“Happy Anniversary, honey.. 4 whole years – that’s a LOOONG time. It’s definitely time for a new one” (husband that is)
This was how mine and Allen’s morning conversation started. Of course - he answered me by saying “Just make sure he’s rich.”

All joking aside – today is a pretty special day for me. 4 years. 4 years. 4 years? I can’t believe I’ve been married to Allen for 4 years. It seems like we just met a few weeks ago. I will never forget the first few times I really “hung out” with Al. Although he was exactly the opposite of anything I ever thought I wanted – I could NOT get him out of my head. All I could think about was how “hot” he was, and how he made me laugh. It wasn’t too long before I decided that whether he liked it or not he was going to be mine, and I concentrated all of my efforts into having this man for myself. I didn’t have to put a whole lot of effort in however, because he (apparently) was diggin’ me as well. I think we both realized pretty early in the relationship that we really had something. It went far beyond physical attraction and surface infatuation. We had a dynamic that just worked; it worked so well that it almost broke us up a few times. We were so young – and neither of us ready to be faced with a lifelong commitment. It took a while, but we finally decided that young or not, mature or not, ready or not – we didn’t want to lose each other. A few years later Allen proposed and a year after that we were married! My heart still skips a beat when he walks in the room, I still love to be near him every second that I can. In fact – at Kenna’s wedding one of our good friends was commenting on how Allen and I seem like we just can’t get enough of each other. I will say that I love our relationship. We’ve been together so long that we know one another inside and out and we have a comfort level that knows no boundaries. But at the same time we still act like two teenagers just starting a relationship. Of course, we’ve had to fight like hell to get here. I cannot tell you how many people were against our marriage; how many people told us that we would never make it, and that we were too young and immature to know what we were getting ourselves into. Granted, we were very young and pretty immature; but we always knew it was going to be a tough road. We knew there would be rough days and hard times, we knew there would be points that getting out would be much easier than fighting to stay together. We walked into this marriage armed with that understanding as well as knowing that we had to put God at the top and center of our relationship. I guess in the scope of life 4 years really isn’t all that much, and we have a whole ‘lotta life left to screw this thing up – but we’re here now. We’ve made it thru 3 years of dating, 4 years of marriage, 2 kids with hopefully more to come and we’re still standing strong!

I love you, Allen. Thanks for sharing these years with me and sticking with me thru the rough stuff. Thank you for understanding my quirks and for strengthening my weaknesses. On this day four years ago I thought I loved you more than any human could love – I’ve since learned that I was very, very wrong as time and the birth of our daughters have multiplied my love for you exponentially.