Can you believe we have been together 10 whole years! That is an entire decade together, the best decade of my life by far! Cody and I have been friends for 19 years, together for 10 years, dated for over 5 years of those 10 years, and have almost been married 5 years and longer than we dated. I still can't believe we haven't yet been married longer than we had been dating, that just shows how long we waited to get married and endured long distance. I feel like I just about can't remember what life was like before Cody! I think a dateaversary is just as important as a wedding anniversary, they both are equally symbolic! So to celebrate our last 10 years, take a trip down memory lane with me:
2011- April 1st 2011 when he asked me to Prom and we started our 5 year long distance relationship only 1.5 months after we started dating. Cody went to UTM and I went to UT We also had our first kiss and first kisses ever only 30 days after we started dating. That was the night we also fell in love. We held hands after the 3rd week (big deal! lol) and loved being in both of each others first relationship. On our first date I also knew he would be my husband and thought about our future kids.
2012- In the midst of college, both drowning, bleh. 2012 Christmas we started talking about marriage. This year I also changed from biomedical engineering to material Science Engineering knowing it would add an extra year to my 'lovely' college experience. I also didn't have to stay in the dorms anymore and moved to an apartment on campus.
2013- We just enjoyed seeing each other for one day every 3 months and really made our time together count. Lots of zoo trips, mini vacations, and cuddles.
2014: We were beyond ready for the next step in our relationship (aka marriage) but knew we had to wait until we graduated. We were so tired of long distance at this point and just tired in general, you could see it in our eyes and faces in this picture. We had just came home from our finals right before Christmas break. College was kicking our butts, we were just worn. Morgan also started college the Fall of this year and we got to spend 2 years together in college, the last year being in an apartment together, that was fun! Once Morgan got there, my experience increased exponentially.
2015- Cody surprised me and proposed April 18th 2015. He had driven the 6 hours from his college to surprise me at my favorite restaurant and got down on one knee. We had discussed from Christmas of 2012 that we were ready to get engaged asap but we didn't want to be engaged for 4 years like some people we knew in college. It just looked bad like we were dragging our feet even though that would not have been the case at all and most of the time, the people who were engaged so young and for so long, it almost never lasted. Plus I needed to focus on school. So when Cody proposed, we were engaged for almost 13.5 months, perfect! My goal was 13-14 months of engagement, perfect for planning the wedding and not too short. Cody also did his student teaching Fall of 2015 in Farragut TN, 30 minutes away from me living with my grandparents and he visited me almost every weekend. Cody also graduated college at Christmas of this year and got his first teaching job in Chattanooga ready to look for apartments for us to settle down in.
2016- June 4th 2016 we finally got married, 2-3 weeks after I finally graduated from college. Cody had gotten an apartment in Ooltewah for us to live in after we got married and came back from our PCB and Walt Disney world honeymoon. I then went on the job hunt for the next few months. We also decided we didn't want to start trying for kids until we hit the 5 year mark in marriage, and I had worked for 5 years to build my career and our savings because I always knew I wanted to be a stay at home mom, and we wanted to be 28 when we got pregnant and 29 when I gave birth. Oh and we also found our dream church and a newlywed Sunday school class during the summer of this year!
2017- Our first year of marriage was one of our best years, we absolutely had a blast and just couldn't wait to finally be in the same city and be married. Pure bliss! Early 2017 I also landed my first engineering job and loved it! Cody also started his masters degree. Starting the 2017 school year in August, Cody moved to a much better high school to teach at. The day after Christmas of this year Cody's dad said he wanted to build a house for us so we began looking for house plans.
2018- This year was a lot of fun but also one of our most challenging. We were itching to get started on our house starting in June but we weren't able to get started until the following year because Cody's brothers house was behind as well and we had to wait until theirs was finished. We did buy our lot on April 23rd 2018 though! That was fun. We decided to take a beach trip this year to a new beach and had a blast. This year we also had really really bad neighbors above us in our apartment and every day was pure misery. Also Cody's masters degree got harder and harder and I was traveling weeks at a time in early 2018 to Wisconsin in the dead of winter. It was very depressive.
2019- After months and months of delay, we finally broke ground on our lot exactly a year after we bought it, April 23rd 2019 and started the year+ process of building that was supposed to only be 4-5 months. We had to live in our apartment for 4 years opposed to the 2-3 years we were wanting. My sister got married this year also. My position at work changed and it was very stressful and awful. Cody also had a major foot surgery 1 week prior to moving into our house at the very very end of this year. I had to move us single handedly because we were promised to be in at the very very very latest, December 5th which ended up being December 27th and the house was far from being done.
