A Bumpy Second Year Of Marriage

It is sooo hard to find pictures...I'm telling you, we have it so much easier now, having phones with cameras. We just didn't take a bunch of pictures until our kiddos came along....okay, rant over. :)

Since it's been about 2 months since I've written a chapter of My Life Story, and just in case you're dropping in for the first time, here are links to the chapters I've written so far. You might want to catch up.

A Child of the 60s &70s
Life in Hawaii ~ Vacation Turned Staycation
The Jr. High Years ~The Good, Bad and The Ugly
High School ~ Flags, Driving and A Boyfriend
Trying To Figure Out Life
A Car Breakdown Can Be A Good Thing
A Whirlwind Romance And A Change Of Heart
Never The Same Again
Wedding Bells
Life After The Honeymoon

Anyway...When I last left off, Mike and I had gotten married, and we had moved into our first little apartment. Frankly, our first year was amazing! We were so very happy and blessed!

Mike still had a huge commute to work every day. He was riding his motorcycle back and forth, and he would "white line"... that meant he was splitting the lane, driving between cars on the freeway. Yeah, I did a lot of praying! He did get clipped once, thank The Lord, there was an empty space for him to slip into. He was pretty shaken up. He took a moment to thank the Lord for protection and catch his breath. He fixed his mirror and knew that if he didn't "get back on the horse" so to speak, he never would... So, he went right back into splitting traffic. Brave man! I don't know how he did it...

Here's a picture of what his bike looked like. He love that bike. We had a lot of fun riding it too!

Life was just sailing along for us.  We were enjoying church and our new life together. Although, after the first year... we began fighting more and more. I guess you could say that "the honeymoon period" was over. We just didn't have one day where we didn't fight about something. We are both strong willed, stubborn people. Definitely more then than we are now... We were pretty much two bulls that would lock horns and neither one of us would "give in".

We loved each other immensely, though... And we were determined to make our marriage work. Our commitment wasn't just before men, but before God. We committed our marriage to Him. In His eyes we were one. Divorce was not an option, and was a word we chose not to use... ever! Divorce was not a solution to our problem. We were the problem, we were the selfish ones. Mike and I took our commitment to each other very seriously, so we decided to seek help. We began counseling with our pastor.

It was tough to admit we were struggling, but it was tougher getting through that year. Yet, we began to allow God to change us...  To take our eyes off of ourselves and to see each other's point of view. We started to think of each other first. We began to seek God more and He filled us more with Himself instead of our own self centeredness. The Lord is so faithful, much more than we are. He is the one that held our marriage together, along with our choice to seek Him first. Over time, the fighting seemed to happen less and our love began to grow more for each other and more for our Lord.

Marriage is hard. It takes work to to make it work. It seems that people are too willing to give up on their marriage if it's too much work, or there are too many sacrifices to make. We refused to become another statistic.

Our love continued to grow... in more than one way. We decided after Christmas, almost to our 2nd year anniversary, that we would try to start a little family.

Mike and I purposefully wanted to have children while we were young. We wanted to be young and energetic to enjoy them and still be young enough to have fun when they grew up and moved on... :)

We didn't know how long it would take for me to get pregnant, but I went off birth control and we figured it would take some time. Plus we wanted all of the chemicals from the birth control to filter out of my body first. Well.... let's just say it didn't work that way at all. I got pregnant right away! What? Wow! That didn't take long at all!

And of course I began to feel the effects of the pregnancy just as quickly!

Here is a picture of me and my mom. It's her birthday, so that would be in April. If you can't tell, my coloring wasn't great. I was nauseous, tired, throwing up and miserable. Wait! This isn't what I signed up for! It was a tough 3 months.  I could barely keep food down, or water for that matter. I lost 15 lbs. my first trimester...(don't worry, we made out just fine! I made up for it in the end) ;)

I was still working as an administrative assistant at the child sponsorship company. Although, I seemed to be out sick, more than I was there working. It wasn't long until Mike and I decided that I should just stay home.

I would have to say that staying home did me well. I look better here, I'm about 5 months pregnant.

This was the same "first apartment"we lived in.

That couch... we had it for YEARS! You will definitely see it in future pictures. :)

Our upbringing was so different from each other. Mike always had a stay at home mom, I always had a working single mom. We decided to do everything we could for me to stay home with our children. There were a lot of sacrifices. But we felt in the long run they would all be worth it.

Mike was still commuting to work and it was so tough on him. We thought maybe we should move closer so that he didn't have to drive so much. We'd still stay at our church, so in a sense, we'd "commute" to church instead.

We found a little apartment in Tujunga. It was only about 30 minutes to Mike's work. That was great! So, we moved in. I'm in my second trimester and moving was quite interesting.... But with help from family and friends we did it!

Well, after we moved in we noticed a horrible smell that was not present when we first saw the apartment. Turns out it was cat urine! It was awful! We complained right away.  They didn't seem to care. Great...

Come to find out friends of ours were moving out of their fabulous apartment. It was so big and clean smelling just perfect! Now this doesn't do it justice, but I found a few pics of the kitchen and dining room.

It had a large living room and a couple of bedrooms upstairs. It also had a cute little patio area out back. We couldn't wait to move in!!!

We contacted our current landlord and told them we would be moving out. That this smell made the apartment unlivable. Let's just say we were out of there within the month or so. Plus we realized in that short of a time, that it was easier for us to see friends and family if we lived closer to them. Tujunga was about an hour away and it just didn't seem to be working out the way we had hoped.

So moving again, while pregnant... Yay!!! Ugh.... But we survived and the new apartment was awesome! It even had a pool!

That's me in front of the apartment.  You can see the pool to the right. The Lord blessed us so much with that apartment.

We were watching that little boy for the day. His parents were dear friends of ours and his mommy was having his little sister that day. Plus, I needed some practice!  :)

I even used the pool some. Well, probably just soaked in some sun...

What's kinda funny is that this apartment was right across the street from our first apartment.... yeah.... Wouldn't it have been nice just to move our stuff across the street??

Anyway, we were settling in, getting the nursery ready for our baby! Look at Mike, he was definitely rockin the mullet and beard! Handsome thing... We were so excited!

Blessings!!