my college roommate got engaged, her parents gave her a choice. She could have a big wedding with all of the trimmings, or she could have a tine wedding limited to family members only and have a huge down payment on a house. She opted for the smaller wedding but called me the week before crying because she wished I could have been there. Had I not been a starving student at the time, I would have booked a ticket and crashed her wedding.

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