I used to be one of those people that thought you should do anything and everything for your kids - that they should be the priority. It’s portrayed in movies of parents willing to do anything for their kids. Overtime this philosophy has changed for me, especially since finding Trevor. You can pause before continuing, and read this awesome article by a mom: “Why my husband will always come before my kids.

During a typical week day, there’s a time where my life becomes like an apron-wearing, oven-ready “50’s housewife cliché”. I love this time of the day. Around 3:30 or 4 pm, my thoughts start to focus on the refrigerator, and pantry, where I figure out what nice meal I can make for us for dinner. Sometimes it feels kind of stressful because I want to make something yummy, fulfilling, and healthy for us, and I’m not always prepared as I could be.

This is the last post in a series of three posts on this subject. It would be beneficial to read part 1 and part 2 before or after reading this post :) How social media has affected my marriage Trevor and I differ on our level of social interaction. I have a stronger need for it than he does, and it’s OK :)Being different in this way set a good example to me, that I’m grateful for.

This is part 2 of 3. If you haven’t read part 1 yet, reading it would probably be to your benefit. :) All the world’s a stage I think each of us are on a stage. We give a public presentation of ourselves to an audience – the people walking by us on the streets, our co-workers, friends, family, and our virtual friends on social media. When we go out on stage, we pick the parts of ourselves that we want people to see.

From about September to December, I really struggled emotionally with social media. I fell into some common pitfalls of comparing my life to other people’s lives, questioning how “real” people were, and spending more time being involved in it than I should have (though I wouldn’t say I was addicted). These things were lowering my self-worth, and making me feel ungrateful. I snapped out of this phase and realized some important things that have made me and my marriage happier.

Wanna know something funny? We’ve established a grocery budget for every month since we’ve been married and I don’t think I’ve ever truly been able to stay under it, EVER! haha. I even feel like I’m fairly frugal in my money-saving strategies. I look through the coupons we get in the mail to see if there’s a deal on something we actually use or eat, I’ll take advantage of good sales going on and stock up in bulk (one of the big suggestions to saving money on groceries), and I’ll avoid getting items sometimes that I think are too expensive that week.

I attended a women’s conference with my mom a few weeks ago and I was inspired by one of the speakers who talked about “loving at arms-length.” It was actually Dawn Armstrong, the mother of the missionary from the movie, “Meet the Mormons.” She talked about how she has a lot of love for so many people; sometimes people who randomly come along. Her love for people grew ten fold when she stopped loving at arms-length, and instead pulled them in tight and gave them a hug.

I’m suuuuuper excited to announce that I am now a PREP trained facilitator! PREP stands for Preventative Relationship Enhancement Program. This accredited program is taught internationally to anyone wanting to strengthen their marital relationship! I have been training so I can teach this curricula to large audiences in the community, and I am happy to announce my first one! I will be partnered with three co-facilitators to teach a slightly condensed version of the program.

I didn’t realize how big of a deal it was to have family pictures up until now. I always thought people made too big of a deal over getting family portraits taken every year, and switching the pictures out in their home every time. While I love the idea of that, it’s not about having formal family photos to show off. To be honest, Trevor and I prefer the silly candid iPhone pictures we take, even in selfie form!

One of my favorite things about getting married, was that I received another awesome family in addition to my own awesome family :) There are so many great things that come with having another set of parents to count on, another set of siblings to have fun with, and of course, don’t forget those nieces and nephews! One of the difficulties, however, in gaining another family, is having to split your time between them for holidays and other events.

Click the play button to LISTEN to this blog post! [sc name=“soundcloud” id=“273872657” ] Back in college I had to do an assignment relating marriage and relationships to something. It could be an object or an action, we just had to explain why. I found a lot of similarities between hiking and marriage so I wrote all those down here for you! :) It’s a crazy, fun, stressful, scary, beautiful adventure together.

Did any other couples gain weight their first months of year of marriage? Or was it just us? hahaha. We always joke to people that getting married must do something to your metabolism. Maybe we just didn’t start off our marriage eating healthy in the first place. I mean, we took this whole first tier of our wedding cake with us on our honeymoon to eat! haha I guess some of our eating habits changed when we got married vs.

Our first married NYE’s in 2013, we went out to dinner to Red Lobster and had a four-course meal discussing our New Year’s resolutions. We had a great time enjoying good food, good company, and talking about the goals and desires of our heart. We decided this year we would continue that as a tradition every NYE! So this year we went out to Buffalo Wild Wings (one of our favs) and listed out to each other our plans for the new year, and it was great!

We chose to send out Christmas cards for the first time this year, and this was our little insert. I meant to post this way before Christmas, but we had some technical difficulties on the back-end of our website. So even though Christmas has come and gone, we hope you can still appreciate our well-wishes to you for the holidays! I’m not sure if a lot of you send out Christmas cards, but I want to share what we did for those of you thinking about doing it.

So remember how I am working on a degree in Family Studies, studying all relationships that come with that, and becoming an expert on how to have a good marriage? Yeah, well just because I’m gaining knowledge, it doesn’t mean it’s easy to apply to my own marriage ;) On a daily basis I find myself learning something neat about normal family functioning, and how to handle relationships. And of course, when I’m learning all of it, I think of the various relationships I have that apply to that idea, and it helps me understand and remember the concept better.

When you think about a typical honeymoon (or look back on your own honeymoon), it’s a pretty great experience :) This picture is of us on our honeymoon to Park City; a.k.a Our best vacation ever! Honeymoons are full of fun, low-stress, and are fairly worry-free because the happiness of being together outweighs everything. That happiness continues on after the vacation is over. Hence, the “honeymoon phase” phrase, haha. It was such a simple time.

I’ve totally been absent for a long time, I know. Sorry. I definitely have my reasons though. I love blogging and writing about aspects of married life that can be useful for people, but I think it’s important to take a step back from writing, and just enjoy those aspects of married life, instead. I’ve been so busy the past few months. Though I enjoy being busy for the most part, I start to hate it when it is consistent and doesn’t come with a nice break.

The word, “realistic” has been on my mind a lot lately: “Is this to-do list realistic?” “Are my wants realistic right now?” “Seriously, is this person’s life realistic?” These are just a few. I’ve had a realization that we need to be more honest and appear more realistic as a society, because that’s how people relate to each other. I have a hard time connecting with people who give a persona that life is perfect because we all know it’s not.

Feel free to LISTEN to this blog post below! [sc name=“soundcloud” id=“273882598” ] There have been some interesting findings that have come from a blog post I wrote a few months ago, and I would like to share those with you. A few months back, I wrote my long-held opinion on bikinis, in the post: “Save it For Your Husband.” I suggest reading it if you haven’t yet, as it can shed some more light on this current post.

As you know, we moved into our first home three weeks ago. We are enjoying it a lot so far :) It’s been great to come home to our own place with a lot more space! (I’m cool because I rhymed.) There’s DEFINITELY some upgrades from an old apartment to a new home, that we’ve enjoyed. Like how my stove cooks chicken, and how my oven seems to bake things better!