Archives for June 2013

Josh Kelley and I will be celebrating our 10 year wedding anniversary at the end of this month.  One of my goals for 2013 was to plan a vacation for just us.  Me and him.  No kids allowed.  Ashley and her husband Chris were game to join in our kidless fun as well, so we did some research and agreed upon a June trip to the Dominican Republic.  We booked it at the end of January and boom…vacay was in the works.

Last Saturday we made our 3 hour road trip to Collierville to drop all four of the wee Kelleys off with some family and then Josh and I drove back home and hit the airways the next morning…like 6:30am style.  That meant our friend Susan being at our house at 3:45am.  Crazytown.

Let me pause to give a major shout out thank you to my cousins Amy, Tom, Rachel and Hannah.  Oh and Becca and Brian too!  The wee Kelleys are clearly no easy task, but throw in allergies and daily meds and heart conditions and I realize this was a huge, energetic, way too busy piece of cake to eat.  Right before we left the kids and headed back to Nashville I told Amy, “As long as everyone is alive when we get back we don’t care what you do while we’re gone.  Do what you gotta do to survive.”  And they certainly all survived.  They had the best week and were spoiled rotten.  We’re pretty tough on our kids, so we figured they could use some spoiling 🙂

  Back to the D.R.  Best trip ever.  I have so many funny stories and can’t wait to share what all we did.  It was deliriously magical, but for today I thought I would post far too many “us” pictures.

I particularly loved this stand side-by-side evening picture.  I would like to point out a few subtle differences from your typical vacation couples dinner photo you ask a stranger to take of you and your love.  Ashley decided to go artsy and include a large portion of the dark air above us and dark bridge area to the right and cut off our legs.  Those two details really make this a keeper.  She really should be a photographer.  {Ashley is going to call me very soon now…I promise.  I’ll let you know how the phone call goes.}  I really do love this picture though.  Just messing with Ashley a bit.

Marriage is hard…kind of like late night photography 🙂 I’m serious though…anyone else think it’s hard as hell?  If not, then don’t tell me cause I’ll get all super envious and the ugly kind of jealous and then I’ll have to repent.  Josh and I are always working at it and changing things and trying to fix things and then throw in a bunch of yahoo kids and good Lord…what a messy life it can be.

Here is his Father’s Day card I gave him this year.  I like Venn diagrams.

I saw it and was like, “YES.”  I mean seriously, it totally is pure insanity sometimes…the majority of the time.  On the inside it simply says, “Thanks for going through it all with me.”  And that’s the kicker.  Marriage and kids and life in general are hard, but I could never be more grateful…like the most sincerest of gratitude ever, ever, ever…than I am to have Josh Kelley along for this wild ride.  And taking a vacation…6 full days…5 glorious nights…with just us, was crazy, crazy good.  We needed it.  We needed that time for just us.  We laughed because it didn’t have to be the Dominican.  We could have just done the same thing at home and it would have still been pretty stellar.  Sunny weather and beaches are a plus though.

I feel like marriage will be something we work at until the day we die.  I can tell you easily how to make a marriage suck.  I’m a kid of divorce and if you want to know how to trash your marriage just ask me.  I can give you the whole run down real quick like.  From a very young age I knew I wanted something very different than what my parents had.  I know my Mom prayed like a freakin’ warrior for my brother and I to marry godly people and to make a real marriage…one that was full of Jesus and love.  She told me a million times over only by the grace of God did we end up not only being the people we are, but also with the people we married.

Marriage is work, but it’s good work.  It’s noble work.  It’s work that is totally worth it.  I feel like putting each other and our marriage above everything else, other than Jesus, is the best thing we could ever do for our marriage and our kids.  Sometimes I fail miserably at that.  Sometimes I put so much care and and kindness and love and thoughtfulness and time into others, and then completely forget about Josh.  Ugh.  Typing that makes me nauseous.  How foolish of me.  But I am working on it.  Like mad.  I’m changing.  I’m making the choice to not just see Josh as my husband and best friend and father to my kiddos, but to see him as Jesus does.  He is to be cherished and treasured.

And we deserve time for us.  We’re determined to make more time for us now than ever before.  He may have even searched Craigslist last night for me a mountain bike because that would be something else we could do together.  He may be a widower after my first attempt, but at least we were together in the end 🙂

So, I know that was a lot of random marriage/vacation/Josh&Laura pictures plus some random humor, but you know how I roll.  I hope you will also start to give you and your spouse time…time is good…and care.  They so deserve it and you do too.

Happy Monday!