2020- What a year for us all. The pandemic hit, we finally finished building the house early June 2020 after living in it for 5 months unfinished. We finished our apartment lease in February 19th 2020 and I broke my foot as well. Lucky me. This was also the year we accidentally got pregnant and then miscarried after 14 long weeks of unsuccessful miscarriage and a surgery later. The silver platter to this year was in the beginning of the year I moved to my dream position at work and we got sweet Lucy girl!!!
2021- This year has been really great, I am getting my health back on track, we are loving sweet Lucy girl, covid is getting better, I had covid twice in the last year, and we hope to be pregnant at the end of this year. In a year from now (April) we are getting Cody his dream truck, getting ready to be a stay at home mom, have Cody finish his masters degree and hope to have our second kid close in age to the first, maybe even a year apart!
I love our relationship and how we support each other. We have definitely had ups and downs throughout these 10 years but the majority has been perfect because I have Cody by my side through everything. He is such a great listener and a fixer which is a rare but amazing combination to have. Here's to the next decade! Who knows, maybe we will have 4 kids by the next decade for us has been over!
Just like last year, to celebrate our dateaversary, we pitched a tent in the back yard and spent the night. This year we had Lucy and it was incredible!!! She actually loved the tent so so much and cuddled against my legs and feet all night long.
Hi mama!
We had a double person sleeping bag and it was prefect and cuddly. It was 55 degrees at night so not bad at all!
We woke up to this😁😆, wake up dad, I'm hungry!
Fast forward to Lucy's first Easter! She loved it so much!! She held her little basket and looked for her eggs filled with her favorite dog treats. It surprised me how well she caught on and it was the most precious thing you have ever seen.
Since I have been working from home for the most part for the past little bit while the cases have temporarily risen, I took the opportunity to declutter the house! I made 3 stacks, sell, give away, and throw away. It is amazing getting rid of so much clutter.
Before and after above. This is just one example. I wish I had done a before and after of other areas in the house.
We mowed the grass the other day for the first time this year, and apparently Lucy LOVES grass clippings. She used to just eat them, now she does that plus rolls in them! She was stained green for 3 days afterwards!
Mom came to visit me after her dentist appointment and we got to walk Sasha around the area! Too bad Lucy and Sasha don't get along.
We spent Easter at my grandparents house to visit the new baby from my cousin Katy and her husband Thomas. Mom and I walked about 4 miles and went on an adventure with Sasha.
Meet Lincoln Cook and Esther Lee, my second cousins! The next generation is among us and I absolutely can't believe it. My cousin on the other side of my family, he and his wife are expecting their second son any day now!
I have known from the start, 10 years ago when I was 17, since I was taking the correct and slower path, my cousins and possibly sister would get married and have kids before me and I accepted that because it was the right way to do things for me. Delayed gratification is a lost art for this generation. It was hard for me to accept at first because I am the oldest and have what they have now (minus babies) but just have to wait longer for the right time. We are financially ready for a baby now, but we are waiting for the right time. For example with Lucy, it was absolutely the perfect time to have her💓, we were so ready financially and where we are in life (our house) and especially for me, emotionally. That's what I worry about with kids. I don't even feel ready to be pregnant again and looking at babies makes me want to run the other direction. The end of this year when we start trying again, I am worried I still won't be ready emotionally but we have to anyways because it's the right time for us and Cody is dying to have a baby lol. Plus we don't know if I will have issues again and it is best to get that out of the way first and quickly. And luckily I did get married first among the cousins and my sister, there are just 4 kids born already between my 9 cousins and there will probably be 2-3 more by the time I give birth to my first or right around then (Lord willing). It doesn't help that family members make it seem selfish and so wrong that I am not having kids right now. I have been heavily shamed lately for that and to be honest, you feel like crap afterwards. I'm not ready and I won't be until 7-19 more months.
Right now, I am very much in the dog mom phase and I am absolutely loving every single second of it. This is my niche and I'm thriving in it. I just love being a dog magnet and being around all of the dogs. With me is Daisy the chihuahua (my future second dog lol), Nahla, Hannah's German shepherd, and Sasha, mom's German Shepard.
Kayla
4/22/2021
