***Giveaway closed.*** Winner listed at the bottom of the post *This post contains affiliate links. This week my focus is on the importance of recording the memories in marriage! I talk about how important it is to journal the little details here, with 10 ideas for how you can do that! I also wrote here about how important it is to update your family photos often AND make sure to hang them up in your house!

I love being right in the middle of a memorable moment when a certain kind of happiness overcomes me, and I can’t help but think, “I will never forget this.” Those moments are deemed “memorable” for whatever reason, and can stay in our hearts forever. As much as we wish they can be replayed over and over, they can’t be; unless you have a time machine in the form of a flying DeLorean, and your name is Doctor Emmett Brown.

So I’m finally sharing our beautiful trip to Hawaii we took in May! Two phrases I remember saying multiple times out loud and in mind are: “Bucket list item - CHECK!” and “That’s another new thing I can say I tried!” I liked being able to make those little steps of progression in life, but doing them felt a million times more special and held more purpose getting to do them with my husband :)

Every anniversary we do a little something to celebrate our love! Like everyone else! haha. Some people choose to follow the theme of their year from that list of anniversary gifts here. I guess I don’t want to be told what to get my spouse because my spouse is unique! Our gift to each other was celebrating in Hawaii this year, but I wanted us to do something special there to mark the occasion.

Arguments, fights, tiffs, quarrels, disagreements, misunderstandings, whatever you call them, are bound to happen here and there in marriage. If a couple says they have never even disagreed before, they are lying to you and themselves! haha. Whether it’s a large or small matter, and consistent or rare. Trevor and I have our tiffs just like everybody else. We have moments when our minds are not in sync with each other.

You all know what we already did for our #anniversary to keep it fresh - romantic vacay to Hawaii! But what is your answer to the question? :) If you recently celebrated your anniversary than this is your early start to thinking about next year’s celebrations! It’s already got me thinking!

If you’ve been following along from the beginning, you’ll remember that I wrote about the following married milestones: being married for three weeks, and then three months. So naturally, I felt like doing a milestone post on being married for THREE YEARS! That’s such a small number, but I believe every year is an accomplishment! And we’ve experienced so much together in this short time, so it gets me excited about what we’ll experience at our 30-year mark!

Little steps make up the whole staircase anyways, right? It’s the little things we do today that count. It’s the little things we do on our marriage that make it long-lasting!

For the last year, we have been looking into a big vacation for ourselves. We’ve done research to various places, planning, and multiple times were minutes away from actually booking a trip! Yet we haven’t pulled the trigger… until now! We finally did it - we went to HAWAII! Some of you might be saying, “Going to Hawaii is this big for you guys?” or “We go on vacations all the time…” Well, it’s different for us, and because it’s not something we do often, it will be that much more special :)

This is a common catchphrase in religions, even though it might not be a guarantee. While I believe praying is a powerful tool in marriage, it doesn’t necessarily guarantee a couple won’t get divorced. However, it does pull a large weight when it comes to feeling high marital quality. I came across a recent article not too long ago from the Institute of Family Studies about how influential religion is in a couple’s marital satisfaction.

*This post contains affiliate links. Our time is very valuable as married couples, individuals, and parents. Weekends seem to be dispersed between your own events and obligations, family events, or just plain staying home on a Saturday night relaxing! If you got kids, throw in their games and activities, too. So when it comes to date night, it’s rare for some of us to find time for double dates, let alone our own dates!

As a society, especially women, we tend to get caught up in other’s love stories. The obvious ways we do this are through movies and novels, right? Writers make up these passionate love stories that (most of the time) are unlikely to happen, with the most convenient circumstances. When these stories are played out in movies, of course, we finally get to see it all played out visually so everything is played up.

There are many things in the beginning of marriage that we don’t know about or fully understand until we have been married for at least a few years. I’m sure you guys have specific situations you ran into that you stressed too much over, or maybe an aspect that you underestimated. Maybe knowing your spouse for longer has helped you know how to handle certain situations better. So for my #freshfridays question I asked:

I’m excited to share this idea with you guys because I think it’s a fun, EASY way to switch things up when it comes to your sex life! For whatever reason, we all experience a hiatus of sexual intimacy at times. Sometimes it’s because there are natural life transitions happening like having a baby, and other times you’re just needing a nudge to get back there. This game can be that nudge for your marriage!

We are all full of wisdom whether we have been married five days or five decades! Sometimes being a teacher helps us learn something ourselves. What would your advice be?

So here’s that part two video about the marriage advice we received on our wedding day! The first video was me going through pieces of “bad” (cliche, not the best to follow) advice and why I think it’s not the best to follow. For this video, however, I wanted to keep it more positive and focused on all the GOOD advice we received on our wedding day because there truly were some great things said to us that stuck with us!

FRESHLY MARRIED IS NOW ON YOUTUBE!!! Click on This button below to subscribe! I was feeling like I needed to be doing videos as another form of helping couples strengthen their marriage because we all learn in different ways.I think this is also a great opportunity for my personality to come out a little more, which can help our relationship feel more personable :) I’m all about relating to others because it allows you to better understand them and trust them.

This week I asked how couples get their exercise - do they work out together or individually, and why. The reason I asked is because this is something my husband and I have been trying to figure out for a while now! I’ve seen many couples do workouts together, or go on the same diets. I think it’s cool to have it be something you can do together because you get healthy while spending time together, you can encourage each other, and it can be convenient to eat the same meals.

I’m grateful that I was able to experience college being both single, and then married. In the beginning I was doing the college thing for the experience and learning, but finishing college as a married woman for the last few semesters was for more than that. I wasn’t just doing it for me anymore. The Single College Life People tend to think that it’s best to go through college being single, or at least not yet married.

Substitute a few words with “marriage” and you now have a quote that inspires you to be more than just married :) “In the end, it’s not the years in your marriage that count, it’s the life in your marriage.”