In honor of our 10 year anniversary coming up on November 30, I’m reposting our love story this month.
Perfect Timing
“When are you going to have a baby?” That’s the question all newlyweds dread hearing, and the question people have no shame asking. Our token answer after our wedding was always “Oh, about five years.”
The truth was, we had so many goals and dreams, and having children was somewhere in the distant future for us. We both knew we wanted to have children, but not yet. Not for a long time.
The short list of things I wanted to accomplish included getting my master’s degree and tenure, and saving for a home. I didn’t want to raise a family in the apartment over my parents’ garage. Ed was focused on saving money and having our own home as well, and getting settled in once we moved there.
As a couple, we wanted to have fun, enjoy being young, and build our relationship. We believe that a strong marriage is the foundation of a family. Since we both grew up in families where our parents loved each other, we knew we wanted to be able to provide the same two-parent environment for our children.
And so in those early years of marriage, we had fun together, taking trips to Maine, Vermont, and even Alaska to walk with Brown Bears. I furthered my career by completing my master’s degree, obtaining tenure, becoming a teacher-mentor, and traveling to the Bahamas for a workshop in place-based learning. Ed continued to learn and work at stairbuilding, and was able to help his family start an aquaculture business from scratch. We also saved quite a bit of money for two young people, and Ed threw himself into building our dream home. When we finally completed our home with the help of our families, we realized it was one of the hardest things we would ever do, and we were so happy to be in a home where we could raise a family. All of these were accomplishments we knew would be delayed if we had children.
As time went on and we settled into our new home, finishing up little projects here and there, our minds started thinking about expanding our family. After months of discussion, we decided it was time to start a family in June of 2009, the same month we would celebrate our fifth wedding anniversary.
To be continued…
